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Tom Clancy’s The Division: Heartland is a new standalone free-to-play game and that's all we know

The headline says it all

Ubisoft have announced Tom Clancy’s The Division: Heartland, a new standalone free-to-play game due for release in 2021-2022. Details are scant, but it'll be developed by Red Storm Entertainment rather than Massive Entertainment, who made The Division 1 and 2.

There's really nothing else to go on. The name "Heartland" (and the picture above) suggests it'll be set in the American mid-west, rather than the urban settings of the last two games. Red Storm are currently hiring for a lead level designer on their "next AAA game" and looking for someone with experience building open world spaces for PvE and PvP, which sounds like it'll follow a similar pattern to the rest of the series.

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If that's enough to pique your interest, you can already register for a chance to access the game early.

Although The Division was created by Massive, Red Storm Entertainment were co-founded by Tom Clancy and originated games based on his work, before being bought by Ubisoft in 2000. They did additional development on both Division games, although the last time they led a Clancyverse game themselves was Ghost Recon: Future Soldier in 2012.

At the same time as announcing Heartland, Ubisoft reiterated that Massive were working on new content to come for The Division 2. There's not much more information than mentioned back in March, but it'll arrive late 2021 and "will include an entirely new game mode and new methods for levelling agents with an emphasis on increasing build variety and viability." Massive are also leading development of Ubisoft's open-world Star Wars game.

I've got a soft spot for The Division series. It's a ridiculous fantasy, but also extremely satisfying to hide behind low walls and shoot men so good that your headquarters upgrade. As Brendy noted in his Division 2 review, "We humans are idiot creatures of contradiction, and we can thoroughly enjoy a rock solid shooter even as we recognise it as being vapid hogwash."

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