In Ubisoft's The Division, a deadly flu has spread and turned the United States into a wasteland in a matter of weeks. Set three weeks after a Black Friday breakout in New York City, this shooter bears the Tom Clancy name but borrows just as much from Gearbox's Borderlands than something like Rainbow Six or Ghost Recon. 

The Division is an online shooter that casts players as part of the Directive 51 response unit, a special organization created specifically to respond to national catastrophy-level events. Like many Clancy games, this one's premise is rooted in reality; Directive 51 is an actual directive put into practice by the Bush administration in 2007. Under this directive, you are an elite soldier fighting through the wasteland of the United States with only the most minimal of equipment and protection. What uniform and weapons you have are cobbled together from the resources at hand. You are a fighter meant to be hidden within society, and bulky body armor and big guns would only make you stand out.

This leads perfectly into the game's looting mechanics, which allow you to raid enemy weapon caches and friendly weapon drops to find better guns and armor. Exactly how each of the game's guns will differ is unknown, but there are definite role-playing mechanics spruced in with the shooting. These mechanics even strech so far as a skill tree, which is upgraded via the player's watch interface. I caught the briefest glimpse of the tree, but couldn't make out much before the devs moved on.

Drop-in, drop-out co-op will allow other players to join you on your journey to rescue what's left of the United States. As the game takes place in an open world, you can expect to find plenty of players, NPCs and enemies dropping into your game. Hunting for loot in the game's open United States should be dynamic and fun. A firefight in our demo, for example, took two soldiers to the exterior of a police station. A third player quickly jumped into the chaos, providing support from the side, while a fourth player used a tablet to control a UAV. With the combined forces of the three console players and the tablet player's UAV, the enemies didn't stand a chance. The fighting itself is third-person, and cover-based.

After the battle, the squad found some neat tech including Seeker Mines. These little orbs are tossed out by players, and will roll around the battlefield seeking out enemies to blow up. If sci-fi devices like these are any indication, there could be some really cool loot waiting for us in The Division. 

As the demo and its various battles went on, I learned of additional abilities that players can deploy during battle. I saw one soldier buff his teammates' armor, while another one healed his buddies, and a third activated a missile strike using accumulated XP. 

The Division has been getting a lot of hype here on the E3 show floor, and it's not hard to see why. The combination of gritty sci-fi and a Borderlands-like leveling and looting system could be the recipe for the next generation's first great co-op shooter. We'll find out when the game launches next year.