Information elements and project structure

Humenhoid

Apr 2·8 min read

This document examines in brief Warlords of New York — World Premiere Cinematic Trailer (2:23; Blur, 2020) promotional video of Tom Clancy’s: The Division 2 (Massive Entertainment/Ubisoft, 2019). The research considers the product and its materials by studying the creative choices, the informative properties, the modalities of visual representation and promotion.

1. Analysis

Warlords of New York it is a complementary story to Tom Clancy’s: The Division 2. Engaged with Division agents in Washington, the protagonist is called back to New York to investigate the terrorist activity of Aaron Keener, a government agent guilty of treason and conspiracy.

“We thought our world will last forever
until a single virus destroyed society in a few days.”

1.1. Narrative summary:
The narrative includes 9 main moments:

1. Location
   In Manhattan, you can recognize the Wall Street building, home to the Stock Exchange, now deserted and in ruins.[1]
2. Character + action
   An agent carefully scans the street stopping in front of the building, which became a barter place after the pandemic, and decides to enter.
3. Investigation
   Inside the dark and desolate building, the artificial intelligence system of the agent’s multifunction clock begins to scan the environment, reconstructing an augmented reality audiovisual signal.[2]
4. Past event information
   The holographic projection[3] reproduces a scene recorded in a previous time interval with: the hall is an exchange market, where people
   they meet to trade food and other resources.
5. Unknown enemy
   The agent’s attention shifts to the figure of a soldier with a mask, portrayed on the side of the crowd. The recording shows the man while operating a detonator.
6. Chemical weapon
   An explosion and the consequent diffusion in the air of a chemical agent that kills the people present is represented. Registration ends.
   The explosion of the pathogen is confirmed by the halo and the red dust visible on the floor.
7. Imminent danger
   A sudden noise attracts the attention of the agent, who hides himself so as not to be detected.
8. Declared enemy
   In front of him, the profile of a hooded man emerges from the other side of the room. The device of the agents is recognizable with the red light, a symbol of hostility of the deserters. The man is then joined by four other armed accomplices[4], who divide themselves to search the hall.
   The agent in the center remains in observation.
9. Final fight
   The Division agent decides to activate a fragmentation remote-controlled grenade with multiple charges. The enemy agent perceives the noise of the weapon and moves quickly. Out of the closet, the Division agent begins the gunfight by shooting at the target.

”You can try to stop me, hunt me down, kill me.
But this is bigger than any of us.
So you’re going to have to ask yourself:
is this a fight you think you can win?”

1.2. Primary information elements:

• New York
  Eight months after the pandemic, the presence of an agent on exploration in Manhattan underscores the continuing urban guerrilla scenario.
• The city community
  The survivors established places of exchange and commerce to encourage the distribution of food and resources among the population.
• The bacteriological attack
  The attack on the market against the civilian population testifies to the presence of hostile subjects, willing to carry out acts of terrorism to conquer power in the new world order.
• Internal war
  The enemy is the symbol of an internal crisis in the institutions, where fanaticism, humiliation and deviated patriotism have created betrayals and conspiracies.
• A universal threat
  The presence of a new pathogen in possession of a terrorist group redefines the priority danger for the nation and for all humanity.
• The salvation of humanity
  In a dualistic balance, the fight against the enemy (agents vs terrorists) is the only hope of saving the world from a devastating new fate of violence and war.

1.3. Dialogue transcription
Aaron Keener’s voice reads:

— We thought our world will last forever
until a single virus destroyed society in a few days.

But here we are, eight months later, and you haven’t learned anything.
Somehow you can’t see that you are making the same mistakes
that brought it down in the first place.

Your job, agent, is to protect this delusion.
And I have sworn to destroy it.

You can try to stop me, hunt me down, kill me.
But this is bigger than any of us.
So you’re going to have to ask yourself:
is this a fight you think you can win? —

1.2. Synthesis of visual development

Notes

[1] The following are visible: a police car (NYPD), the sign indicating Wall St., and the black protection panels of the buildings with the bacteriological danger symbol and the word “quaratena” (intuitive).
Among the objects on the street are also recognizable a Christmas tree and a Christmas decoration depicting Santa Claus, thus recalling the origin and the temporal interval of the generative catastrophe: the pandemic caused by the spread of contaminated money during Black Friday.

[2] The character is Aaron Keener, a government agent mutinied in Tom Clancy’s: The Division, responsible for stealing the original pathogen from Gordon Amherst, originally engineered to cause the pandemic on Black Friday. Guilty of treason, Keener now has a new deadly virus used to carry out attacks in New York with the aim of destabilizing government action and gaining total control.

[3] The holographic recording and reproduction mode is characteristic of The Division and allows you to scan an environment to retrieve visual and audio information. On several occasions, Keener specifically records the messages revealing his hostile intentions. See the E3 2014 Demo, and Keener’s final confession in The Division.

[4] Keener’s accomplices are disclosed in the Tom Clancy’s video game: The Division 2: Javier Kajika (tactical operations expert); Theo Parnell (security expert, computer scientist, drone control, conspiracy theorist); James Dragov (heavy weapon expert, chief of the “Rikers”); Vivian Conley (explosives expert, head of the “Cleaners”).

Study method and sources
This document is the result of a compilation process created with scientific and accessibility requirements. Special care has therefore been devoted to coherently structuring the texts and analysis sections, to selecting functional visual devices, and to providing verified information by correctly citing sources of documentation, with the final objective of sharing useful material for the purposes of study, criticism and information.

Legal notice
The iconographic material, the trademarks (registered or unregistered) and all the information reported as being in any case protected belong to the respective owners. The internal use of protected material responds exclusively to a scientific and cultural intent.

The author releases the document through the license:

• Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.
  This allows third parties to share the published material indicating the origin, respecting the same type of original license and prohibiting the use for commercial purposes.

Contacts
Humenhoid is a creative research unit specialized in immersive entertainment and transmedia storytelling, with focus on cinema, tv series, and video games.

For information, communications or proposals for collaboration write to
Enrico Granzotto | e@humenhoid.com | Humenhoid.com

Follow Humenhoid on Instagram

Humenhoid’s projects include:

• Project Prometheus
  A comprehensive case study on information management and narrative design in the Alien (R. Scott, 1979) and Prometheus (R. Scott, 2012) interconnected franchises.