The Division Gets New Details on Loot, Customisation, Car Door Closing Animations

Ubisoft has released a new video Q&A with the developer of Tom Clancy's The Division, who talk about various elements of the game including loot, character customisation, and animations.

Lead economic designer Andrada Greciuc discussed how The Division handles loot in response to a query about a drop that was denoted with a large orange marker, saying the game features several tiers of rarity

"The orange ones you see was the highest rarity and it was very flashy so you notice it. We make sure that when you get a good item, you don't overlook it," she explained.

"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."

Senior character artist, Emil Mujanovic, appears to provide insight into how players will be able to customise their characters in The Division.

"We have a good system in place where we can actually customise regions of our gear," he explained.

"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."

And of course, there was the issue of the door closing, which senior technical animator Matthew Lee addressed.

"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 being told to provide a real explanation, Lee, who will forever be remembered as a rapscallion, said the animation used "a blend of motion-capture, key framed animation, and human inverse kinematics" to track the door, place the hand on the door, and shut it.

In May, The Division was been delayed and is now expected out early next year. An outline of games coming during the company's 2016 fiscal year (which runs April 1, 2015 - March 31, 2016) listed The Division as coming to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC during its fourth fiscal quarter, which translates to January-March of 2016.

Ubisoft recently revealed that, along with Massive Entertainment, a total of four studios are working on The Division. Take a closer look at their work in the screenshots below.