Tom Clancy's The Division: And the prize for ‘Game most likely to be delayed’ goes to…

The Division was the most anticipated game of 2015. That’s right, past tense. There’s no other way to put this: Ubisoft has had a rocky year. Every major title in its portfolio Assassin’s Creed: Unity, The Crew , Watch Dogs, the list goes on has launched with massive game-breaking problems and/or critical content oversights. The world-spanning, multi-team development model is starting to come crashing down around the publisher, and that’s making us worried about The Division.

Because, right now, Ubisoft Massive’s debut next generation title is attempting to surpass its competition with bold statements of intent, and little to back it up with. We’ve been told time and time again that The Division will showcase The Five Boroughs wrapped up in a hellstorm of apocalyptic proportions; that it will effortlessly blur the lines between single and multiplayer interactions; that, essentially, its entire framework is the culmination of every lesson Ubisoft has learned from making open-world action games since it first unleashed Assassin’s Creed in 2007. But still, over a year since its reveal, we’re facing a tight-lipped studio and limited access to the game.

Does that mean that we and, obviously, you dear reader shouldn't be excited about it anymore? Of course not, but we just aren't confident that it’ll make its 2015 release date. Obviously we're still excited, how can you not be? If Ubisoft Massive pulls this off, it’ll be a huge leap forward for open-world action games. Hell, it could even put the final boot into Ghost Recon franchise entirely. Small squad moves into dangerous territory to stop the unstoppable with superior fire power and tactics, only this time we are doing it alongside our buddies in co-op and on tablets. It sounds bloody awesome.

But as we move into 2015, with a year of disastrous Ubisoft game launches behind us, The Division will need to stand tall and prove that its mechanics and systems are a reality, and not simply the fever dream of wild Tom Clancy fanatics. Visually, The Division looks incredible, stunning even. The gunplay looks tense and the co-op integration interesting; we hope it launches on time, but we’d much rather see it launch in a playable state rather than an unfinished mess. Ubisoft, we've been hurt before. Our achy, breaky Ubi-lovin’ hearts just can't take it anymore.