After first breaking Ubisoft company records within its first 24 hours of release, The Division went on to hit 1.2 million peak concurrent users and raked in $330 million globally in its first five days—a feat that crowned it the biggest new game franchise in history. Since, many a player has scoured its post-apocalyptic interpretation of Manhattan from corner to corner—you might even have spent your Easter weekend Easter egg hunting—however have you ever wondered how the game’s depiction of NYC compares to the actual Big Apple?
One Reddit user named Feanauro has, and has overlaid a number of the game’s important locales and missions onto the real thing via Google Maps as a result. Feanauro points out that due to simplifying the in-game world—dropping certain real life streets and tinkering with aspect ratios, for example—the Division creates certain “inconsistencies or visual anomalies” that stray from the real deal. “For this reason, I didn’t attempt to reproduce the DZ border in game faithfully with all its nooks and crannies,” they say. “Just closely enough to correspond to the major streets.”
As you can see, though, Feanauro has depicted a number of safe houses, missions and landmarks within the Dark Zone and beyond, with the addition of neighborhoods (PvE areas) and resource locations, such as weapon parts, tools, fabric and electronics a possibility at a later date. Due to their circumstantial nature, Feanauro won’t be adding side missions any time soon, however, nor boss locations as there’s already enough maps out there to this end, apparently.
I love things like this because not only do they offer a peak beyond the velvet rope of video game research, but there’s also much fun to be had spotting the similarities, inconsistencies and crossovers between real life and their video game translations. Or is that just me? Maybe I should spend more time outside.
