Tom Clancy's The Division - Expansion I - The Underground

Editor's Notes

Xbox One digital version reviewed, with a disc copy of the base game.

Introduction

'The Underground' is the first paid DLC in 'Tom Clancy’s The Division' season pass. It follows the large 1.1 update and a bunch of other free stuff. 'Underground' includes, among other things, its own Incursion, randomized levels, and four new gear sets. It arrives alongside Update 1.3, which includes the new shared social space, The Terminal.

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

'The Underground' adds a new area to the Base of Operations, unsurprisingly called the Underground. It is a haphazard maze of sewers and subterranean access tunnels that have been partially claimed by the gangs of New York. In the lore, the Cleaners, Rikers and so forth use the tunnels as a place to lick their wounds when Division agents savagely pummel them on the surface. In gameplay terms, it functions as an endless, customizable source of missions.

Each time I went into the Underground, I could choose a few variables for the operation. Multi-stage missions, difficulty level, and even some modifiers for things like removing the minimap, reducing ammo pickups, and more (called Directives). In this regard it’s not unlike the challenge modes in many other games, where each handicap gives a bit more experience on a successful finish. The playthroughs in the underground are procedurally generated - each mission has a random layout, enemy configuration, and objectives, although there are common denominators like boss fights.

Finishing up an operation grants experience points for the Underground rank, which allows for more Directives, longer Operations, and the coveted Underground caches. These caches, which drop high Gearscore equipment on a pretty reliable basis, are currently the only real incentive for farming out Operations. All of the other stuff I pick up along the way is, to an item, beneath my Gear level, even the orange freebie at the end. This amounts to a lot of crafting materials, and 'The Division' already has a lot of ways for level 30s to farm the primo crafting materials. These missions are exactly like all other missions: first Faye Lau or another important NPC gives us a pep talk, then we fight some guys, follow the floating orange diamond to the next fight with guys, and so on for 30-60 minutes. It’s not bad, it’s actually quite fun, but this can already be done without paying extra for DLC, and for similar rewards to boot. On a side note, even though these operations are quick and dirty, they’re not really accessible for solo players. The lone wolves out there will have to keep doing what they’re doing, make some friends, or resign themselves to the perils of matchmaking.

Besides the Directives and ranking system, there is little new content in 'The Underground' (I’ll talk about the incursion in a bit). Yes the levels are procedurally generated, but after a few missions everything began to run together and just look sewery. There are no new gangs and not much in the way of fresh weaponry or enemy types. I did encounter environmental traps, like a downed power cable that shocked me when I was foolish enough to walk over it, but otherwise there’s not a lot to distinguish the gunplay or aesthetics of the Underground from anything else in 'The Division'. I should note that the Terminal, a secondary vendor hub between the Base of Operations and the Underground, is part of the 1.3 patch materials and available to all players, not just season pass holders. Here you can find the newly granulated blueprints vendors, as well as the HVT questgivers released in patch 1.2.