When facing the challenge of trying to keep development team sizes down and still pushing the boundaries of console technology, Ubisoft-owned developer Massive knew it had to rethink the tools it provided to its creative design teams. The result of its self-evaluation and educated guesses on the direction of the technology in the heart of the new Sony and Microsoft consoles was the Snowdrop engine, which is now being used to power The Division.
Like the Unreal Engine 4, Snowdrop empowers creators by giving them visual scripting tools that allow them to quickly prototype new ideas without the continual aid of programmers. Massive delves into more details and showcases some of the high end capabilities of the engine in this video:
Pretty impressive, eh? Ubisoft pointed out though some of the street scenes were from The Division, some of the environments (like the forests, flies, and turrets) were merely tech demos and not representative of the game.