And the President.
Editor’s Note: Spoilers for The Division 2 including today’s update.
I originally titled this article “Let’s Kill The President” but figured I didn’t want a visit from the Secret Service. It’s that time already folks. One year ago this week Ubisoft launched the Warlords of New York expansion for The Division 2.
Let’s start by setting the groundwork. Aaron Keener returned in Warlords of New York as the big villain from The Division 1, the guy who got away at the end of the story to parts unknown. After securing scientist Vitaly Tchernenko who was captured during the events of The Division 1, the player tracks down and defeats Aaron Keener. The President by this point had been uncovered as a traitor and fled to parts unknown, and the big twist at the end of Warlords was that another Division loyal had turned rogue; Faye Lau. Faye Lau boots the rogue agent network and summons a small army of rogue Division agents to Washington DC for a final all out war.
Over the course of the last few seasons players have been taking on rogue agents as they showed up, but this season we finally saw Faye Lau as the big baddie. My assumption going into this episode was that the player would take down Faye Lau leaving President Ellis as the main target for the next season. Nothing particularly shocking.
But no! Faye Lau’s mission is a retread of Camp White Oak which ultimately makes sense when you realize that the President is there. I guess he couldn’t stay away from the last place we missed him at. You are told pretty explicitly that you don’t have the authorization to kill the President, and when you get to the lodge the big reveal is that he’s already dead.
Faye Lau killed the president. What a buzz kill.
The fight against Faye Lau isn’t anything particularly special, but the mission gives you a new skill called Achilles Pulse that highlights a weak point and treats any damage to that as headshot damage. I didn’t use it for this mission because I didn’t think it the best time to try out new skills.
I forgot just how bleak the situation was in the Division 2 universe until the game pointed it out to me again. President Waller died from a stress-induced heart attack during The Division, his successor and Vice President Thomas Mendez was murdered by Black Tusk infiltrators disguised as Secret Service. And now his successor Andrew Ellis the speaker of the house is dead as well. Congress and Senate are either dead, missing, or scattered. The entire chain of command of the US Government has been effectively destroyed at this point in the story.
I can’t remember the last time I was this interested to see where The Divison’s story would be headed, but at this point Massive pretty much has free reign to go anywhere. Do we work on finding the remaining living congress/senate people? The next successor to the President would be the President pro tempore of the Senate, so maybe we’ll be tracking them down next to extract them. Maybe we’ll find out that they’ve been hiding out in their Washington DC bunker apartment this whole time.
MMO Fallout 