It's my first attempt at venturing into the dark zone, the area of The Division's New York that has been entirely quarantined off from the rest of the map, and I'm very much uncertain what to expect. From most critics and players, the dark zone has been heralded as the pinnacle of what the game has to offer. It's a combination of PvP and PvE, the only place in the game that you'll come into combat with other players, where typically the game revolves around working with people to achieve your objectives. The purple-hued lights of the entrance; the apocalyptic vendor offering loot in return for mysterious dark zone credits; simply stepping into the checkpoints is a disorienting experience in The Division, and a contrast to the information overload of the hub where every last detail is painstakingly explained. My first experience in the dark zone is unlike anything else I've done in The Division so far, stepping through the gate I'm expecting a war zone, a battlefield of slain corpses, where rogue bands of players go about slaughtering the latest combatants. Everything else about The Division has prepared me for this, where every mission is about pushing through a linear path of varyingly difficult enemies, and there is never a moment to pause without finding an audio-log, civilian encounter, or item to collect.
So to push through that heavy gate and be met with... nothing, was frankly surprising, off putting almost. There's an eery silence that hangs in the air, where previously the chatter of people trying to survive or the rattle of gunfire was relentless. The streets are strewn with cars, not unlike the main areas, and whilst the night time fog settles in I'm beginning to wonder if I've come to the right area. Have I come offline somehow? Surely I should be getting shot by now? With no clear sign of this I push on through the fog, turning on my map to see what I can do. But... it's practically empty. There's a smattering of contamination zones and a handful of landmarks, but it's nothing like the map outside the dark zone. A map that resembles a board game where someone has spilt all the pieces and you've been tasked with cleaning it up. Relenting, I select a landmark and begin to eek my way forward slowly, anticipating oncoming violence with every step I take. Time seems to move much slower in the dark zone at first, largely due to the sense that you're not accomplishing anything - even containers I stumble across are unaccessible, requiring me to have a higher 'dark zone level', another feature of the dark zone that has been thrown in my face. Turning the corner to a gas station I spot a handful of people, who because I haven't aimed at are currently unidentifiable. Are they enemies, NPCS, rogues, nice people? I begin to pull my gun up to take aim, but as the reticule begins to hover over them they start running. The sound of gunfire has attracted them, and so I follow meekly behind them, creeping from cover to cover, careful not to be seen. Cradling myself into the corner of the gas station, I watch the battle begin to play out in front of me.
It's difficult to tell where those initial shots were coming from, until seemingly out of nowhere a real player storms into my vision, before promptly slamming back into cover and taking pot shots at these enemies. This transition from silence to chaos has happened within the space of a minute, and I realise I find myself in the convenient position of being exactly behind the enemy NPCs this plucky trooper is shooting at. Pulling up my trusty machine gun I take aim and begin to pump ammunition into their backs, a cowardly move, but one that seems fitting for the dark zone. With this two pronged attack these NPCs are made quick work of, myself and this other player collect the spoils of our victory. A new pistol, an improved backpack, and a trendy pair of jeans. In the dark zone you can't simply walk out with your loot, it must be extracted by helicopter due to the contamination that occurs within this area. The helicopter takes nearly two minutes to arrive, in the meantime which every other player is alerted to its incoming presence, and they can choose to take advantage of its arrival by using it for their own extraction, or cruelly killing those who are anxiously waiting themselves, stealing their loot. Thankfully for my first time in the dark zone, I don't have the daunting task of calling in the helicopter, for some other luckless fool has heralded its arrival, which happens to be right around the corner from me.
The signal for its arrival attracts a mob of enemies, descending upon the player who has called it in like a pack of wolves hungry for the kill. Gun fire begins to rain out across the night skies, and my compass indicates that a swarm of enemies are gathering behind me. I begin to run for the helicopter. It's a panicked, zig-zagged run between cars, over benches and around trees, trying to escape enemies from behind only to be met with more in front. Tentatively hiding between bits of cover I wait the long, hard wait, grit my teeth and prepare for death. Amazingly, the distraction of the other players keep the enemy NPCs off of me, and the helicopter arrives, with the caveat that it will only hover for a measly thirty seconds before hastily exiting. I make the dastardly sprint for it through a hail of bullets, and somehow manage to reach it with relatively little harm. Holding down the square button it feels like an age to extract my items, and out of the corner of my eye I see a player sprinting towards me. Oh god, I'm about to die, all this effort spent on getting and extracting loot will be wasted. As the extraction bar is on the precipice of filling up they reach me, and explode in a flash of violence, disappearing as fast as they arrived. Incredibly, I survive. With a sliver of my health left the rag-tag collection of loot is sucked up into the helicopter, and I stumble backwards out of the extraction arena with my wits barely intact. I sprint into an alleyway with my head down and my heart pounding only to be met with a swift shotgun blast to the face from an NPC. Crumbling to the floor is a relief, with my items safely in transit to the home base death is no longer a fear, instead it is a sweet embrace. I hold down the 'give up' button, accept my fate, and exit the dark zone.
I've spent very little total time in the dark zone, but it's been a delightful shot of subversive energy that The Division greatly benefits from, contrasting the systems that the game has built up so far to offer a completely different experience. It's my first time in the dark zone, and I leave with an unrelenting desire to return, to explore its depths, and to experience the depravity that it has to offer. My journey into the heart of the dark zone has only just begun...
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