Tom Clancy's The Division's All-New Snowdrop Engine Looks Pretty Sweet

There are ambitious video games, and then there's what the guys over at Ubisoft are doing with Tom Clancy's The Division.

Set in a huge open-world New York City, the environment is probably already a big enough task to complete on its own. But on top of that, the teams at Ubisoft Massive and Ubisoft Reflections are creating an entirely new engine for the MMO masterpiece, the Snowdrop engine.

In a self-published interview on the game's site, Technical Director Anders Holmquist gives a little insight into the creation of an all-new engine for this brave new MMO world.

"Often, technology is something you have to fight every step of the way to accomplish your dreams and visions," Holmquist said. "We don't want that. We believe that to make the best games possible, we need an engine that lets us follow our vision and philosophy instead of fighting us. By having our own engine, we can focus on the areas that we think are important and build the tools and the features we need to create a fully immersive New York City in a state of emergency and chaos."

Holmquist then diverged just how he thinks Snowdrop will make games better, starting with The Division.

"As I said before, we are trying to recreate the most detailed New York City ever shown in a video game," Holmquist said. "Snowdrop has many different tools that make it possible. With the building tech for example, we can create a huge, diverse, and detailed city, starting with just a limited amount of building blocks. You will really feel that you're part of this wounded colossus."

Be sure to check out the rest of the interview, because it's a really great look into the mind of a game developer whose team is really doing some big things. Also, in case you've forgotten how awesome The Division and Snowdrop look, peep the gameplay video below.