The Division will start with only midtown Manhattan available

Despite some previous gameplay presentations and announcements centering around events in Brooklyn and other nearby areas Ubisoft has recently announced that The Division will only contain the Midtown Manhattan borough on launch.

Don't take that as a negative however because according to an interview the Examiner did with The Division's creative director Magnus Jensen it will be a 1:1 recreation of Midtown Manhattan which is still a rather large area. Here's the full quote:

"For Tom Clancy's The Division we are going with Midtown Manhattan. It is because of the 1 to 1 re-creation and the way the pandemic has [happened]. Basically, everything has been hit and there are no more resources because everyone tried to get out. There is no more gasoline in the cars, there is no traffic, you're on foot.

With the level of detail we have, doing Midtown Manhattan is a huge open-world experience and more than enough to sink your teeth into. It is a very sizable open-world game."

I've seen a lot of people angry about this but its really not that uncommon for the scope of a game to shrink as it gets closer to launch and deadlines start to creep. The question everyone should be asking is not how many areas The Division will or will not have but rather how big and involved will those areas be?

Nonetheless, even if Brooklyn and the surrounding regions won't be coming with the release version of The Division they still might arrive via some future patch so if you were looking forward to your home turf ending up in a game don't drop your hopes yet.

The PC beta will begin on January 29th and last through January 31st so you will be able to give The Division a try and see for yourself whether Midtown Manhattan alone is good enough to support an entire game.