Echoes of Central Park is coming to The Division 2 as the game’s latest major expansion. Eight years in, we have been promised yet another bit of new content: Echoes of Central Park.
I had a chat with Yannick Banchereau, The Division 2‘s creative director, to learn more about what we can expect from the expansion.
We are in an era when games are abandoned quickly by dev teams. In contrast, The Division 2 is getting one of its biggest expansions of all time eight years since its launch. What was the reason to mobilize so many resources for its development?
I think for as long as there will be players hungry for content on The Division, we will be happy to do it. And Battle for Brooklyn proved to us that there is this hunger for those bigger pieces. Like we maintain the division two, we make new seasons, we bring new things, new features.
We do a bunch of events, but there’s nothing that comes close to that feeling of like that one big piece of content that comes out and you get to dive into a new story and explore a new space. It also really resonates with the players. It allows us to be creative and really come up with new ideas, and players seem to always ask for more of this. So, as long as they will want it, we’ll be happy to do it.
To play the Brooklyn DLC, we didn’t have to wait once we were past level 40. Will Echoes of Central Park be equally accessible to new players, or will we need to clear a fair bit of in-game content?
We are following the same formula as Battle for Brooklyn. So that means when purchasing Echoes of Central Park, you get a 40-level boost: you can immediately create a character and jump straight into the new content. We actually have a character creation screen especially for that. The first mission will teach you all the basics you need to know.
The story is just like Battle for Brooklyn, disconnected enough that you don’t need to have a full understanding of the main story and the eight years of story we’ve been telling. Therefore, it is made with new players in mind as well, and we’ve made sure to make it accessible for them.
Echoes of Central Park introduces three different companions we can add as allies. Will we see the system branching out the main game in the future?
At the moment, we’ve treated Companions as an exclusive feature for the DLC for Echoes of Central Park. If you’re familiar with the history of The Division 2, you may remember we have done Companions in one of our seasons in Mutiny, the third season of last year. And that was the first time we tested the idea and we learned a lot from that. And at the same time, we are developing this new DLC.
It made sense for us to iterate on that idea and bring it as a full-fledged feature unique to this DLC. But as usual, we’re always listening to player feedback, and we’re always interested to learn one step at a time. So let’s see where it takes us. If people really resonate with the idea of companions and want that to be extended and expanded to the rest of the game. It could be a possibility in the future, but first let’s make sure we make it as good as we can for this DLC.
The Division 2 has seen plenty of new systems introduced over the years, like Gear Rarity and Seasonal Modifiers. What was your inspiration and rationale behind adding a separate set of skills to the DLC?
We wanted to make sure that when people complete this DLC. There is replayability within the DLC itself, but also there is something they can take with them in the rest of the game. So we wanted to have skills. We did that in Battle for Brooklyn, but it was under the smart cover.
For this DLC, instead of making a new skill platform, we’ve decided to expand on the existing set of skills that players have. So you have six new variants for existing skills that will be unlockable.
The idea is to just keep expanding that horizontal progression, give more tools for the players, things that are a bit more specialized, that resonate with the theme and the gameplay of the DLC, but things they can take with them in the rest of the game as well. So it’s really about extending that arsenal and just giving more options to players so they can really craft the exact play style that they want to have.
How will the DLC eventually fit into the general arc of The Division 2 once we have completed its campaign?
Well, there are two things. First, we are bringing a whole new endgame experience in this DLC. Central Park is built with replayability in mind, and you’re going to be rewarded for it. And there’s a complete reason to keep going back there. That’s actually also how you will unlock the skills. When we make these DLCs, when we make those maps, it gives us a new playground for us to expand upon in the seasonality of the game.
You may remember recently we did the Dust Storm event in the map of Warlords of
New York. Therefore, we actually used the DLC map and created an entire new seasonal event as part of that that was for all players, but using the map of Warlords of New York. So I think there will be opportunities for us in the future to use the map of Echoes of Central Park.
What are your expectations from the upcoming DLC in terms of player retention and engagement? Also, how does the DLC cater to beginners and veterans despite the two having distinctly different experiences when it comes to gameplay?
Well, I think what’s important for us is that, I mean, first and foremost, we are making content for our players, and we want to make sure that our players are having a great time with it. So the veteran players, the ones that have been here with us, we want to make sure that they go into this DLC. It is familiar enough that they feel like home.
It is nostalgic enough because it’s going back to New York, and it’s going to Central Park, and it’s something they’ve always wanted to have. So I hope they will feel like we’ve delivered on the expectations that they had going into Central Park and still surprised them in some ways as well, in ways they didn’t expect. And they will have fun playing the campaign and replaying the endgame as well. And we are building this endgame for those people to really give them a reason to keep coming back and feel like there is a purpose for them to experience that map.
Because they want very often when we do DLCs, they like the DLC, but then they don’t really have a reason to go back. So this endgame is here to give them a reason to go back. but also like playing around with this tonality, this darker tone that we have for this DLC. It is, you know, it is horror inspired. It is a story about fear and about the fear of the park. It gives us something that feels just different enough, but I hope it will resonate with a different audience.
It will get some people interested. People that didn’t think we would go in that territory might be curious to try it out and think, oh, well, I wasn’t interested in The Division 2 before, but I like horror. I like those kinds of stories. So maybe I will try it out. So I do hope that some new players, some people that didn’t resonate with the usual story and tonality of The Division 2, will find that different take interesting.
How much will Echoes of Central Park cost?
$19.99, which is slightly above Battle for Brooklyn, but you’re talking about a piece that is twice the size and has endgame and replayability and a bunch of more things to offer. And then, of course, as usual, when we do a DLC, there will be offers, there will be bundles: there will be many ways for people to get into The Division.
