Tom Clancy’s The Division is not meant to be a linear RPG, says Massive Entertainment head Fredrik Rundqvist.
He elaborates that the game will not have the kind of handholding expected in story driven RPGs like it. This is where the open world nature of the game comes in. Manhattan is freely explorable from any angle from the start, and you can explore it any way you wish.
The game will also not be like a sim. Fredrik did not elaborate, but he made it clear that agents will not be able to draw friendly fire towards civilians. As he points out, being a government agent, it would not make sense if you were able to do this anyway.