Brooklyn won’t be a playable area in The Division when the game launches later next month. Even though the area is clearly a part of the gameplay that’s showcased in a few videos from Ubisoft, it won’t initially be available.
Brooklyn isn’t initially playable, and neither are other boroughs of New York.
At launch Ubisoft wants to concentrate on the visceral experience of midtown Manhattan, making sure that every minutia is correctly represented. Brooklyn will then come at a later and unspecified date through DLC or perhaps even through a free update. The reason, and this is the real reason, is that Manhattan is a very complex area to model, and they want to be able to represent it on a 1:1 scale, which unfortunately takes a lot of time and effort to do correctly. Even with a large enough team, it would be nearly impossible to have other areas modeled and ready, unless they pushed release back to 2018 or beyond. DLC is planned, though the content of that DLC hasn’t been confirmed quite yet.
The Division is looking to turn into one of the game of the year contenders for 2016 already. Though it resembles Destiny in a lot of ways, it still could be quite the exciting game if cross-play and the ambiance is correctly captured. We certainly hope they don’t destroy the memory of Tom Clancy in any way.