NOTICE: spoilers de The Division 1 y 2
It’s been eight years since I first set foot in The Division’s New York City. It was on November 16, 2016 during one of Ubisoft’s classic free weekends. I was a year late, but I certainly made up for the delay by accumulating more than 1,000 hours between PS4 and PC, mainly on the Sony console.
His story hooked me a lot from the first day. I repeated the campaign and each mission several times, I got all the collectibles and I was literally in every corner of the Manhattan map. And it’s not a figure of speech: for a while I dedicated myself to combing every street and intersection in search of secrets about the plot.
The legend of The Division: from feared villain to cliché reborn
Aaron Keener, our antagonist in The Division, has always seemed to me to be one of Ubisoft’s best villains. Yes, I think he is better than Vaas Montenegro. He was one of those characters that make you feel from the beginning that you are not dealing with just anyone. He rarely loses his cool, he always speaks with a firm and calm voice, and needless to say, he is absurdly smart. He ends up being so dangerous because he is a cold and calculating person who controls very powerful forces.
Like many of you, I spent years chasing him through Manhattan, later through Washington DC and finally we returned to New York. It’s true that the sequel kept him in the shadows for a long time, but the Warlords of New York DLC finally brought him to light. And it was incredibly epic… at first.
Ubisoft Massive made the worst decision in The Division history: it killed Aaron Keener at the end Warlords of New York. I killed him on March 5, 2024. I maintain what I thought at the time: the Liberty Island mission was a botch and I am convinced that it was designed to capitulate history. The villain deserved much, much more than to end up cornered and dying from his injuries on a dock. To me, it never made sense.
Since then, The Division 2 has floundered and never had a single enemy that posed even remotely a threat like Keener. Natalya Sokolova is the most generic and boring thing ever, and her Black Fangs have long since stopped imposing the slightest. Ubisoft planned two major events to prevent us players from drowning in the pit of repetitive content and dull hunts that it has become. The Division 2 in recent years.
Faye Lau and Alani Kelso, our colleagues in The Division y The Division 2 respectively, they betrayed us and became renegades. I killed Lau on February 10, 2021. She fell in the backyard of the president’s house in White Oak as another NPC from the mound. Ubisoft did not dedicate a single cinematic to one of the most important characters.
The hunts were happening as repetitive and risk-free as ever, until we reached the recent events. Kelso disappears in New York and, like you, I had to mess up with the search on another hunt. I refused to believe that Ubisoft was going to repeat the renegade companion trick, but they did… and raised the bar: Aaron Keener has recruited Kelso for his renegades.
The big bad was dead, although we clearly saw him die. Okay, our character didn’t stick an entire pistol magazine in his forehead to make sure, but he was an officer. 2024 is the year of the resurrected: Keener, Cayde-6… Does anyone else want to be resurrected with the blessing of the script?
Ubisoft has no memory, but I do: Keener is not the way
I think the story of The Division
It turns out that Keener is not our enemy and that everything was part of a super-elaborate plan to combat the real enemy: the hunters, agents trained to kill agents who question the mission (renegades); the True Children, Black Fangs and Sokolova. They all form a huge faction. And to top it off, the mass murderer wants to test me (and you) to see if I am worthy of joining his renegades. By the way, no one has asked me if I want to.
Let’s say I buy the argument: do you want to test me after killing him and having spent years fighting all the factions in New York and Washington DC? Excuse me, freak? The funniest thing of all is that his tests consist of repeating the same missions and activities that I have been passing like a steamroller for years. Ubisoft hasn’t even included a renegade or hunter as the final boss to scare me. Nothing of that. I had hopes.
The thing is that Ubisoft is making it very difficult for me to act crazy with the direction the story has taken. Last night I reflected on this after passing the Echo Test and today I found hundreds of like-minded players on Reddit. Agent epicnonja (Reddit) has expressed very well in a post
Have the writers or Keener’s character forgotten about the dozens of innocents he murdered with the virus in New York and the thousands he tried to murder in DC with the missile we stopped on Liberty Island? The “I’m actually a good guy” trick doesn’t work when you’re actively murdering civilians and civilian militia to gain power and influence.
If Keener really was a “good guy”, he would have been working with us all the time, as he constantly recognizes that we are helping stop the Hunters and Black Fangs, without wasting time creating Anna and organizing a treasure hunt to see if We can fight the same factions we have been fighting since they appeared.
At this point, I don’t know if Ubisoft Massive has a master plan, which includes a sublime turn of events in the DLC that will arrive in 2025, or if simply the story of The Division He has completely lost his way.
I think introducing grays and rethinking certain relationships is always positive. All of that has happened in Destiny 2, although Bungie has invested years of constant development. However, I see no consistency in proving anything to Keener, much less joining his renegades, no matter how much Kelso is on his side. No matter how right or true he is, nothing can erase all the atrocities he has done.
I’m not getting off the boat The Division 2 at this point and even less so with The Division 3 on the way. I have been following the story for many years and I want to know how it progresses and ends, if it ends. Ubisoft will know what it’s doing. I’m just a fan who doesn’t understand why it should become something he’s been fighting for years. Here’s the thing, in case I stopped playing a while ago or you’ve never played and wanted to know what the hell is going on.
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