Ubisoft just announced a new entry in its popular third-person tactical military online looter shooter series, The Division. You probably didn’t notice The Division 3 was revealed because Ubisoft buried the news inside a corporate press release announcing a new executive producer for the “Division brand,” confirming the company has big plans for the series.
The first game in the franchise, Tom Clancy’s The Division, launched in 2016 and told the story of a biological terrorist attack in New York City that spread a deadly virus via dollar bills. This horrible event activated a secret group of highly trained operatives, Division agents, who grabbed some guns and began killing every criminal and slightly dangerous person in the city while ransacking apartments for food, clothes, and rare guns. In 2019, The Division 2 launched and continued the story but this time the shooting and looting happened in Washington, DC. Since then, the franchise has announced two games but neither has been released. And now Ubisoft has gone and done it again, this time confirming that it’s working on yet another Division project, a third entry in the main franchise.
The news of this new Division 3 didn’t come via a flashy CG trailer or some big teaser at a press conference. Instead, it was quietly announced on September 21 in a larger press release focused on Julian Gerighty, the new executive producer of the franchise. He was previously the associate creative director on the first game before becoming the lead creative director on the sequel. And now, according to Ubisoft, he’s “setting his sights on” The Division 3 as well as a “plethora of other projects set in The Division universe.”
We don’t know much about The Division 3
Ubisoft says Gerighty is building a team for The Division 3, which will once again be developed by Massive Entertainment. The publisher also confirmed that it will continue to support The Division 2, as well. Beyond that, we don’t know much more about this just-announced sequel. And based on what Ubisoft is saying here, I’m not sure there’s much to announce as it sounds like the project is just starting development.
“We may have over 40 million players,” said Gerighty, “but The Division is still in its early years as a franchise. There are so many incredible stories to tell, places to explore, and people to protect. “
However, before Gerighty can hop onto the Tom Clancy looter-shooter train, he has to finish up his work on a different project: Star Wars: Outlaws. He’s currently the creative director behind that upcoming open-world Star Wars adventure, and won’t officially start his duties as producer of The Division franchise until that game ships in 2024.
While The Division 3 is likely years away at this point, we know there are at least two other Division games coming out sooner rather than later.
First, The Division: Resurgence, a free-to-play mobile shooter set in New York City. The other entry is The Division: Heartland, an extraction-like shooter set in the middle of the United States and featuring more rural environments and survival elements. Perhaps one day in the future Ubisoft will stop announcing Division games and actually release one. We shall see…
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