It's an exciting time to be a fan of Massive Entertainment's looter shooter, The Division 2. The first of three episodic content drops is releasing next Tuesday for those with the Year 1 pass and on July 30th for those without it. With this update comes tons of new content and changes for players both old and new. Game Rant sat down with The Division 2's live content manager, Yannick Banchereau, to learn a little bit about Episode 1 and how it connects to the main game.

Story content within Episode 1, which Ubisoft announced a few months ago, will be directly connected with The Division 2's main campaign, and players will have to have reached World Tier 5 to actually partake in the episode's two new story missions. "Especially, Camp White Oak, one of the two new missions we're introducing with Episode 1, is actually a direct continuation of what happened after Tidal Basin," stated Banchereau during the interview. Banchereau also stressed that the new missions are considered endgame content, which is another reason for requiring players to reach World Tier 5.

Future content updates will continue to expand on the story, according to Banchereau. When asked whether or not future episodic content would be compartmentalized, he stated, "No, we're really interested in continuing the main narrative, so for us, it's important to keep adding to the story and make all the events connect to each other, so it'll be a continuation." This, ultimately, is a good sign for the future of the game. It means that Massive is dedicated to telling a full story with The Division 2. Plus, most content will be released to all players, even if they don't have the Year 1 pass, so there's not much of a paywall to worry about for players that only own the base game.

The Division 2 Camp White Oak

There's still a lot of great stuff on the horizon for The Division 2, and Episode 1 is really only the beginning. Future episodes will continue to add new things to the game, and players will even go back to New York in future content updates. It'll be interesting to see what The Division 2 looks like this time next year, with plenty of new stuff for players to blast their way through being implemented between now and then.

The Division 2: Episode One will release on July 23rd for Year Pass holders and July 30th for everyone else.