How the Snowdrop engine brings The Division's New York to life

Massive Entertainment brand art director Rodrigo Cortes discusses the Snowdrop engine and ways in which it'll enhance Tom Clancy's The Division, while also taking a moment to talk about the game's New York setting.

Ozzie Mejia

March 31, 2014 4:00 PM

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Massive Entertainment has big plans for its new Snowdrop engine, having already shown it off in previous trailers for Tom Clancy's The Division. Massive's brand art director, Rodrigo Cortes, recently took the Snowdrop engine on the road to this year's Game Developers Conference to discuss how it'll be used in the upcoming Ubisoft title, while also discussing its New York setting.

"One of the main things is that we want to have full immersion," Massive brand art director Rodrigo Cortes told GamerHub TV. "That's like a mantra for us when do games. Immersion is very important to us."

Cortes detailed the fidelity of The Division's animation and lighting and noting how much it adds to the game's RPG experience. He also goes on to discuss the fully in-world 3D user interface, before going on to talk about The Division's interpretation of a dystopian Big Apple.

"We knew that we wanted to do New York," Cortes added. "And it's based on New York and Manhattan and more of the downtown area and we wanted to do something as realistic as possible, while at the same time, it needs to be fun. So we have done some creative choices there, so it works with the gameplay, but at the same time, it has the same scale and level of fidelity that you expect New York to have. From all the details when it comes to streets, when it comes to signs, when it comes to stores, and when it comes to what you see inside of the windows, there is life still... all of that is something we needed to be able to make."

To hear more about the Snowdrop engine and what it means to The Division, check out the full video below.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?