One thing I seriously appreciate about this manhunt, is that they managed to hit the sweet spot where they have given us quite a bunch of important information and background on the Hunters without completely ruining the mystery behind them. I love how they wrote everything
Absolutely agreed. For me, it legitimately feels like Division 2 had been notably _ramping up_ with the storyline since Faye Lau in *End of Watch,* and it's this Manhunt has been particularly interesting for me. There's some serious twists for us in this path and what it means as a Division agent. I've always spent some time here and there in Division 2 (I have 4 characters, nearly all of them have 12+ _different_ Loadouts), but 2023's lore actually reinvigorated my love of the franchise. Between the re-manning of the Division 2 Devteam, the official announcements for Project Resolve + loose roadmap, finding this channel among some others (like RogueGold), and checking out the Crossroads book series, I'm having a _really_ enjoyable time just hanging out in this universe again. I've loved The Division through thick and thin since the first game, and I'm really happy to see the franchise _finally_ blossoming into all the new potentials (even the ones I probably won't personally interact with, like the mobile game). There are *so many* stories to tell in The Division, that taking the franchise transmedia is absolutely the best way to see it grow.
@@Trepanation21funnily enough, I didn’t actually spend a lot of time in the first game. It was the sequel that made me fall in love with the story, and ever since season 9 I’ve been loving the worldbuilding and lore even more. I didn’t read any of the crossroad books because, admittedly, I’m too lazy to read, and the audiobook version isn’t available in my country, but I really wanna give those books a shot now that Hunted came out. Glad you’re enjoying this world again
So in layman's terms; 1. Our agent is Rogue, but the Keener watch is making sure we don't glow red. 2. Hunters are part of SHD, who wipe out the real rogues. 3. Keener was right.
He i am from future and i want say 3 keener was right all ti time now we work with him and try find he remembers teams now we in season 1 year 6 find tho karnal
I knew the recruiter was Johnson the second we heard a voice talk to Mari at Manning Zoo. You know, “these are Division comms”- Mari. The voice who gave Mari the comms had a similar voice to Johnson. Johnson gave away the comms which also hints that Mari was the “insider”. Not on purpose of course but it gave Black Tusk the ability to listen in. Yes, Johnson was an insider also. I’m excited for the Brooklyn DLC because we know Kelso is in NY somewhere and the recruiter said our agents went off mission the moment we followed Kelso not McManus. Right now we are rogue and Vivian Conley wasn’t lying when she said Issac can’t determine between right and wrong.
@@Osmo-7777 depends if you think so. Agents respond to the POTUS. I believe McManus is the President or maybe someone else is on his side. We are rogue since our agents are not following their orders. Only so many can die until the Secretary of Defense is the president. Line of succession
@@Osmo-7777Honestly, I don't think it matters anymore. Arguably the fire fighters in the JTF have gone rogue and are gunning down American citizens but fundamentally the job they should be doing doesn't exist anymore. Likewise, the political system and society in the Division is to messed up in general that "Saving what remains" Isn't possible anymore especially when they guy the claim, we should be following supports the Black Tusk who have a tendency to wipe civilian settlements off the map.
@@Osmo-7777 it’s difficult. ISAC hasn’t flagged our Agent or the people in our group as Rogues, BUT technically we are rogue, since we stopped following orders from the government. We’re supposed to answer to the President or, if absent, to the people who are closest to POTUS’ position. Of course, we aren’t following McManus. As crooked as he is, he’s still part of the official government. So… it’s tricky
@Osmo-7777 no, because the division's mission is the save what remains, and not about continuity of government, because there's no government if nothing can be governed in the first place, the SHD's job is to protect the ones who are trying to rebuild/prevent society from collapsing, which is not cal or nat
All this talk of us being "rogue" and the threats to cut us off from SHD tech make me wonder if Keener's watch will come into it again at some point. We are wearing it, after all, and it was Rhodes who managed to get it working at the end of WoNY. Maybe there are features that are yet to be unlocked that Keener left hidden until the time was right. The watch also could be the reason why ISAC doesn't ever flag us as rogue, because it never did to Keener and he was.
ANNA is definitely important in some way. If our tech goes down, this will likely be our only option. Besides it seems like she’s the superior ai to ISAC.
@@neofulcrum5013 The rogue network has just been sitting there with ANNA all this time too, it's probably why Nat is trying to get hold of the mobile SHD server, so that it can be used to gain access to ANNA and the network. It also adds a point in Kelso's favor for not being rogue, she is one of the few who knows about the Keener watch and Black Tusk have never tried to take it from you or even given any hint that we have it.
@@Zipa7 say what you will about Kelso’s attitude, but I doubt she’ll go rogue on us. Especially with what happened to Faye. I think she’s even more loyal to the SHD now.
What if we were always meant to be Keener's replacement? Maybe unknowingly we are actually carrying the task of Keener. And very soon ANNA will be activated by us. Also look how they are pushing Keener's stuff. We got the ouroboros which has his quote in the description. Then we got this skin called "keener was right." Then we have the next season called "Vanguard " which was Keener's call sign.
You still get access to your tech if rogue , that was the bypass after the 1st wave ran into problems with being labeled off mission and loosing shd access and killed
I would have enjoyed it if the Recruiter survived, replacing Keener as our agent’s foil. Him appearing several times throughout various seasons, either fighting us or taunting us would have been cool. I also don’t like Birdie’s introduction, I would have thought it better if we were rescuing Vik and had an interesting conversation about having to trust him with control of the mortars we hacked into earlier!
@@_Fulgur_ I know lol. People reacting about "a hunch" as if the professional writers aren't specifically guiding the audience's feelers in the design and presentation of the story 😂
Lots to digest here. Like you I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't do more to go with something other than the extraordinarily obvious Agent Johnson as the Recruiter. Given how much they threw us for a loop with Stovepipe I continually thought that it had to be someone different and that maybe Johnson ended up killed by the Recruiter in the end. But I guess it was the obvious. I had this conversation with Tom Parrott on Twitter the other day, but you can get a bit of a better understanding of this by thinking about D&D alignments. Hunters are obviously lawful in that the goal is the mission and they always follow orders. You get this from Birdie when she tells Johnson that he's always all about the mission. That comes first, and that's all he focuses on. Now, the morality of Hunters is different. I would be hard pressed to call them good because their job is to clean up rogue agents. Without remorse. So at best they're neutral and some, perhaps like the very first one we encounter in the side mission in DC who is torturing a missing agent, are evil. But Johnson himself came across as more neutral. He was entirely focused on the mission, and obeying Cal's orders, but there were also times he seemed to help us. Or at least not hinder us. Obviously he was under orders and focused on the mission, but he didn't stop us saving Mari. And he didn't stop us killing Jack Bonnie. Division Agents on the other hand seem to generally have a more chaotic or neutral approach to their orders. They are independent, and as Cal said, a fail safe on a fail safe on a last resort that was never meant to be triggered - and if he and Nat had the same influence over the President at the time of the green poison that they felt they had over Ellis the Division may NEVER have been triggered. But the problem is that what makes for a good agent can also make for someone who could be bad at following orders. Agents generally do what they do for others - doing what they can to help them which is neutral good in D&D speak. Some more just act on what their conscience dictates which is more chaotic good. But some, like Keener, are more chaotic neutral and are driven by their own thoughts and holding personal goals above all others. But agents, as Crazy Cindy said, are just people. What's interesting is the way Johnson doesn't distinguish between anyone like Keener, who is working entirely for their own benefit, and someone like Kelso who is working for the good of others in her own way. Because neither are following his orders he views them both as rogue. And, in the absolute definition of the word, they are. Only the Hunters continue to follow Cal's orders. Not that we are even getting orders from Cal, although the fact that the systems are interlinked, and Cal has access to ANNA, may well mean he's putting missions into ISAC without us even knowing. The challenge is that Cal is, at least to some extent, working with Nat. She wants to rule the world, as per the Tears for Fears song, and he is playing along. How much we don't know, but we do know that Hunters show up in Countdown working with the BTSU, and we do know that they do seem to actively oppose some of the things we do. That said, Johnson seemed at times to be at least not hindering our missions. To rescue Mari for example. He gave her comms and allowed us to talk to her. He also just watched while we rescued her. He didn't intervene. Which means that Cal was likely telling him to let that play out. Given that a bunch of BTSU died during that mission that must demonstrate that Cal isn't entirely working with Nat because we know that if he'd ordered Johnson to fully support Nat then he'd have been opposing us in that mission. Interestingly, Cal sent a Hunter to take out Schaeffer before we could kill him. Which means that Cal had likely figured out that Schaeffer and Lau were working together. But Nat doesn't seem to know this because she was still looking to rescue Schaeffer when she attacked the White House. So, despite our comms being their comms as Birdie so eloquently says, the BTSU didn't know that Schaeffer was no longer entirely working with Nat. What is concerning is that of the people that Birdie mentioned that could reprogram a Mobile SHD Server we have Wally, Claire, and Maira. We don't know the status of Claire Ortiz, I guess presumed dead, but we know that Maira is in the hands of Homeland Security at least as of the end of Compromised. Will she write the code to allow the BTSU to do what they want? I guess you know as you've already read Hunted, but I'll find out soon when the book becomes publicly available. Coming up we're obviously going to explore Kelso more. I think, as you said, that she's going to come out as simply doing things her way rather than being rogue. The fact that both Johnson and Vik question her, likely coming out of comments made by Nat, means that she should be central to the next season. But I have a bit of a concern that the whole penetrate the BTSU bunker plot was in the DLC that was pushed back 12 months. I guess we'll have to see. Hopefully there is sufficient content to keep us going for another year. That means that Shaeffer likely remains switched off for a while longer. I guess we'll see. Also, Birdie listed a bunch of BTSU brats that had access to the bunkers. And, barring Schaeffer, they're all dead. Does that mean that Nat now has new brats? Or does nobody in the BTSU have access to the bunkers any more? That would definitely throw a spanner in the BTSU workings. Anyway, thanks as always, mate. Hopefully I'm more on track with these stream of consciousness thoughts.
Beautifully written. It’s very clear that you have the story at heart, as I have. I think you make a lot of very great points, but the thing I have to disagree on is where you said that Nat was trying to rescue Schaeffer during the White House attack. I don’t recall them explicitly saying they wanted to *rescue* him. I’m pretty sure they wanted to either take him out on the spot, or get him back to their HQ for some… uhm… “enhanced” interrogation, and then decide if it was worth it to kill him or not. Bardon was having some second thoughts on his duties once the Black Tusk started working with the Hunters, and Natalya was very clearly aware of it, he stopped being the BTSU’s Boy Scout and started being more of a pain in the ass. I don’t think she really misses him, especially considering that the BTSU kept giving her disappointments.
Honestly, I now just don’t trust anyone. Kelso is cool, but her being Ex-CIA and the focus on her being a potential threat has got me spooked. We also this weird situation of Nat and Cal being Allies, but potentially planning to betray each other, and then this raises questions if Keener was correct in his ideas about the divison. Honestly I am cautiously intrigued.
I am seeing 3 sides to this conflict now. Team Manny & Kelso: Survive and rebuild society and protect people Cal & BTSU: Restore the continuity of the US Government, or what's left of it with them as the "support" to the new US government. Keener's Rogues: Agent's reported as rogue for disobeying ISSAC, going off mission or aligning with Keener's ideals. Its definitely going to be interesting to see how they play out things over the next year and even into the next Division.
personally, I believe that Kelso is our ally yes, she's young and reckless but she's also a good person and Faye said in her message that she's the best person to be a leader for all loyal division agents, besides to Calvin McManis all agents that are against him or his allies are rouge and Natalya Sokolova manipulates people for her goals just like Aaron Keener did.
Recruiter accused us of going rogue the moment we sided with Kelso. All I can say, is that's really funny, coming from him - my watch hasn't turned red yet.
Neither did Keeners (now our watch), although currently our watch is being operated by Isac, Anna was used by Keener and she didn't flag him rogue, something that is notable because Isac did and this is important because Anna can comprehend and handle many moving parts and moral conundrums, something Isac can't with this being stated by the coders of the Ai's themselves.
it really hurt me how Cal insulted Lau for being off duty. She was on duty to save what remains was such a great agent. Aand about the figurine of the agent i dont know how i feel about him, i kinda think that the figurine is another character, and i have a theory about why Johnson hates kelso so much i think she killed the other agent of his cell but only time will tell
Can't wait for the next division book to come out tomorrow and see how it connects with the current story. Will Mairia now be tracked down by a Hunter after being labeled as Rogue
it makes sense about that first hunter encounter we had after discovering a dead agent held above the table if you remembered, i always wondered why he didn't just kill us after we were shocked but i quite understand with the reason of agents getting out of their path is considered hunted... but what makes us as a 'rogue' and hunted for those hunters still confuses me
@@smidcy1 that could actually be true but weren't all hunters wear ski mask, i might be wrong tho. none the less, i wont be surprised if that was him considering he was playing two sides with black tusk and us.. and didn't want to kill us because we were opening a path for him.. and i seriously doubt these hunters were sent by the govt, those "eliminating agents that are swayed from their path" doesnt seemed right and probably just a propaganda
I fo agree with you ngn, I did had a hunch that Johnson was the recruiter. But I did wish he wasn't. Hear me out for a bit. The way the hunters fight and how strong their tech are, it does make sense that McManus would have the best toys, but I thought the hunters were members of a spec ops group like tier one operators or delta force, also McManus sounds like a seasoned spec ops veteran. And I thought a delta force or seal team six member would fit as the recruiter more appropriately, due to wanting to pick quality of quality members for the hunters. I know I'm wrong and I haven't been following the lore in the aspect that you are the best research officer of this. But I'm looking forward to see what will happen in the next season. Extremis malice, extrema remedia.
Tbh it just seems that Hunters do have that background with much more training and better tech that our agents. Like Johnson said they are agents but they just exist to clean up any mess agents cause. So naturally you'd want someone to be better than your best. We're not 100% sure about John's past but the hunters definitely have more experience and training than we do.
There are some really BAD ASS ducks with hunter masks in this mission, first are in that parking area with first boss and second are in that Terminator easter egg on table left to gate that leads to cabin. Also u can encounter this recruiter 3 times in this mission when he watches you.
Imo, I like how Div's writing and story is understandable if you dig a little and ambiguous enough to keep you engaged but its not too ambiguous that it leaves you with missing brain cells unlike franchises such as FNAF or Kingdom hearts.
I was hoping Johnson would've had a larger part in the story than just this one season. It worries me too what happened to the other who came to DC with him. Again it baffles me why our OG agents from 1 were not allowed to be carried over as ALL of this would be 10x more personal from that investment.
This whole mission reminded me of a quote from Babylon 5: Crusade (a show that did NOT get the respect that it should have from TNT): "Whom do you serve, and whom do you trust?" (Also, this is why you can't trust cops, ever--they lie every chance they get).
It is funny how the developers are really playing on the concept that a good amount of the player base is expecting Kelso to be a traitor to a point they established this as canon to the lore since even majority of the NPCs are thinking Kelso maybe a traitor pretending to be loyal and they are just waiting for a excuse to just mark her as Rogue. Johnson is a extreme case where his constant belief about Kelso being maybe a traitor pretending to be loyal lead him down a path where he became paranoid about her to a point everytime Cal mentioned someone being a traitor his mind defaulted to Kelso even when Cal himself does not think Kelso is a traitor. The irony to all this is that the more this goes on the more we see it is the people who think they are still "loyal" to the mission who ends up being the traitors to our agent and his/her allies. This also goes back into a bit of Kelso's background since she was former CIA agent. She even mentioned previously her job as a CIA agent was literally going into dangerous places that makes what life is now during the Dollar flu outbreak look like a normal day to make priority targets marked by the US government disappear or extract someone out safely. This means the stuff she does now to get the mission done, despite certain people's disapproval of her methods, was the usual method she used back before the outbreak as a CIA. Of course she no longer has the luxury of the US government covering up it was her doing and she now has a watch that literally tells everyone she is the one who caused it compared to her CIA days when she could blend in with the crowd more.
Going out on a whim here... I'm guessing that when the time comes, we're taking Bardon Shaffeur with us, back to Camp White Oak and using his person as a key to open that Massive underground vault door. That always seems to close when we go there, what's behind it... I wonder...
I'm pretty sure it's canon lore that our agent had to do a build change-up for this mission. Such a pain to do solo on heroic but felt so good finishing the mission.
I read the comic books and I liked them. It would be awesome if agents Heather Ward and Caleb Dunne appear in the upcoming seasons. I am interested to see how both have been doing since the Mantis incident.
My appologies, I forgot to add them, I'll do that now!! The Division Extremis Malis - PART 1 th-cam.com/video/pdXgognZLwc/w-d-xo.html The Division Extremis Malis - PART 2 th-cam.com/video/bktQrjFdcn0/w-d-xo.html The Division Extremis Malis - PART 3 th-cam.com/video/GrJT8KU4OCw/w-d-xo.html
The threads being woven into the recruited books it's awesome. Them needing a coding expert, the need for the server to create the code bomb that takes down the shd servers for good. What really pisses me off is that no one talks to each other in this universe. Johnson wines we have any idea what he's taking about and we should be "on the right side".
I finished the Recruiter Mission myself last weekend. There are two things that stuck with me the more often I heard them, I think in your vid it is at 5:07 and 22:07 is all that talk about "We serve the president, we work for Cal" I did some research on my own after this (I am from Germany) and figured, that Cal is in fact in the line of succession as secretary of homeland. So my fear is, that by law he IS the rightfull president of the USA (I even started a Reddit these about it, but no real response yet). But that would mean that (since the Division must only obey the POTUS) he could just order the Division to stand down. He doesn't do that (or did it yet) so either he can't do it (dead, hostage, cut of from comunication) or he wouldn't do that, because he wants them to oppose Black Tusk. Problem is, by sending Johnson and others to Natalia, he handed the Hunters over to her. So the Hunters think they are fullfilling his (the POTUS') orders by bringing the Division down
And now I finaly figured out why the clearname of the Recruiter made me so uneasy every time I heard him on the comms before: One of the Secret Service Agends that killed Mendez was called the same
The hunter character was predictable but this story opening up possibilities such as Keener very well may have been warning us, especially with his "Do you trust your fellow agents" hud and "Kill agent Kelso" mission marker possibly being the hunters objective and Anna being on his watch and the Anna ai not flagging him as rogue (remember unlike Isac, Anna can handle moral leaps and operate in grey zones) could very well hint he and his fellow rogues and Legacy may have been anti heros of a sort.
Yeah, I realized that after watching the video and while doing the boss fight. Keener is one of those villains you get that was KIND OF right. I wonder what Season 3 is gonna have this year, it's about him from my understanding. "Vanguard"@@ChangedCauseYT-HateFoxNames
Maybe Kelso is similar to what Grimmsdottr was to 3rd Echelon during Splinter Cell Conviction. One last insurance policy spy for when the organization is corrupted from within.
I get the feeling that division three will be flipped on its head. If agent Johnson Is right, WE are all wrong about why the division was activated. This season’s story played like James Bond’s “skyfall” movie in my opinion. Howeverwe, we might go out “A La Jason Bourne” in the The Div 3. I’m excited.
Apologies for the wall of text that rambles at times. A gold star if you read all of this. TLDR I have some issues with where this story is going and it is all due to the glaring conflicts in the lore caused by the info put into the Descent comms. I mean, if we just completely ignore Div1, then sure this new info could make sense. Some background info: We have to keep in mind that despite all the warnings and intel on Amherst, and by some of the Descent comms(I think, have to relisten to them), ISAC was collecting and analyzing the intel and pointing to Amherst as an issue(an NSA analyst was as well), Cal just dismissed all of it. Cal knew Natalya and started the SHD(and Hunter) programs long before the outbreak. Cal was in New York when the outbreak started. In Div1 certain characters that knew what Amherst was up to, were either killed(April's husband) and their body taken or went into hiding(Guy that wrote the Survival guide). Johnson saying that when we teamed up with Kelso, we went "rogue" even if ISAC doesn't think we did, makes absolutely no sense, at all. Johnson is a complete idiot and has zero idea about anything apparently, which would mean that McManus has been lying to Johnson the entire time. Which is odd, considering Johnson was one of the agents Cal used during development. If us working with Kelso to stop Keener and Eclipse is what Johnson is talking about, again, that's just a retcon. Reply to the above from someone: "I believe he meant siding with Kelso against Ellis and taking the retrovirals and bioreactor for ourselves and making Manny a fake president." Even then, ISAC didn't have an issue with it. And ISAC very easily flags SHD agents as rogues, to the point that Cal specifically told Ortiz Robotics to stop ISAC from disabling SHD tech if ISAC classified an agent as rogue, because one of his agents died after breaking into a pharmacy to get medical supplies and that wasn't "off mission". The Ortizs' asked if he was sure about leaving SHD tech in the hands of potentially bad actors, and Cal was fine with it because he had a way to take care of that issue. Another comm he activated the Hunters. Cal is either completely incompetent(He's not) or has ulterior motives(He does). Cal is absolutely aware of what is "on mission" for Directive 51 and ISAC. Cal has his own private little hit squad within the broader SHD/Directive 51 program, that being the Hunters. He also has access to all 3 AI programs. ISAC, ANNA and Diamond(used by the Black Tusk). All of this was built and funded by the US Government and BTSU(Natalya) Cal saying that Faye wasn't interested in Continuity of Government and had a personal vendetta against Keener is laughable. Touching on us and Kelso being rogues again. If Kelso and our Div2 agent should have been flagged as rogue by ISAC, which Johnson seems to believe is the case, then our Div 1 agent should have been flagged, especially after we started going after the LMB. Cal would have known about this. Not to mention that the Black Tusk was supplying the LMB with weapons. I'm sure Cal was perfectly aware of the ISAC classified rogue agents working with LMB(as he activated the Hunters), that his Hunters didn't kill, but he apparently authorized his Hunters to kill our Div 1 Agents while we were trying to retrieve the antivirals in the Survival mode(Where the Hunters were introduced). and in the Underground as well. If all that is "off mission" and constitutes going rogue, if stopping Keener with Kelso is going rogue, while at the same time neither Cal nor the Hunters were apparently concerned with the actions of Keener and his Rogue network, the fact that Cal didn't have an issue with rogues working with BTSU; then what exactly is "on mission"? As for using Bardon to get into BTSU HQ, it would be the height of incompetence for Nat to not lockout his access. It's literally SOP. With how this story is unfolding, we're stuck with people that are situationally competent or incompetent, somehow fully informed or oblivious to everything, ISAC is either too restrictive or allows for anything, on and on. The story isn't self consistent. Oh and the whole Kelso bit, is just tongue in cheek poking at the playerbase(well, it better be.) The new BTSU broadcasts have Nat mocking the idea of the Russians being involved.
I was all in since day one for Kelso to be a bad guy, All the way up to us removing Lau. Once she was gone, it just doesn't work for me any more. Then the season after, where Kelso was the only one that had any remorse about taking Lau out, then we find out she is staying in NY, keeping an eye on them as they lost there main agent and its our fault. Now add in Vik dropping all the hints about Kelso in the last cut scene and ugh. I was also with Johnson about not needing to rescue Vik, after what he did too us in the store, I was hoping we could remove him from the world. And hey, at least the markings on the recruiter's sniper rifle where there as it was him, with so many teams coming and going on the dev time of the game, its nice to see some one remembered that.
@@neofulcrum5013because Johnston was the recruiter and well they where a cell when entering DC so it's not far fected to say they carried on working together, and when Johnston went dark he killed both of them, which I would say was around the time of the kenly situation after all it was him who was gonna grab the server back then but I am guessing the outcasts got in the way
@@MCD10000 plausible. Though I think someone would ask questions how he came back but his cell didn’t. We will have to wait and see if they’re in the next trailer cinematic for season 3.
@@neofulcrum5013true, but manny had only heard of him before the season so many be him and cal spread false rumours about him and his cell getting ambushed during the SHD blackout
Not sure if you caught it, The Re ruiter was visible at the very beginning of this mission. In the shed to the left before you go through the first gate.
@@devinthierault I only found one of those on the first run through, by the gun case before you go through the gates towards the tunnel, but there is at least a second location where the duck with the mask has stabbed the other duck.
Oh my god I literally was going to put a comment about my Brian Johnson figure I have on my desk (next to heather ward of course) and then right at the end of the video you mention it! 😂
one thing i find weird, is that birdie mentions the BTSU units being part of " natalya's inner circle ", isn't this odd to anyone else? BTSU was just a special unit of " cuthroats " except Bardon, he makes sense, the rest not so much, also still waiting to find out the " unknown " officer who was Bardon's superior in the Div 2 launch echo's and comms, they both also mention their " boss " as a he, not a she, meaning at the very least someone under natalya is above the Unknown officer and Bardon.
This season was very interesting, lots of answers and also alot of new questions. With the new season soon approaching?(not sure if we're getting the new season right away or if it is delayed because of the new project resolve) I am very interested to see what the manhunt title means, the next manhunt title per their roadmap was Vanguard, which we all know was Keener's callsign. Something is going to happen with Kelso, thats for sure. I am very interested to see where they take the story going forward. A huge Underground BTSU city?! That smells of raid content. THE BTSU HQ? Sounds like fun! Lots of new places to see and shoot badguys at in the coming year. Great Video and I look forward to more speculation too! Keep up the good work agent!
Something is telling that this maybe leading up to either a choice or a betrayal by our agent...it feels like this grey line we're walking is gonna lead us away from the SHD
I always had a sort of fantasy that we would be successfully recruited by Cal into the hunter program as an insider. Since we already don't ever speak and are ruthless killing machines! That ended up being not the case, but I can still dream, dammit!
This Manhunt makes me wonder when they officially decided Hunters were Agents recruited to be a Hit Squad against Rogue Agents. Especially since when they first appeared in Division 1, we were trying to get the cure and extract it in the Snowstorm and they showed up to kill us, even though we definitely weren't off mission then
Yeah, I've wondered for a while what is lore relevant and what is just a gameplay consideration. Like, we've been explicitly told that the easter egg hunters are not canon. So are those Survival hunters also not canon? I like to imagine that most hunter encounters are not real in that sense. We kill one in coney island when hunting Bardon Shaeffer. We kill the recruiter. You could maybe make an argument for the pair in summit, but that's a stretch. Other than that, We've mostly been just observed by hunters at various times. Probably some other stuff too. I just don't remember them all anymore. It takes so much attentiveness and memory to really parse what parts of the game are story relevant. I'm just thankful that we have people like NGN who try to keep the whole canon in their brain just to be able to put events into context.
@@Dopesaur I would say, all of the D2 and survival hunters are cannon, because the Hunter's only report to Cal so it's not a stretch to say Cal ordered the kill of all agents in NYC during the storm, because he never liked the fact the SHD agents didn't report to him and it's good cover
It took me 6 tries to beat the Recruiter, only because I wanted to make sure I was as close as possible to him when Birdie took down the network. Some damn Black Tusk soldiers always managed to sneak behind me and shoot me. It was infuriating.
After several hours of trying on heroic I killed the fucker on hard. I don't understand why it is a goal for UBI/Massive to make people hate the game. This was unnecessarily hard and stupid.
At this point im wondering why the SHD network is so valuable, like the most we have seen it do is able to do constant area scans for targets and be able to keep up with controling many drones and other ai weapons and thats it.
The SHD network is tied to the three operational systems Ortiz Robotics made, ISAC(us/Hunters), ANNA(was hidden/dormant until Keener/Theo), and DIAMOND(BTSU servers that have no AI). The fact the servers are all tied together make them each a point of weakness for attack on the others. However DIAMOND lacks an AI like the others and is just straight data and executions. Something that would have been beneficial if not that Claire Ortiz and McManus kept her servers tied to the others as a way to collect data (and probably eves drop).
I enjoyed the final manhunt against the recruiter at camp white oak I was also surprised that it was on under control of the black tusk and the true son’s
Not sure if it is a Bug, but for me and all my D2 playing freinds Kelso is gone after killing johnson. First she was moved into the Mask wall in NY, and then just fully removed. So my guess is that she will either go AWOL or rouge in the next season, that is afaik called Vanguard(Keeners callsign)
This comms got me to think soo much about this agents: Caleb Dunne, Heather Ward, Mantis, Calvin McManus, Natalya Sokolova, Bardon Schaeffer, Alani Kelso, Simon Keyes, and other known division agents still alive or unkown report mentioned for div2 in wiki 🤔
i have a feeling keeners watch is gonna come into play. especially with all the talk about how issac cant differentiate who is rogue and not. like the smallest infraction can make an agent a rogue. also anna has to be a big part to that as well
I just wish I could've fought the recruiter. My game keeps glitching as I've done all the targets solo, in order but the completion % stops at 95 when I rescue Vik. Ive restarted this manhunt 3 times and its the same thing and not going to try again just for it to cut me off at the end. I had hints about who the recruiter was so it was satisfying to watch this video.
I’m hoping that in season 3 we have an option to defect and join a side for the future of the game me personally I would want to join the winning team which is obviously the Black Tusk and I wouldn’t fell bad betraying Manny and the remnants of the Division besides I always like the red watch color more than the orange anyway
Man I really wish instead of killing agent Johnson he had a voice line along the lines of "You did good you have a choice to make now agent" and it was the choice to join the hunter program and hunt down everyone we've worked aside the last 5 years with Black Tusk that would have been a awesome storyline instead of what we got
Such a great set up, them slowly realizing who the recruiter is through accidental communications...shame it was plagued by horrible writing. Half of this sounds like a Disney movie, Birdie is the most obnoxious character we've had the displeasure of coming across yet and every one of her lines reads like a complete idiot who's talking to people who are somehow even dumber than she is. None of them get that their comms are the same? Even Sokolova? It's like they dumbed everyone down to make Birdie look good because they don't have the aptitude to write a smart character. Reminds me of Game of Thrones after season 4. This manhunt had great atmosphere, creepy parts where you knew something was wrong but man they just can NOT write dialogue or good characters to save their lives. Even watching this, Rogue's delivery is so serious and solemn (well done btw) contrasted with the corny lines like "go get a taco or something." Is that supposed to be funny?
I'll be honest, I kinda liked the hunters more when we knew nothing about them. Knowing how close they are in relativity to the agent makes them feel much less threatening.
so, sum up of what Cindy thought about Kelso: "I don't know what you're doing or have any idea what in the actual fuck is goin on but I like things that go boom and you make things go boom so I like you"
Cal mentioned Faye, and did we, the audience, ever get to know what Faye found out on the laptop? Or maybe we will find out next season with Kelso being "divorced" from Manny and D.C. ?
We are not the rouge agents. This has to do with the oath that every enlisted person takes "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". They are suppose to "obey the orders of the President of the United States" but the President was not elected but put in place by Sokolova.
still haven't played out this manhunt finale, waiting until I hear that all the gamebreaking bugs have been worked out before I waste my time messing with it.
i guess i was wrong about agent johnson being the same person as the one in the incursion but honestly looking forward to the new york dlc and where the story will be heading
![[ ออกกอง ] วัยหนุ่ม 2544 โลกหลังลูกกรง..ทัวร์กองถ่ายหนังใน "คุกของจริง" | JUSTดูIT.](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vB--aOkZCpw/mqdefault.jpg)
One thing I seriously appreciate about this manhunt, is that they managed to hit the sweet spot where they have given us quite a bunch of important information and background on the Hunters without completely ruining the mystery behind them. I love how they wrote everything
Who knows? Maybe any agent dear to us is secretly a hunter. >:3
Absolutely agreed. For me, it legitimately feels like Division 2 had been notably _ramping up_ with the storyline since Faye Lau in *End of Watch,* and it's this Manhunt has been particularly interesting for me. There's some serious twists for us in this path and what it means as a Division agent. I've always spent some time here and there in Division 2 (I have 4 characters, nearly all of them have 12+ _different_ Loadouts), but 2023's lore actually reinvigorated my love of the franchise. Between the re-manning of the Division 2 Devteam, the official announcements for Project Resolve + loose roadmap, finding this channel among some others (like RogueGold), and checking out the Crossroads book series, I'm having a _really_ enjoyable time just hanging out in this universe again. I've loved The Division through thick and thin since the first game, and I'm really happy to see the franchise _finally_ blossoming into all the new potentials (even the ones I probably won't personally interact with, like the mobile game). There are *so many* stories to tell in The Division, that taking the franchise transmedia is absolutely the best way to see it grow.
@@Trepanation21funnily enough, I didn’t actually spend a lot of time in the first game. It was the sequel that made me fall in love with the story, and ever since season 9 I’ve been loving the worldbuilding and lore even more. I didn’t read any of the crossroad books because, admittedly, I’m too lazy to read, and the audiobook version isn’t available in my country, but I really wanna give those books a shot now that Hunted came out. Glad you’re enjoying this world again
Guys is jhonson one of the agents from.the cover art? What happened to the other two agents?
@@deviljocky598UT Yes He is. The other two agents from the Cover could be dead by now
'And the stubbornness to admit this was the wrong loadout for this fight.' - Proper laughed out loud!
Right?! I literally was rolling on the floor when he said, "After a few practice runs..."
I absolutely laughed out loud during that hahahaha too reeeal 😆
Every damn loadout is the wrong one, and the idea of farming so I could have the build I need for friggin mission pisses me off.
So if jhonson is a hunter is agent dunne and ward also hunters?
It's true sometimes 😂
So in layman's terms;
1. Our agent is Rogue, but the Keener watch is making sure we don't glow red.
2. Hunters are part of SHD, who wipe out the real rogues.
3. Keener was right.
He i am from future and i want say 3 keener was right all ti time now we work with him and try find he remembers teams now we in season 1 year 6 find tho karnal
I knew the recruiter was Johnson the second we heard a voice talk to Mari at Manning Zoo. You know, “these are Division comms”- Mari. The voice who gave Mari the comms had a similar voice to Johnson. Johnson gave away the comms which also hints that Mari was the “insider”. Not on purpose of course but it gave Black Tusk the ability to listen in. Yes, Johnson was an insider also.
I’m excited for the Brooklyn DLC because we know Kelso is in NY somewhere and the recruiter said our agents went off mission the moment we followed Kelso not McManus. Right now we are rogue and Vivian Conley wasn’t lying when she said Issac can’t determine between right and wrong.
Are we really rogue tho?
@@Osmo-7777 depends if you think so. Agents respond to the POTUS. I believe McManus is the President or maybe someone else is on his side. We are rogue since our agents are not following their orders. Only so many can die until the Secretary of Defense is the president. Line of succession
@@Osmo-7777Honestly, I don't think it matters anymore. Arguably the fire fighters in the JTF have gone rogue and are gunning down American citizens but fundamentally the job they should be doing doesn't exist anymore. Likewise, the political system and society in the Division is to messed up in general that "Saving what remains" Isn't possible anymore especially when they guy the claim, we should be following supports the Black Tusk who have a tendency to wipe civilian settlements off the map.
@@Osmo-7777 it’s difficult. ISAC hasn’t flagged our Agent or the people in our group as Rogues, BUT technically we are rogue, since we stopped following orders from the government. We’re supposed to answer to the President or, if absent, to the people who are closest to POTUS’ position. Of course, we aren’t following McManus. As crooked as he is, he’s still part of the official government. So… it’s tricky
@Osmo-7777 no, because the division's mission is the save what remains, and not about continuity of government, because there's no government if nothing can be governed in the first place, the SHD's job is to protect the ones who are trying to rebuild/prevent society from collapsing, which is not cal or nat
All this talk of us being "rogue" and the threats to cut us off from SHD tech make me wonder if Keener's watch will come into it again at some point. We are wearing it, after all, and it was Rhodes who managed to get it working at the end of WoNY. Maybe there are features that are yet to be unlocked that Keener left hidden until the time was right.
The watch also could be the reason why ISAC doesn't ever flag us as rogue, because it never did to Keener and he was.
ANNA is definitely important in some way. If our tech goes down, this will likely be our only option. Besides it seems like she’s the superior ai to ISAC.
@@neofulcrum5013 The rogue network has just been sitting there with ANNA all this time too, it's probably why Nat is trying to get hold of the mobile SHD server, so that it can be used to gain access to ANNA and the network. It also adds a point in Kelso's favor for not being rogue, she is one of the few who knows about the Keener watch and Black Tusk have never tried to take it from you or even given any hint that we have it.
@@Zipa7 say what you will about Kelso’s attitude, but I doubt she’ll go rogue on us. Especially with what happened to Faye. I think she’s even more loyal to the SHD now.
What if we were always meant to be Keener's replacement? Maybe unknowingly we are actually carrying the task of Keener. And very soon ANNA will be activated by us. Also look how they are pushing Keener's stuff. We got the ouroboros which has his quote in the description. Then we got this skin called "keener was right." Then we have the next season called "Vanguard " which was Keener's call sign.
You still get access to your tech if rogue , that was the bypass after the 1st wave ran into problems with being labeled off mission and loosing shd access and killed
man the humor you bring in out of no where always gets me ,thanks !
I would have enjoyed it if the Recruiter survived, replacing Keener as our agent’s foil. Him appearing several times throughout various seasons, either fighting us or taunting us would have been cool.
I also don’t like Birdie’s introduction, I would have thought it better if we were rescuing Vik and had an interesting conversation about having to trust him with control of the mortars we hacked into earlier!
So glad my hunch was right on the Recruiter's identity. it seemed extremely suspicious from the start and their dialogue gave off so many red flags
"Oh hey its Johnson!"
"From the trailers!"
"Oh. Its the fucking recruiter."
well we kinda saw it coming a mile away
@@_Fulgur_ I know lol. People reacting about "a hunch" as if the professional writers aren't specifically guiding the audience's feelers in the design and presentation of the story 😂
Lots to digest here. Like you I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't do more to go with something other than the extraordinarily obvious Agent Johnson as the Recruiter. Given how much they threw us for a loop with Stovepipe I continually thought that it had to be someone different and that maybe Johnson ended up killed by the Recruiter in the end. But I guess it was the obvious.
I had this conversation with Tom Parrott on Twitter the other day, but you can get a bit of a better understanding of this by thinking about D&D alignments. Hunters are obviously lawful in that the goal is the mission and they always follow orders. You get this from Birdie when she tells Johnson that he's always all about the mission. That comes first, and that's all he focuses on. Now, the morality of Hunters is different. I would be hard pressed to call them good because their job is to clean up rogue agents. Without remorse. So at best they're neutral and some, perhaps like the very first one we encounter in the side mission in DC who is torturing a missing agent, are evil. But Johnson himself came across as more neutral. He was entirely focused on the mission, and obeying Cal's orders, but there were also times he seemed to help us. Or at least not hinder us. Obviously he was under orders and focused on the mission, but he didn't stop us saving Mari. And he didn't stop us killing Jack Bonnie.
Division Agents on the other hand seem to generally have a more chaotic or neutral approach to their orders. They are independent, and as Cal said, a fail safe on a fail safe on a last resort that was never meant to be triggered - and if he and Nat had the same influence over the President at the time of the green poison that they felt they had over Ellis the Division may NEVER have been triggered. But the problem is that what makes for a good agent can also make for someone who could be bad at following orders. Agents generally do what they do for others - doing what they can to help them which is neutral good in D&D speak. Some more just act on what their conscience dictates which is more chaotic good. But some, like Keener, are more chaotic neutral and are driven by their own thoughts and holding personal goals above all others. But agents, as Crazy Cindy said, are just people.
What's interesting is the way Johnson doesn't distinguish between anyone like Keener, who is working entirely for their own benefit, and someone like Kelso who is working for the good of others in her own way. Because neither are following his orders he views them both as rogue. And, in the absolute definition of the word, they are. Only the Hunters continue to follow Cal's orders. Not that we are even getting orders from Cal, although the fact that the systems are interlinked, and Cal has access to ANNA, may well mean he's putting missions into ISAC without us even knowing. The challenge is that Cal is, at least to some extent, working with Nat. She wants to rule the world, as per the Tears for Fears song, and he is playing along. How much we don't know, but we do know that Hunters show up in Countdown working with the BTSU, and we do know that they do seem to actively oppose some of the things we do.
That said, Johnson seemed at times to be at least not hindering our missions. To rescue Mari for example. He gave her comms and allowed us to talk to her. He also just watched while we rescued her. He didn't intervene. Which means that Cal was likely telling him to let that play out. Given that a bunch of BTSU died during that mission that must demonstrate that Cal isn't entirely working with Nat because we know that if he'd ordered Johnson to fully support Nat then he'd have been opposing us in that mission.
Interestingly, Cal sent a Hunter to take out Schaeffer before we could kill him. Which means that Cal had likely figured out that Schaeffer and Lau were working together. But Nat doesn't seem to know this because she was still looking to rescue Schaeffer when she attacked the White House. So, despite our comms being their comms as Birdie so eloquently says, the BTSU didn't know that Schaeffer was no longer entirely working with Nat.
What is concerning is that of the people that Birdie mentioned that could reprogram a Mobile SHD Server we have Wally, Claire, and Maira. We don't know the status of Claire Ortiz, I guess presumed dead, but we know that Maira is in the hands of Homeland Security at least as of the end of Compromised. Will she write the code to allow the BTSU to do what they want? I guess you know as you've already read Hunted, but I'll find out soon when the book becomes publicly available.
Coming up we're obviously going to explore Kelso more. I think, as you said, that she's going to come out as simply doing things her way rather than being rogue. The fact that both Johnson and Vik question her, likely coming out of comments made by Nat, means that she should be central to the next season. But I have a bit of a concern that the whole penetrate the BTSU bunker plot was in the DLC that was pushed back 12 months. I guess we'll have to see. Hopefully there is sufficient content to keep us going for another year. That means that Shaeffer likely remains switched off for a while longer. I guess we'll see.
Also, Birdie listed a bunch of BTSU brats that had access to the bunkers. And, barring Schaeffer, they're all dead. Does that mean that Nat now has new brats? Or does nobody in the BTSU have access to the bunkers any more? That would definitely throw a spanner in the BTSU workings.
Anyway, thanks as always, mate. Hopefully I'm more on track with these stream of consciousness thoughts.
Beautifully written. It’s very clear that you have the story at heart, as I have. I think you make a lot of very great points, but the thing I have to disagree on is where you said that Nat was trying to rescue Schaeffer during the White House attack. I don’t recall them explicitly saying they wanted to *rescue* him. I’m pretty sure they wanted to either take him out on the spot, or get him back to their HQ for some… uhm… “enhanced” interrogation, and then decide if it was worth it to kill him or not. Bardon was having some second thoughts on his duties once the Black Tusk started working with the Hunters, and Natalya was very clearly aware of it, he stopped being the BTSU’s Boy Scout and started being more of a pain in the ass. I don’t think she really misses him, especially considering that the BTSU kept giving her disappointments.
Honestly, I now just don’t trust anyone. Kelso is cool, but her being Ex-CIA and the focus on her being a potential threat has got me spooked. We also this weird situation of Nat and Cal being Allies, but potentially planning to betray each other, and then this raises questions if Keener was correct in his ideas about the divison. Honestly I am cautiously intrigued.
I see as a final manhunt there will be a massive blowout between cal and natalia. Where we eventually have to take them both out
@@mattmeyer99 got two bullets with their names on it.
@@neofulcrum5013 i got a few extras to ensure it
@@mattmeyer99I don't see why they would do that in a man hunt, it will most likely be a DLC for D2 or even D3 if they want to pull another keener
I am seeing 3 sides to this conflict now.
Team Manny & Kelso: Survive and rebuild society and protect people
Cal & BTSU: Restore the continuity of the US Government, or what's left of it with them as the "support" to the new US government.
Keener's Rogues: Agent's reported as rogue for disobeying ISSAC, going off mission or aligning with Keener's ideals.
Its definitely going to be interesting to see how they play out things over the next year and even into the next Division.
personally, I believe that Kelso is our ally yes, she's young and reckless but she's also a good person and Faye said in her message that she's the best person to be a leader for all loyal division agents, besides to Calvin McManis all agents that are against him or his allies are rouge and Natalya Sokolova manipulates people for her goals just like Aaron Keener did.
On that we agree
Recruiter accused us of going rogue the moment we sided with Kelso.
All I can say, is that's really funny, coming from him - my watch hasn't turned red yet.
Neither has mine agent….. I intend to keep it that way
Neither did Keeners (now our watch), although currently our watch is being operated by Isac, Anna was used by Keener and she didn't flag him rogue, something that is notable because Isac did and this is important because Anna can comprehend and handle many moving parts and moral conundrums, something Isac can't with this being stated by the coders of the Ai's themselves.
“After a few practice runs… ” 😂love your humor dude. Great job. Glad I can finally watch this.
Also, loved the nod to Jurassic Park when the mortars dropped on him. :D
Just discovered your channel and it's fantastic. Cheers from Wellington.
Fellow Kiwi!!
There isn't too many of us around here...
To the guy I said that it wouldn't be Brian Johnson I have to apologize 😅
I love your videos NGN, the humour is perfectly spot on. Completely stone faced. I love it.
it really hurt me how Cal insulted Lau for being off duty. She was on duty to save what remains was such a great agent.
Aand about the figurine of the agent i dont know how i feel about him, i kinda think that the figurine is another character, and i have a theory about why Johnson hates kelso so much i think she killed the other agent of his cell but only time will tell
Damn, the story in this game just gets better and better with each new season, im totally invested right now.
johnson is a lot like schaeffer, strong convictions about the cause they fight for
Can't wait for the next division book to come out tomorrow and see how it connects with the current story. Will Mairia now be tracked down by a Hunter after being labeled as Rogue
it makes sense about that first hunter encounter we had after discovering a dead agent held above the table if you remembered, i always wondered why he didn't just kill us after we were shocked but i quite understand with the reason of agents getting out of their path is considered hunted... but what makes us as a 'rogue' and hunted for those hunters still confuses me
That's very interesting. I wonder, if we went to look back at that clip, maybe that hunter is Johnson...
@@smidcy1 that could actually be true but weren't all hunters wear ski mask, i might be wrong tho. none the less, i wont be surprised if that was him considering he was playing two sides with black tusk and us.. and didn't want to kill us because we were opening a path for him.. and i seriously doubt these hunters were sent by the govt, those "eliminating agents that are swayed from their path" doesnt seemed right and probably just a propaganda
I fo agree with you ngn, I did had a hunch that Johnson was the recruiter. But I did wish he wasn't. Hear me out for a bit. The way the hunters fight and how strong their tech are, it does make sense that McManus would have the best toys, but I thought the hunters were members of a spec ops group like tier one operators or delta force, also McManus sounds like a seasoned spec ops veteran. And I thought a delta force or seal team six member would fit as the recruiter more appropriately, due to wanting to pick quality of quality members for the hunters. I know I'm wrong and I haven't been following the lore in the aspect that you are the best research officer of this. But I'm looking forward to see what will happen in the next season. Extremis malice, extrema remedia.
Tbh it just seems that Hunters do have that background with much more training and better tech that our agents. Like Johnson said they are agents but they just exist to clean up any mess agents cause. So naturally you'd want someone to be better than your best. We're not 100% sure about John's past but the hunters definitely have more experience and training than we do.
@ineedzemedic5810 💯 facts, also just an assumption maybe McManus may also have training grounds similar to the descent
@@ineedzemedic5810 From what we know of Johnson's past, he was ex-navy (most likely a SEAL) and went on to join Baltimore PD as a SWAT Sniper.
Maybe Kelso is a double agent working for the Ortizs. Thats would explain Johnson's hunch on her being out of control.
There are some really BAD ASS ducks with hunter masks in this mission, first are in that parking area with first boss and second are in that Terminator easter egg on table left to gate that leads to cabin. Also u can encounter this recruiter 3 times in this mission when he watches you.
U where right in ur suspicion about agent Johnson
Imo, I like how Div's writing and story is understandable if you dig a little and ambiguous enough to keep you engaged but its not too ambiguous that it leaves you with missing brain cells unlike franchises such as FNAF or Kingdom hearts.
I was hoping Johnson would've had a larger part in the story than just this one season. It worries me too what happened to the other who came to DC with him. Again it baffles me why our OG agents from 1 were not allowed to be carried over as ALL of this would be 10x more personal from that investment.
This whole mission reminded me of a quote from Babylon 5: Crusade (a show that did NOT get the respect that it should have from TNT): "Whom do you serve, and whom do you trust?" (Also, this is why you can't trust cops, ever--they lie every chance they get).
It is funny how the developers are really playing on the concept that a good amount of the player base is expecting Kelso to be a traitor to a point they established this as canon to the lore since even majority of the NPCs are thinking Kelso maybe a traitor pretending to be loyal and they are just waiting for a excuse to just mark her as Rogue. Johnson is a extreme case where his constant belief about Kelso being maybe a traitor pretending to be loyal lead him down a path where he became paranoid about her to a point everytime Cal mentioned someone being a traitor his mind defaulted to Kelso even when Cal himself does not think Kelso is a traitor. The irony to all this is that the more this goes on the more we see it is the people who think they are still "loyal" to the mission who ends up being the traitors to our agent and his/her allies.
This also goes back into a bit of Kelso's background since she was former CIA agent. She even mentioned previously her job as a CIA agent was literally going into dangerous places that makes what life is now during the Dollar flu outbreak look like a normal day to make priority targets marked by the US government disappear or extract someone out safely. This means the stuff she does now to get the mission done, despite certain people's disapproval of her methods, was the usual method she used back before the outbreak as a CIA. Of course she no longer has the luxury of the US government covering up it was her doing and she now has a watch that literally tells everyone she is the one who caused it compared to her CIA days when she could blend in with the crowd more.
These are always well made and detailed. Just like watching a good film. Nicely done…
Going out on a whim here... I'm guessing that when the time comes, we're taking Bardon Shaffeur with us, back to Camp White Oak and using his person as a key to open that Massive underground vault door. That always seems to close when we go there, what's behind it... I wonder...
I'm pretty sure it's canon lore that our agent had to do a build change-up for this mission. Such a pain to do solo on heroic but felt so good finishing the mission.
I read the comic books and I liked them. It would be awesome if agents Heather Ward and Caleb Dunne appear in the upcoming seasons. I am interested to see how both have been doing since the Mantis incident.
I am completely unable to find a link to your coverage of the Extemis malis comics, as said at 19:50
Am I blind?
My appologies, I forgot to add them, I'll do that now!!
The Division Extremis Malis - PART 1
th-cam.com/video/pdXgognZLwc/w-d-xo.html
The Division Extremis Malis - PART 2
th-cam.com/video/bktQrjFdcn0/w-d-xo.html
The Division Extremis Malis - PART 3
th-cam.com/video/GrJT8KU4OCw/w-d-xo.html
@@NGN Thanks, man! Always a pleasure watching your stuff.
The threads being woven into the recruited books it's awesome. Them needing a coding expert, the need for the server to create the code bomb that takes down the shd servers for good.
What really pisses me off is that no one talks to each other in this universe. Johnson wines we have any idea what he's taking about and we should be "on the right side".
I finished the Recruiter Mission myself last weekend. There are two things that stuck with me the more often I heard them, I think in your vid it is at 5:07 and 22:07 is all that talk about "We serve the president, we work for Cal" I did some research on my own after this (I am from Germany) and figured, that Cal is in fact in the line of succession as secretary of homeland. So my fear is, that by law he IS the rightfull president of the USA (I even started a Reddit these about it, but no real response yet).
But that would mean that (since the Division must only obey the POTUS) he could just order the Division to stand down. He doesn't do that (or did it yet) so either he can't do it (dead, hostage, cut of from comunication) or he wouldn't do that, because he wants them to oppose Black Tusk. Problem is, by sending Johnson and others to Natalia, he handed the Hunters over to her. So the Hunters think they are fullfilling his (the POTUS') orders by bringing the Division down
And now I finaly figured out why the clearname of the Recruiter made me so uneasy every time I heard him on the comms before: One of the Secret Service Agends that killed Mendez was called the same
His boss fight was really annoying but the reveal was no surprise to be real.
It would’ve been better if he was working with us for multiple seasons, it was weird he just shows up again
The hunter character was predictable but this story opening up possibilities such as Keener very well may have been warning us, especially with his "Do you trust your fellow agents" hud and "Kill agent Kelso" mission marker possibly being the hunters objective and Anna being on his watch and the Anna ai not flagging him as rogue (remember unlike Isac, Anna can handle moral leaps and operate in grey zones) could very well hint he and his fellow rogues and Legacy may have been anti heros of a sort.
Yeah, I realized that after watching the video and while doing the boss fight. Keener is one of those villains you get that was KIND OF right. I wonder what Season 3 is gonna have this year, it's about him from my understanding. "Vanguard"@@ChangedCauseYT-HateFoxNames
I had to rewrite some scenes for my short film because of this manhunt lol
Brian Johnson is still going to stand on the shelf👍
DZ gear went crazy this mission
The division franchise has the best music
Dang .. I need to find all those coms I was missing a lot of that story between Birdie and Vik. Great video.
Maybe Kelso is similar to what Grimmsdottr was to 3rd Echelon during Splinter Cell Conviction.
One last insurance policy spy for when the organization is corrupted from within.
go get a taco or something is my favorite line from this manhunt
Just bought my Recruiter outfit and ofc gave it to my sniper loadout👍
I get the feeling that division three will be flipped on its head. If agent Johnson Is right, WE are all wrong about why the division was activated. This season’s story played like James Bond’s “skyfall” movie in my opinion. Howeverwe, we might go out “A La Jason Bourne” in the The Div 3. I’m excited.
Happy to see the Recruiter comeback
Amazing video!
Thank you NGN
congrats on doing it on nheroic, i tried but got annnoyed so put it down to normal just so i could see the story. Thanks fr covering everyting
Apologies for the wall of text that rambles at times. A gold star if you read all of this.
TLDR I have some issues with where this story is going and it is all due to the glaring conflicts in the lore caused by the info put into the Descent comms. I mean, if we just completely ignore Div1, then sure this new info could make sense.
Some background info: We have to keep in mind that despite all the warnings and intel on Amherst, and by some of the Descent comms(I think, have to relisten to them), ISAC was collecting and analyzing the intel and pointing to Amherst as an issue(an NSA analyst was as well), Cal just dismissed all of it. Cal knew Natalya and started the SHD(and Hunter) programs long before the outbreak. Cal was in New York when the outbreak started. In Div1 certain characters that knew what Amherst was up to, were either killed(April's husband) and their body taken or went into hiding(Guy that wrote the Survival guide).
Johnson saying that when we teamed up with Kelso, we went "rogue" even if ISAC doesn't think we did, makes absolutely no sense, at all.
Johnson is a complete idiot and has zero idea about anything apparently, which would mean that McManus has been lying to Johnson the entire time. Which is odd, considering Johnson was one of the agents Cal used during development.
If us working with Kelso to stop Keener and Eclipse is what Johnson is talking about, again, that's just a retcon.
Reply to the above from someone: "I believe he meant siding with Kelso against Ellis and taking the retrovirals and bioreactor for ourselves and making Manny a fake president."
Even then, ISAC didn't have an issue with it. And ISAC very easily flags SHD agents as rogues, to the point that Cal specifically told Ortiz Robotics to stop ISAC from disabling SHD tech if ISAC classified an agent as rogue, because one of his agents died after breaking into a pharmacy to get medical supplies and that wasn't "off mission". The Ortizs' asked if he was sure about leaving SHD tech in the hands of potentially bad actors, and Cal was fine with it because he had a way to take care of that issue. Another comm he activated the Hunters.
Cal is either completely incompetent(He's not) or has ulterior motives(He does). Cal is absolutely aware of what is "on mission" for Directive 51 and ISAC. Cal has his own private little hit squad within the broader SHD/Directive 51 program, that being the Hunters. He also has access to all 3 AI programs. ISAC, ANNA and Diamond(used by the Black Tusk). All of this was built and funded by the US Government and BTSU(Natalya)
Cal saying that Faye wasn't interested in Continuity of Government and had a personal vendetta against Keener is laughable.
Touching on us and Kelso being rogues again. If Kelso and our Div2 agent should have been flagged as rogue by ISAC, which Johnson seems to believe is the case, then our Div 1 agent should have been flagged, especially after we started going after the LMB. Cal would have known about this. Not to mention that the Black Tusk was supplying the LMB with weapons. I'm sure Cal was perfectly aware of the ISAC classified rogue agents working with LMB(as he activated the Hunters), that his Hunters didn't kill, but he apparently authorized his Hunters to kill our Div 1 Agents while we were trying to retrieve the antivirals in the Survival mode(Where the Hunters were introduced). and in the Underground as well.
If all that is "off mission" and constitutes going rogue, if stopping Keener with Kelso is going rogue, while at the same time neither Cal nor the Hunters were apparently concerned with the actions of Keener and his Rogue network, the fact that Cal didn't have an issue with rogues working with BTSU; then what exactly is "on mission"?
As for using Bardon to get into BTSU HQ, it would be the height of incompetence for Nat to not lockout his access. It's literally SOP.
With how this story is unfolding, we're stuck with people that are situationally competent or incompetent, somehow fully informed or oblivious to everything, ISAC is either too restrictive or allows for anything, on and on. The story isn't self consistent.
Oh and the whole Kelso bit, is just tongue in cheek poking at the playerbase(well, it better be.) The new BTSU broadcasts have Nat mocking the idea of the Russians being involved.
I was all in since day one for Kelso to be a bad guy, All the way up to us removing Lau. Once she was gone, it just doesn't work for me any more. Then the season after, where Kelso was the only one that had any remorse about taking Lau out, then we find out she is staying in NY, keeping an eye on them as they lost there main agent and its our fault. Now add in Vik dropping all the hints about Kelso in the last cut scene and ugh. I was also with Johnson about not needing to rescue Vik, after what he did too us in the store, I was hoping we could remove him from the world. And hey, at least the markings on the recruiter's sniper rifle where there as it was him, with so many teams coming and going on the dev time of the game, its nice to see some one remembered that.
Caleb and Heather are not gonna be happy about this. Which agent is gonna tell ‘em?
Bold of you to assume they’re still alive and not in some ditch
@@sinner2133 why would they all be dead? I’m pretty sure they’re the poster kids for the division 2.
@@neofulcrum5013because Johnston was the recruiter and well they where a cell when entering DC so it's not far fected to say they carried on working together, and when Johnston went dark he killed both of them, which I would say was around the time of the kenly situation after all it was him who was gonna grab the server back then but I am guessing the outcasts got in the way
@@MCD10000 plausible. Though I think someone would ask questions how he came back but his cell didn’t. We will have to wait and see if they’re in the next trailer cinematic for season 3.
@@neofulcrum5013true, but manny had only heard of him before the season so many be him and cal spread false rumours about him and his cell getting ambushed during the SHD blackout
My only problem with this manhunt is the bug preventing me and other agents from doing the final target mission
So theres is a bug.. wow it was the "mission failed" towards the end?
@@reyess1986 for me at least it thinks I haven’t talked to Cindy or Mel
Not sure if you caught it, The Re ruiter was visible at the very beginning of this mission. In the shed to the left before you go through the first gate.
On my third play through, he was actually in quite a number of hidden spots throughout the map!
@@devinthierault I only found one of those on the first run through, by the gun case before you go through the gates towards the tunnel, but there is at least a second location where the duck with the mask has stabbed the other duck.
17:48 seems like it's lining up towards Bardon being the key for us entering an assault into btsu's main base?!
Been waiting for this video! Let's go
I love how they mentioned Maira from the books.
Oh my god I literally was going to put a comment about my Brian Johnson figure I have on my desk (next to heather ward of course) and then right at the end of the video you mention it! 😂
Awesome work, thank you.
Johnson really lived up to his name during that boss fight 😂
I believe that Jhoson's anger towards Kelso is because she is impulsive and chaotic, very different from what he considers "a good agent"
one thing i find weird, is that birdie mentions the BTSU units being part of " natalya's inner circle ", isn't this odd to anyone else? BTSU was just a special unit of " cuthroats " except Bardon, he makes sense, the rest not so much, also still waiting to find out the " unknown " officer who was Bardon's superior in the Div 2 launch echo's and comms, they both also mention their " boss " as a he, not a she, meaning at the very least someone under natalya is above the Unknown officer and Bardon.
Oh yeah, the echo in the coffee place, If I'm not mistaken. You've brought up an excellent point.
This season was very interesting, lots of answers and also alot of new questions. With the new season soon approaching?(not sure if we're getting the new season right away or if it is delayed because of the new project resolve) I am very interested to see what the manhunt title means, the next manhunt title per their roadmap was Vanguard, which we all know was Keener's callsign. Something is going to happen with Kelso, thats for sure. I am very interested to see where they take the story going forward. A huge Underground BTSU city?! That smells of raid content. THE BTSU HQ? Sounds like fun! Lots of new places to see and shoot badguys at in the coming year. Great Video and I look forward to more speculation too! Keep up the good work agent!
Something is telling that this maybe leading up to either a choice or a betrayal by our agent...it feels like this grey line we're walking is gonna lead us away from the SHD
I always had a sort of fantasy that we would be successfully recruited by Cal into the hunter program as an insider. Since we already don't ever speak and are ruthless killing machines! That ended up being not the case, but I can still dream, dammit!
Very nice burn at the end. Still hurts. I need to make a recruiter outfit for him now.
This Manhunt makes me wonder when they officially decided Hunters were Agents recruited to be a Hit Squad against Rogue Agents. Especially since when they first appeared in Division 1, we were trying to get the cure and extract it in the Snowstorm and they showed up to kill us, even though we definitely weren't off mission then
Yeah, I've wondered for a while what is lore relevant and what is just a gameplay consideration. Like, we've been explicitly told that the easter egg hunters are not canon. So are those Survival hunters also not canon? I like to imagine that most hunter encounters are not real in that sense.
We kill one in coney island when hunting Bardon Shaeffer. We kill the recruiter. You could maybe make an argument for the pair in summit, but that's a stretch. Other than that, We've mostly been just observed by hunters at various times. Probably some other stuff too. I just don't remember them all anymore.
It takes so much attentiveness and memory to really parse what parts of the game are story relevant. I'm just thankful that we have people like NGN who try to keep the whole canon in their brain just to be able to put events into context.
@@Dopesaur I would say, all of the D2 and survival hunters are cannon, because the Hunter's only report to Cal so it's not a stretch to say Cal ordered the kill of all agents in NYC during the storm, because he never liked the fact the SHD agents didn't report to him and it's good cover
the kelso conspiracies begin again
It took me 6 tries to beat the Recruiter, only because I wanted to make sure I was as close as possible to him when Birdie took down the network. Some damn Black Tusk soldiers always managed to sneak behind me and shoot me. It was infuriating.
As soon as I recovered Malik and Johnson was like: "Wally, we're gonna need the server" I thought: "Alright, I know where this is going already!"
I took his sniper off him just in case he tries something lol still can't believe it was him all this time
My guy.... you might have called something being weird with Kelso.
After several hours of trying on heroic I killed the fucker on hard. I don't understand why it is a goal for UBI/Massive to make people hate the game. This was unnecessarily hard and stupid.
I cherish these videos ☺️
At this point im wondering why the SHD network is so valuable, like the most we have seen it do is able to do constant area scans for targets and be able to keep up with controling many drones and other ai weapons and thats it.
The SHD network is tied to the three operational systems Ortiz Robotics made, ISAC(us/Hunters), ANNA(was hidden/dormant until Keener/Theo), and DIAMOND(BTSU servers that have no AI).
The fact the servers are all tied together make them each a point of weakness for attack on the others. However DIAMOND lacks an AI like the others and is just straight data and executions. Something that would have been beneficial if not that Claire Ortiz and McManus kept her servers tied to the others as a way to collect data (and probably eves drop).
I enjoyed the final manhunt against the recruiter at camp white oak I was also surprised that it was on under control of the black tusk and the true son’s
Was the “clever girl” a Jurassic Park reference?
💯
Not sure if it is a Bug, but for me and all my D2 playing freinds Kelso is gone after killing johnson. First she was moved into the Mask wall in NY, and then just fully removed. So my guess is that she will either go AWOL or rouge in the next season, that is afaik called Vanguard(Keeners callsign)
Sometimes she gets stuck in the wall of shelving behind where she usually is.
@@NGNsome times?? I haven't seen her out of the wall since last season
here we go
This comms got me to think soo much about this agents: Caleb Dunne, Heather Ward, Mantis, Calvin McManus, Natalya Sokolova, Bardon Schaeffer, Alani Kelso, Simon Keyes, and other known division agents still alive or unkown report mentioned for div2 in wiki 🤔
Told ya this manhunt was a challenge after getting sniped several times but got through with it in the end overall well done.
I saw the whole season playing out from the start. I think that maybe the next season final target will be possible kelso.
What's the point of playing on higher difficulties because it doesn't give me any exp increases
You were right, Recruiter is Agent Johnson 👌🏻
I'd say Bardon need to wake up like, right now. Aside from that, I'm hoping to see a Manhunt where all the targets are Hunters.
i have a feeling keeners watch is gonna come into play. especially with all the talk about how issac cant differentiate who is rogue and not. like the smallest infraction can make an agent a rogue. also anna has to be a big part to that as well
I just wish I could've fought the recruiter. My game keeps glitching as I've done all the targets solo, in order but the completion % stops at 95 when I rescue Vik. Ive restarted this manhunt 3 times and its the same thing and not going to try again just for it to cut me off at the end. I had hints about who the recruiter was so it was satisfying to watch this video.
Ubisoft should make a Articulated Figurine of Agent Johnson in his Recruiter Hunter outfit
I’m hoping that in season 3 we have an option to defect and join a side for the future of the game me personally I would want to join the winning team which is obviously the Black Tusk and I wouldn’t fell bad betraying Manny and the remnants of the Division besides I always like the red watch color more than the orange anyway
Man I really wish instead of killing agent Johnson he had a voice line along the lines of "You did good you have a choice to make now agent" and it was the choice to join the hunter program and hunt down everyone we've worked aside the last 5 years with Black Tusk that would have been a awesome storyline instead of what we got
This been a disaster for me. I have to do the whole damn thing again
Such a great set up, them slowly realizing who the recruiter is through accidental communications...shame it was plagued by horrible writing. Half of this sounds like a Disney movie, Birdie is the most obnoxious character we've had the displeasure of coming across yet and every one of her lines reads like a complete idiot who's talking to people who are somehow even dumber than she is. None of them get that their comms are the same? Even Sokolova? It's like they dumbed everyone down to make Birdie look good because they don't have the aptitude to write a smart character. Reminds me of Game of Thrones after season 4. This manhunt had great atmosphere, creepy parts where you knew something was wrong but man they just can NOT write dialogue or good characters to save their lives. Even watching this, Rogue's delivery is so serious and solemn (well done btw) contrasted with the corny lines like "go get a taco or something." Is that supposed to be funny?
I'll be honest, I kinda liked the hunters more when we knew nothing about them. Knowing how close they are in relativity to the agent makes them feel much less threatening.
The hunters couldn’t remain ambiguous forever…
@@railie6081They stayed ambiguous for 7 years
@@onemorescout your point?
I guess the theory of them being the “third wave of agents” was somewhat true
so, sum up of what Cindy thought about Kelso: "I don't know what you're doing or have any idea what in the actual fuck is goin on but I like things that go boom and you make things go boom so I like you"
Cal mentioned Faye, and did we, the audience, ever get to know what Faye found out on the laptop? Or maybe we will find out next season with Kelso being "divorced" from Manny and D.C. ?
Well we did just find out 1 part, Barton is the key, faye gave the SHD the key to the bunker nat is hiding in
We are not the rouge agents. This has to do with the oath that every enlisted person takes "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". They are suppose to "obey the orders of the President of the United States" but the President was not elected but put in place by Sokolova.
still haven't played out this manhunt finale, waiting until I hear that all the gamebreaking bugs have been worked out before I waste my time messing with it.
How about that can’t even finish the f n manhunt bug?
i guess i was wrong about agent johnson being the same person as the one in the incursion but honestly looking forward to the new york dlc and where the story will be heading
Back to New York… Brooklyn here we come
I have a question can i play the previous manhunts that has already passed ?