The Division – Stuyvesant Town

Stuyvesant was the first entire region of the open world in The Division that I was personally responsible for, and working in collaboration with a team of Environment Artists I contributed to the following throughout the area;

• Conceptualise the space and the themes of the area in the game world and setting
• Design the initial playable spaces and open world encounter locations
• Create and arrange the whitebox game space cover layouts, navigation paths and exploration areas

Despite only working on the Stuyvesant region in its early stages of development, the area still remains one of my favourite level design challenges to date. Tonally, it was completely different to any of the other open world areas of The Division with its dense parkland, rolling landscaping and not a hint of the street grid layout that permeates throughout Manhattan. Not to mention the unique challenge this presented to convert the area into a compelling, beautiful space for cover-based shooting that still believably conveyed the real-world location.

I’m pleased to say that the majority of my initial level design and conceptualisation of the area remains in the final version of the game. What’s more, the team that took over from me did a brilliant job in creating what I still consider to be the most beautiful and visually interesting area of The Division!