For their first-ever Community Q&A video, Ubisoft explained a couple of the nitty gritty details we’ve been wondering about the The Division’s loot systems, gear customization, and door-closing animations. The game, which was originally announced during E3 2013, is currently slated for release sometime in 2016–a date which follows several delays. With E3 kicking off in a matter of days, and Ubisoft’s press conference next Monday at 3 PM, this video is hopefully hyping us up for more details about the hotly anticipated game.
In the video above, Ubisoft Massive’s Hamish Bode explains that they normally do Q&A’s in written format, but this time around, they thought it would be cool to bring fan questions all the way to the developers at Massive so they can answer them face-to-face. The power of the internet, you guys!
Anyways, first up is a question about loot rarity. During the latest E3 gameplay trailer, an enemy drops loot on the floor and it is indicated with an orange marker, but other enemies didn’t have the orange marker. “The orange ones you see was the highest rarity and it was very flashy so you notice it,” explained Lead Economic Designer Andrada Greciuc. “We make sure that when you get a good item, you don’t overlook it.” But that’s not the only loot out there. She continued, “The lower rarity items are also marked, you should be able to find them as well, they’re just not as flashy. Also, not all kills grant loot, so that’s why you didn’t see [a notification] after each kill.”
Now we know that weapons will be customizable, but another thing about which we’ve been wondering is what else the company is doing to make characters stand out in the world. “We have a good system in place where we can actually customise regions of our gear,” senior character artist Emil Mujanovic said. “For instance, the chest piece has up to three variants we can change. There’s an outer layer, a middle layer, and a bottom layer. That way you don’t bump into the same guy with the same gear and be like, ‘Oh, I don’t feel as unique or as important in the game anymore.’ Plus you get to look how you want to look.”
Also, though it’s a simple detail, the door-closing animations in the gameplay trailer are excellent. Senior technical animator Matthew Lee cheekily elaborated on what they did to nail the realism: “We have a bunch of animators who are door closing experts, they basically closed car doors all day just for this one animations. Obviously, you’re going to be able to do this on a lot of different cars in New York. We weren’t getting the right results on the Swedish cars so it was pretty important that we went and got authentic New York car doors.”
After chuckling, Lee remarked, “For real, it uses a blend of motion capture, key framed animation, and human inverse kinematics to allow us to track where the car door is, and place the hand onto the car door and shut the car door with blended animation.”
Well, there you have it, folks. Tom Clancy’s The Division looks like it is shaping up nicely. Let us know whether you are excited for the title in the comments below.
HT: YouTube
