The Division Resurgence hits smartphones this fall

The Division Resurgence hits smartphones this fall

The Division is coming to your smartphone later this year. At its Ubisoft Forward event, the company confirmed that The Division Resurgence, a mobile spinoff of the near-future shooter series, will be launching in fall 2023.

As with the previous games in the series, Resurgence is set in a “mid-crisis” version of New York, one thrown into a crisis following an outbreak of a genetically engineered virus known as the “dollar flu.” And like those games, the mobile version is a cross between an open world game, where you can explore the city and take on missions, and a multiplayer experience where you can squad up with friends. Ubisoft describes it as a “true MMO experience.”

I had the chance to check out an early version of the game, and while I couldn’t test much of the social experience, what I played felt very much like, well, The Division on your phone. The graphics were great; I especially loved being able to get up close to my character during the creation process. The parts of Manhattan that I saw were both dense and large, with lots of cover strewn about — which is good since this is a cover-based shooter where you need to get out of the line of fire often.

That said, while it looks the part of a big-budget Ubisoft game, the touchscreen controls took some getting used to. I played on an iPhone and the screen had a lot of information on it, and I often found myself accidentally getting out of cover instead of shooting. Resurgence is also a free-to-play game, and it wasn’t clear from my time yet how pervasive the paid elements of the experience will be, which is an important thing to know about a loot-focused shooter.

Resurgence has been in the works for some time. It was first announced in 2021, and was only given a name last year. It’s also not the only expansion of the franchise in the works: a free console and PC spinoff called Heartland is also in development.

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