'Tom Clancy's The Division' Release Date This Year: New Screenshot Revealed

A new screenshot from “Tom Clancy’s The Division” has been revealed by Ubisoft, showing two soldiers preparing for battle in a barren New York City.

Gamers are looking forward to the title, which is set to launch sometime toward the end of 2014. The third-person shooter action RPG is currently being developed by three studios – Ubisoft Massive, Ubisoft Reflections and Ubisoft Red Storm for the PC, Xbox One and PS4.

The title will take place in a desolate society that has been ravaged by a disease that spreads on Black Friday and causes the United States to collapse in less than a week. The player is part of a group called “Strategic Homelands Division” and must work to combat the biological threats and save what is left of the U.S.

The game will use the next-gen engine "Snowdrop," developed by Massive Entertainment, a Ubisoft studio. “Snowdrop is a dynamic, interconnected and united system,” said Massive in a statement. “The artists, the designer and the animators have the power to achieve their ideas and vision, simply by accessing the game directly within the engine.”

The cutting-edge Snowdrop will also run in real-time. “Each thing the creators develop needs to be instant and in-game, so that they know exactly if it will work, with no baking time. That means lightning-quick iterations. The result is the ability to develop game features faster than ever,” Massive claimed. “We built Snowdrop in a way so that the game is always playable during development.”

The most important of Snowdrop’s features is the destruction system, which will be an important part of the game’s tactical cover-based combat system. Massive stated that “the destruction effect is not pre-baked into the game; it reacts differently depending on the physical forces at play.” This means that each time an action takes place – a car explodes or a glass window shatters, it will look different – and will actually be a separate experience every time.

Another amazing result of the Snowdrop engine is the lighting system, which was created to mimic film production methods. If you move an object in the game, the surrounding light will immediately react in a cohesive manner. This also applies to the time of day, as well as indoor and outdoor lighting.

The next-gen engine also gives the developers incredible accuracy and speed when creating the game’s metropolitan setting. More importantly, the city will be unified, which means that any alteration or developed feature in one area will result in an automatic change throughout the entire game – which leads to a more harmonious experience for the player.