Boy, I Picked the Worst Time to Start PlayingThe Division 2

As the globe started to realizethe true scopeof the spread of the refreshing coronavirus , it seemed like many people turn toapocalyptic and pandemic - based fictionas a singular salve to solace their nerve . I did much the same , but in a more video game fashion , and chance that it was much harder to soothe my nerves than I ’d look to .

determine inWashington DC , The Division 2 — a game I ’d been stand for to play , but just never obtain round to it until a few week ago — like its forerunner , ideate a contemporaneous post - pandemic apocalypse . A significant bit of the United States population has been killed by “ the Dollar Flu , ” a man - made lethal computer virus spread on polluted dollar sign bill at the tallness of vacation shoppingone Black Friday , infecting and stamp out millions . As a extremity of the titular Division — sleeper agent with access to futurist technical school designed to kick in and patrol the Carry Nation against rogue elements in the face of a national crumbling of order — you’re tasked with navigating the world of survivors left behind by the Dollar Flu , one deployable healing drone or remote guided searcher mine at a time .

https://kotaku.com/the-division-2-is-political-despite-what-its-developer-1826776710

This is my Division 2 lady. She likes healing drones, long walks along the now-deserted National Mall, and listening to people who recorded their pandemic anxieties on tape and left them strewn over Washington, D.C.

Your home base is straight up the White House . You combat through endless mint like the Lincoln Memorial or the Senate chambers . You free the President at one peak , and he promptly tell apart you to go out there and kick ass in his name and whatnot ( he also seems like a massive asshole who betrays you at one point , I think ? It ’s hard to say , the storytelling is very bad ) . Along the telephone circuit , a random gentlewoman halt you in one of the biz ’s subsister settlement and ask you , wo n’t you please take care popping out and picking up the genuine Declaration of Independence on your next sally , because it might … I dunno , make multitude feel hope ? America , etc .

It ’s very mute . But it ’s honestly the kind of mindless dumb I really needed at a prison term when I just need an aimless telecasting plot to play , scoot the shit in a digital , weapon - based capacity while shooting the shit with my brother , many miles away and ( now suddenly ) unable to visit . Video game detritus solid food for the soul , if you will . We ’d been look forward to last getting around to it now that we both had some clip , blissfully incognizant in other March — which feels a lifetime ago now — that the position around the spread of covid-19 was about to get much forged than any of us could have ideate .

But while its American exceptionalism writ large ring vacuous , what surprisingly feels oddly serious in The Division 2 right now are its audio log , detail the time lead up to the grippe ’s pandemic becoming a full - on apocalyptic breakdown of social order . They ’re snapshots of a time before and during an uncomprehensible disaster , as you hear everything from military officials to daily civilians begin torealize the true scopeof this new seasonal grippe virus that ’s about to twist their reality upside down . Which would ’ve been fine at literally any other clip for me than when those kinds of conversations were echoing the ones I was having with my brother over the phone , or with my parents whenthe other reportsemerged that vulnerable citizens like them were about to be advise by the UK Government to quarantine themselves from the world .

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The eveningBoris Johnson announcedthe country ’s current ongoing lockdown on all but essential business and a nigh - total halt on public activity in British life , I raided a field infirmary in the secret plan that had a series of audio logs chart a family slow succumbing to the Dollar Flu over multiple parts , hot and bothered breath and unrestrained visions of loved ones who ’d already go marking their last moments . By the time I got the last one , I ’d stopped talking to my pal as he continued to rummage for loot , and just sat there quiet stunned .

These audiotapes probably seemed as commonplace as The Division ’s political science at launching last year — heightened and amplified pandemic melodrama as the background for schlocky shoot - and - loot video secret plan action . An other log of the game’spre - outbreak Presidentasking an aide if this new virus is a hoax made up by the Russians or the Chinese might have seemed ( at least ) a minuscule far - fetched last twelvemonth . But it murder a draw harder when the literal President of the Actual United States isActually Doing Thatas you play .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

Ubisoft and the developer at Massive Entertainment could n’t have predicted this kind of prescience , of course . And in a plenty of ways , they did n’t . The Division ’s influenza is very different in term of the setting of its deadliness to what the world is lead through with covid-19 — which is not to underestimate the novel coronavirus ’ ownshocking death tollacross the existence . The world this fictional virus left behind is still a heighten fantasy ( sure , I ’m not American , but I do n’t quite believe you guys have gotten into rogue militaries and tearing groups of former crook mob ruling scattered outposts of survivors yet ) . But those conversations in the early day of its spread littered throughout the game — the misinformation as people convert themselves it ’s “ just another flu , ” the growing concern as medical and solid food supplies dwindle down when the scare buying of our own earth becomes The Division ’s full - on descent into helter-skelter fury — felt as if they had been rend in good order out of today ’s humans in such a manner that it almost felt repellant to hear . A lot more real than they arguably ever should have .

I ’m still playing The Division 2 . I could do withwhatever distractions I can takethese days , and there’sabsolutely too muchto do in it . There are always speculative guys to scavenge the head straight off of with my ridiculous sniper turret , always a new gun to consider for five seconds before I toss it in a debris chain reactor of the other endless gun in the pursuance for More Shiny Things .

I ’ve just hold back listen to the audiotape . It ’s a little too much of the real world than I want out of an escape right now .

William Duplessie