It's safe to say from the moment it was announced back at E3 2013, interest in Ubisoft's upcoming MMO shooter The Division has been incredibly high. Recently, however, we’ve been coaxed into focusing on other titles thanks to a delay and lack of new information, which has also caused an air of mystery to begin to surround the project.

The weight of expectation is more than sufficient to crush some of the past few years’ most-anticipated titles long before they’ve launched. It’s precisely for this reason art director Rodrigo Cortes and the rest of the team at Ubi Massive are content to play the long game. Determined to learn from the lessons of the past, there’s no plan to reveal anything before it’s ready and even then, he tells me when we sit down to talk, it won’t be done by press release. The hope is for potential previewers to have a full three days with the game so they can understand its intricacies before going away and writing about it, hopefully enabling the ensuing write-ups to contain the required nuance.

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"We want to show gamers the game they will end up playing. We don’t want to sell a fantasy," Cortes says. "We’ve been persistent with our messaging about high targets and benchmarks, and we want to deliver that. Then it’s about making sure people get the game we’re promising so they don’t think it’s something else."

“ It’s not a shooter with some RPG stats tacked on. It’s actually a proper RPG from the very beginning.

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"For us, one of the biggest challenges is figuring out how to tell people how much of an RPG it is," Cortes explains. “It has shooting, and is shooter-like. If you look at it, that’s the whole point because we want it to be very immersive. But it’s not a shooter with some RPG stats tacked on. It’s actually a proper RPG from the very beginning. There’s deep progression when it comes to loot, gear and levels and you’ll be able to customise every skill, do exactly what you want and choose roles. So, that’s probably the biggest communication challenge. We want to make clear to everyone that it’s an RPG."So that’s the mantra, but what about the details? As mentioned, Cortes and his team are adamant they won’t give us too many pieces of the puzzle in case we piece them together wrongly and end up hoping for something beyond what’s being promised. What he will offer, however, is a tantalising glimpse into the game’s class or archetype system, which sounds like it could be a refreshing mix between the traditional nod towards damage-absorbing, damage-dealing and healing classes we see in MMOs and RPGs and the loadouts found in shooters. The real draw on this front though is the flexibility Ubi is also adding, however.

Cortes gives an example of you starting down the path of a healer but then wanting to play with three friends of a similar class, so you can quickly switch to something "more short range or assault or closer to the action. You can switch between offensive, defensive and support skills on the fly."

“ You can switch between offensive, defensive and support skills on the fly.

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"In the background, the technology being used to decide who is placed with who could be described almost as an instance but as a gamer it’s seamless. You walk out and are with your friends or whatever, but technologically I suppose you could say it’s an instance."In essence, it sounds like The Division will have pockets of the world reserved just for you and your group mates, in much the same way as Destiny’s “no respawn” areas. Cortes explains the team decided to go down this route to prevent situations where you feel like you’re meant to be the chosen one, destined to save the world, only to encounter 30 compatriots in the exact same scenario. Taking this route allows Ubi Massive to craft a stronger and more immersive narrative for you and those you choose to play with.

And that, ultimately, is what Ubisoft Massive is passionate about achieving. One of, if not the, core tenet all RPGs are built on is story, and The Division’s is planned to go on for some time yet. Bungie has frequently talked about how it hopes Destiny will have a 10-year life-cycle and, while Cortes won’t put a figure on it, he explains post-launch support is absolutely coming. Whether this takes the form of patches, expansions or direct sequels remains to be seen.

"We want to keep the players playing for a long time," he says. "We don’t want to do a story that ends and it’s like you can take the disc and put it on the shelf. We want to keep the players enjoying the game in many different ways so we would obviously offer different activities like PvP, PvE and several progressions. First there’s the story progression, where you can finish the story and get more tidbits later on, but then there’s the progression of your gear, your stats, also of your base of operation. You can continue upgrading your base and yourself together. We’re hoping for endless gameplay. On top of that we’ll support the game heavily post-launch, though we won’t go into details yet."The truth of the matter is, we don’t really know what to expect from The Division, but that’s okay. It’s a carefully orchestrated game Ubisoft is playing so we’re all clear about exactly what it is we’re getting. Despite my best efforts, Cortes won’t say when we’ll see the finished product, or even a sliver of it, though he does hint new details are coming and soon. After so long waiting for our thirst to be quenched, it’s sounding like we won’t want to be anywhere else when the floodgates finally open.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK News Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter