Ubisoft has announced Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland, a free-to-play offshoot of the shooter series. Heartland is intended as a stand-alone game to show the The Division universe from a new perspective. A mobile game is also planned in the series; The novel and film will follow.
Heartland with a new setting
However, Ubisoft is still stingy with details on Tom Clancy’s The Divison Heartland, which as a free-to-play game will be basically free to play. The announcement states: “Heartland is a stand-alone game that does not require any previous knowledge of the series, but offers a completely new perspective on the universe in a new environment.” Heartland is due to be released (late) in 2021 or 2022 for PC, game consoles and cloud gaming.
Heartland is being developed again by the Ubisoft subsidiary Red Storm, which has already worked on The Division and The Division 2 (cover picture). Red Storm's experience with titles from the Tom Clancy series even goes back to 1997, which is no wonder, since the development studio was co-founded in 1996 by the late political thriller author Tom Clancy.
Registration for the beta for The Division Heartland The state of development is apparently so advanced that Ubisoft is already offering interested players to apply on a website for one of the early test phases. A Ubisoft account is required to register to have a chance to participate. If this is done after choosing the desired platform, you are registered for the beta of The Divison Heartland. You can then change the platform again. You can choose from PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X | S. Ubisoft also speaks of a planned release for the cloud.
The game will be made available in 2021-22 on PC, consoles, and cloud.
Ubisoft
On reddit there is already eager speculation about the possible setting and the game mechanics. It is not surprising that genre trends such as battle royale and survival are at the top. Ultimately, Ubisoft could reveal a little more details at the digital games fair E3 in June.
Roadmap with mobile game and film
As is well known, free-to-play games and Mobile games (or a combination of both) for the biggest sales in the global gaming market. Ubisoft is therefore also relying on a mobile offshoot. However, according to the roadmap shown, the Mobile Division will not appear until much later. After Heartland, the recently announced content update for The Division 2 is to appear first, which was promised for “the end of 2021 at the earliest”.
Roadmap for new The Division Title (Image: Ubisoft) Even later in the timetable there is a novel and then a film adaptation of The Division. Actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain were hired to star in the film, which is due to appear on Netflix.