About the story/voice acting [Division videos/spoilers] (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Friday, March 11, 2016, 15:15 (3182 days ago) @ Kahzgul

I caved and bought the Division yesterday. Thanks to a perfect storm of events (late evening nap + sick daughter who wouldn't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time) I ended up playing the game from about 1am-5am, so I'm starting to get a feel for how it all works. Some initial thoughts jump out to me (mix of positive and negative):

Hope she feels better!

Thanks :)

* No story is better than a really bad story

Destiny has taken plenty of knocks for its lack of story or character development, and rightfully so. While the Division clearly makes an effort to establish characters with motive and personality, and have you develop a relationship with them, I've already found myself wishing the game had a Destiny-like void in that department. The writing in the Division is that bad. I'm talking worst of the worst, overblown dialog that flipflops between painfully cliche and utter nonsense. Making things worse is the fact that the player character never says a word, never reacts to anything these idiots are rambling on about. I've already begun skipping cutscenes because what little info they communicate about the plot just isn't worth sitting through the horrible dialog and voice acting.

I strongly disagree with your assessment of the Division's story. The voice acting is actually very strong (even the detective from Arrow delivers some fun lines, and he normally just chews the scenery), and as you move deeper into the plot, it becomes engrossing.

I need to jump in here with a few examples.

The dialogue is melodramatic and ham-fisted right off the bat, like the conversation at the end of this helicopter ride:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt0PxkYr-bQ&t=645

The dialogue here made me roll my eyes so hard I almost fell over:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt0PxkYr-bQ&t=967

And this guy right here... this is the moment I tuned out completely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt0PxkYr-bQ&t=1880

These clips are all from the first 2 hours or so. I totally get where you're coming from in terms of the game building a story slowly through many different avenues (collectables, NPCs, cutscenes, etc), but with dialogue this bad I just can't buy in to any of it. Just a personal preference thing, but I need to be invested in the characters before I can give a damn about the world or greater scenarios going on. I have similar issues with Destiny. While I find a lot of the game's universe and backstory fascinating, I have a hard time caring about any of it while I'm in the middle of playing, because I have absolutely no attachment to any of the characters involved.

As it stands, my interest in the Division's story is nonexistent. I treat it like a co-op arcade shooter. I run through the missions with a few people, shoot bad guys, grab loot, skip the cutscenes, upgrade my stuff and move on to the next mission. And I'm having lots of fun with it in that way. But if I go in hoping for anything story-related to care about, I hit dialogue like the clips above and my head explodes :)

*edit: Youtube timecode links don't seem to work here... replaced the video embeds with direct links :)