Keener is definitely one of the more memorable characters in the Division universe. It sucks how they handled him in Warlords of New York, but hopefully they can treat him a bit better in the upcoming season. And yes, Keener has always been right.
Well, I think he kinda had to die--he was a great foil/overarching bigbad for us over the course of Division 1 and even in Division 2 with the audio comms he left around DC, but if he wasn't out of the picture *somehow* then we'd have kept hunting him forever and Black Tusk would have rolled right the hell over us.
Keener was one of the most intelligent villains in any Tom Clancy games since the mid 2000s, I was hooked on his story since Division 1. I hate they killed him for the extremely boring Sokolova character 😔
I've been thinking about the recruiter. What if he was a Division agent recruiter instead of a Hunter recruiter? What if he was sent to find agents he recruited? Who better than him? What if Keener is the only protection the Division had against the hunters? "You have no idea what you've done." Are his last words. Vanguard is a shield or protecter isn't it? I am very excited about season 3
Getting to know Keener's motivations way after the fact in audio logs doesn't make me sympathize with his cause. He very well could have allowed himself to be captured, but he didn't. He wanted to hurt fast and hard. The missile on Liberty Island, imo, felt like it was more a surgical strike like the rocket the blew up our agent's helicopter in TD1 opening. Maybe we will find out he had Theo unlock Isac, Ana, and Diamond and so he was able to know exactly what was going on and where Calvin was. Maybe we'll find out the missile was going to attack a Natalia and Calvin meeting and our agent stopped it?
With all that we know now, I am just wondering why Keener was not found and killed by hunters before we could even pinpoint his location. He was the roguest of them all and yet the unit specifically designed to take out rogue agents is not the one dispatching him..
Maybe Cal didn’t want to put his hunters up against keener because of his good combat and high skill of manipulation. Cal gets pissed that we kill his hunters so I think holding off was his idea let Natalia’s men die trying instead
Cal probably don't think Keener as a threat. Or he is concern about his hunter being turned by Keener. Of course, there's also the possibility of the whole hunter being the third wave thing is just an afterthought.
Considering his skills and his Rogue allies, sending the Hunters in would heavily cripple Cal's wetwork force. Keener is easily Hunter+ on the powerscale with his combat expertise, abundant SHD tech disposal and extremely powerful allies. I don't think Cal would be dumb enough to waste resources on Keener ESPECIALLY when us, the Sheriff, who is easily the most feared combatant in lore was already gunning for him. Cal was smart enough to just let us and Keener wore each other out before swooping in for the ez kill.
I'm not talking about "final-form-Keener". I'm talking about him when he steered in the wrong for the first time. He didn't have all his puppets when he went rogue, but his steps were already known to be going in the worst possible direction. This is when a squad of 4 hunters could have killed him without breaking a sweat.
Next season is literally called Vanguard. Keener's callsign. I have a feeling were also gonna be waking up sleeping beauty this season. It seems like a perfect time to do it. Keener dead, Lau dead, and Shafer is the wild card for Lau. And if your theory of Lau and Kenner talking to each other is correct, then Shafer definitely knows what Keener's true intentions were
@@edvarduz I didn’t think Kelso would be rogue though… unless they are going to pull the “ole switcheroo” with cal and nat taking control of the division so they would be the bad guys and the rogues would be the good guys with the better AI in Anna storyline
Now, knowing about the hidden city; it's possible that it was his target. Birdie made mention about how the plans showed short cuts were made on the building of it. Kener probably saw an overlooked means to deliver his virus to prevent such a safe space from being used if they got the football. Honestly speaking, the New York and Brooklyn underground areas would be a great place to set up a community as it comes already pre-made in the form of interconnected WW2 bunkers. Of which had to have huge pumps installed because of water table issues.
9:40 I think that Fay Lau was a distraction so keener could leave the island / hide away for now. Since his revive hive does infact turn on as we leave.
They’re probably gonna try and find a way to canonically justify his huge shift in character that would eventually get him killed in WoNY. I have my serious doubts about them being able to successfully pull it off, but I’ll admit, I’d start smiling like an idiot if we’ll get brand new comms with brand new voice lines from Keener and his original VO. Edit: I SERIOUSLY hope they won’t make it so it’ll be like “ACTUALLY, keener WANTED to be killed! It was part of his grand scheme!” That would be very unbelievable and kind of stupid, but maybe I’m wrong. I hope I am
imo itd be dumb if that was part of the plan for the beginning, however it'd be believable if that ended up being part of the plan once he realized the division is too focused on locating and neutralizing him than the threat he believes is bigger than him
The only way it makes sense is that something caused him to accelerate the time table. A WONY comms series actually shows Keener helping out a civilian so its not like he completely lost it.
There is a lot to unpack here, but I would guess that, despite all of the comms that we've heard that ISAC intercepts, we really have very little information on a lot of what happened between different characters in the game - whether, for example, Keener ever had interactions with someone like Faye Lau, in the days leading up to what happened on Liberty Island. One thing I do agree on is that I'm sure Keener knew more than we do. Whatever it was that Theo was able to achieve by making ANNA available to Rogues operating with Keener, I'm sure he found a lot more than we've learned. After all, when Keener's Rogues show up in the Operation Crossroads saga, they definitely seem to know more about the way that ISAC, ANNA, and Diamond work than your average Division Agent. And that's likely based on information which is at least a year old. I also agree that the way Keener went down didn't make much sense. Keener triggered an attack on Castle Clinton using the Eclipse virus and it killed almost everyone there in fairly short order, leaving a contaminated mess that could impact us even wearing the protective gear we have as Division agents. And, while I'm sure the payload on the missile on Liberty Island was significant, it was in no way big enough to impact everyone in NYC. As you pointed out, Eclipse kills almost instantly. The whole thing about the Green Poison is that people got sick and then it spread everywhere during that incubation period. Eclipse doesn't work that way as you said. The big challenge that militaries have had with chemical weapon delivery is in creating a dense enough concentration. Obviously with newer chemicals that may not be as significant a challenge, as the Iraquis proved in the Iran-Iraq war, but to cover a broad area you need multiple delivery systems, not one missile. But, what if the target of the missile was something that happened to be in NYC? Something that would allow Keener to get even further ahead? Something for which the comment he makes, "you don't know what you've done", would make more sense? What if the target of the missile was the Black Tusk HQ Bunker? While we know that Nat has been out and about in more recent months, largely because we've been killing off her lieutenants, maybe that wasn't the case during the WONY timeframe? Putting the eclipse virus on the BT HQ might have had an ENORMOUS impact on BT capabilities - perhaps the group that Keener regarded as the biggest REAL threat to his plans. You suggested that Keener intended to draw us in to highlight the bigger real threat to the Division, but if the missile had been launched at the BT HQ, and just impacting the area around that, it would have very much highlighted that Keener isn't working directly against the Division, but is working to prevent a bigger threat. (That said, the fact that the missile is sitting by a dock on the edge of Liberty Island in easy sight and shooting range of the BT Hovercraft makes ZERO sense that they couldn't have just shot the thing apart.) All this would make the activities on Liberty Island make more sense. BT is throwing everything they happen to have in the NYC area at Liberty Island as they've realised what Keener is planning. But they only have so much to hand. And while we saw Faye communicating with Schaeffer following Keener's death, I got the feeling long before we found that Schaeffer was working with Faye that he was actually setting things up for Division assets to take out BT crews - for example at Camp White Oak and at Manning National Zoo with the "competition". What makes less sense in this scenario is what Hornet and Jupiter executed following Keener's death. These attacks seemed to be more directly targeted at the Division, particularly Jupiter, although I suppose Hornet attacking Tidal Basin could have been more BT focused although we'd already taken Tidal Basin from BT at that point. Also, the rogues that are encountered in The Division: Compromised seem to be more focused on Keener's original mission of releasing the Eclipse virus in a more general attack. But, the fact that they had quantities of the virus stored in the Houston area doesn't mean that they were planning to use it against civilian targets. They could have been focused on BT targets. Plenty of them around, after all. Going back to Keener though, his death on Liberty Island made little sense. It was, in many ways, "too easy" an end to the DLC. Keener had BT running in circles, and also effectively avoided Hunters that I'm sure Cal was sending after him. Because, in the secret Hunter comms we get after Johnson dies, we know that Cal keeps directing Johnson back to Keener's rogues as better examples of targets for Hunters than Kelso. Kajika, Dragov, and Conley. Which suggests to me that he was trying to get to them and Keener and Keener was staying ahead. After all, none of the comms we get from any of that seem to indicate any fear of the Hunters. Why? Because Keener was steps ahead of the competition, and with his advanced SHD Tech maybe his skills weren't hackable by the Hunters. It would certainly explain why he couldn't be tracked down, although the rogue Agents in Division: Hunted certainly seemed to be impacted by the same jamming that regular agents were. Although Maira's skills couldn't be hacked by the Hunter and he had to flee from them. There's also something to the fact that Keener was a first wave agent and possibly had more insight on Cal than some of the later activated waves. Certainly with Conley having worked at Ortiz Robotics and being one of the first agents recruited it would make sense that Keener had heard things about Cal that we wouldn't have heard. Although Conley doesn't really strike me as someone to sit around story telling over drinks with Keener. Still, you never know. What we learned is that Johnson did training with Conley, and Johnson was a Hunter. In fact, we pretty much know that all the Hunters are Division Agents at this point. Did Conley know this? Hunters were obviously supposed to never talk, but someone must have speculated as to who they were and where they got their equipment from. Keener is exactly the sort of person to have been putting some of this together, if only to protect himself. I wonder if in the upcoming season we are trying to track down Keener's secret information stash - something similar to how J Edgar Hoover had a secret set of files on everyone. Information that would help us better understand his real goals, and just who he regarded as threats to his plans. Things that would provide more insight on what he'd been tracking between Cal and Nat, and that he was perhaps ahead of them as well. And yes, it would be very interesting if Keener was still alive, but that speculation doesn't seem to align with everything that's been in the story since. I guess we'll find out more soon!
Was so much hoping they we were to choose sides after WoNY, either join Keener or stay with the "infiltrated SHD", would have provided an interessting back/forth world with 2 sides captures zones and perhaps a rewamp to the DZ, with friendæies and hostile factions inside the pvp too... Keener was the hero we needed not the hero we deserved...
If keener was just straightforward with us, maybe we wouldn’t have to kill him. I’m hoping this next season will give us more insight into the ANNA network.
I want to know who he knew in the government. He found out something and worked with maybe Clare or McManus for a short time. He found a partner but didn't trust them. He probably killed hunters who were agents, that's why they never came for them.
8:50, this just made me have a realization, with the new descent comms, McManus was in New York doing the outbreak and was panicking, maybe through that panic state he said something and Keener overheard it, or some paperwork (digital or not) got left behind in a hurry and Keener stumbled upon it? I really want the first wave to be explored upon more because in the first game they implied very heavily that the first wave was very important to the story and lore
Aaron Keener is a very astute guy. Having a rogue team lineup and creating a setup plan to rid of other factions. He thought "smarter" not "harder" and also were 10 steps ahead of everyone. ✨✨ I think also he was trying to warn "The Division" but they were ignoring all signs. Lau knew and this was her GREAT OPTION to side with Keener since this was a "losing war." ✨✨ Thank you for the awesome video! Continue your great breakdowns! 😎✨✨✨
Great video and i am excited to see what this week has in store for us! I really like dthe part where you allueded to the fact that maybe Faye and Keener DID have a conversation before we killed him on liberty island. The fact that Keener's influence is still around means exciting things ahead. I still wanna believe he's out there somewhere hiding...
Agent Kelso should've been there with us in the battle against Keener, even if just as an unkillable NPC that only did reduced damage to him. She's a great character, her voice actress is amazing and she should have more presence in the story and during gameplay segments.
Maybe I'm reaching here, but the Keener from WONY almost looks like a different person than the Keener from The Division 1. They definitely look very "similar" but it really doesn't look like the same person. Granted, this might entirely be due to different people working on the character model but it's also slightly possible (albeit highly far fetched) that Keener used Theo's facial recognition hack from the Tombs mission to change what ISAC recognizes as Keener's likeness. It'd be an interesting twist to say the least.
Thank u for another great content. You're the one that has been answering most of questions u were right about agent Johnson as well plz see if u can find out about Schaefer also wen r we getting sum get back wit that lady & the black tusk
A good story they could explore is exactly how they track the agents without the watches. They could come up with a pre story of them being a tracked via under the skin implanted GPS chips. Just a more scientific approach to explore.
I have a little bit over a year of playing D2. One thing i wish they'd do is work in a little bit more story telling cut scenes into every stage of the seasons. Im really looking forward to the learning more of the story this season.
It does make me wonder. Maybe the eclipse missle was meant to hit an installation. Black Tusk HQ? The ground above the Underground City? Who knows? Reminds me of the dynamic between Foxhound and the Patriots back in Metal Gear Solid when Liquid was plotting his strike.
Was keener not a Wallstreet trader? As someone that dealt with numbers, I feel like he could see where the money was going and make judgements about who might be doing what. Like Sokolova dumping huge amounts of money into a robotics company. Just a thought there, assuming my memory is correct.
Like someone said in the comments before. What we know now and knowing what the hunters im a very surprised that keener wasnt hunted. He is literally the rogue of all rogues and how they didnt hunt him down im very surprised. Wouldnt be suprised if we become label as rogue next season. Us and kelso. Cant wait love the story in division and another great video @ngn 👌
Ur statement is somewhat correct,or maybe keener left something for us to know the real enemy,that why his watch stated Cassandra was reactivated to follow some breadcrumbs to claim a prize.But can’t wait for couple weeks and maybe resurgence might have some lore in it too ;)
Maybe mate. Im just hoping we get clues or some insight in how he managed to avoid the hunters. Just hoping also kelso dont go rogue or becomes a hunter 🙏
Im wondering how the division 3 will tie into the story (if it will) as supposedly its from the perspective of a first wave agent and as we know keener was also a first wave agent
I knew something off after i finally beat Kenner almost like when i first heard when said"you won't stop what's coming"Almost like he's was trying to warn ALL of us.but now it's FAR to late and we have a War to win,and he was Right.but it still does not mean we have job to do..we need to Find ANNA.and wake up Baron as soon as possible.We have them on our side..we may have a fighting chance.
Actually, I find it quite sad that most of the antagonists in Tom Clancy series, division or ghost recon, are written better than "good" characters, and Ubisoft just drops them down the drain all the time. I hated killing Keener, because, despite his methods, he had motivation and reasons to act. It would be a sick move if ubi allowed us to side with him in the end of warlords.
Keener was asking us "who can you trust?" Remember that some our agents in division can be hunters. He knew all too well. As for his tech. It's not shd. It's rogue tech. Keener was able to use ANNA, to hack warhounds and quad-copper to take full control. Not to mention he was able to completely shutdown our skills. I think he was trying to show us this and bigger picture of what was going on with black tusk and McManus. He also has agents in black tusk, but don't know who. I had similar thoughts about the payload and where he was targeting. Maybe haven... not sure.
I remember the last mission in the DLC, and talking to my buddy about how I kinda relate to/understand keener. The scariest villains/enemies, are the ones that make sense.
Wait, when WoNY dropped, D2 wasn't really planning on more content. It was supposed to be the end of D2, as far as THAT storyline. Then within a year or so they switched gears and decided more content was coming. Am I misremembering?
I wish we had a clear time line of where we're at right now. Given I've read all three crossroads books, I feel like we know so much about what's going to happen, but with no clear indication of where we are in game.
Division I was and is one of my all-time favorite games and storylines ... and I've been "in the game" for decades. There are "rumors" that certain launches in and around 2020 were made to be problematic if there was a "too close to target" assessment of some of those games undertones. Keener and certain aspects such as Dark Winter might have been part of that equation in that time frame. Regardless, when I completed Liberty Island, I quit Division forever and divorced Ubi
The theory I have maintained since Warlords is that WE DID NOT KILL Keener; we killed a true believer in Keener’s cause who acted as a “cutout”. A “cutout” in espionage parlance is agent who functions as an intermediary between a spymaster and other subagents. Keener recruited this guy to act as him, run this false flag op to get the Division’s attention, and when they died in the process, it wasn't all part of the plan. The only thing I think Keener actually needed from the story of Warlords was the Rogue network and replacing Keener’s biometrics in ISAC so he could operate with everyone thinking he was died.
I stated before that it would’ve been funny if Isaac was hacked to confirm Keeners demise and right before the agents caught up to him he took a chemical agent that would slow down his vitals to the point of being presumed dead by Issac. I know….. I know it sounds crazy…..but man that would be mind blowing for the Division storyline ⭕️
Hmmm, maybe keener was going to use the eclipse to take out Nat or Cal I don't know. But you talking about the how the virus worked certainly got me thinking.
After coming off the reveal of “Cassandra” bro you gotta be working on the story, or have someone inside is telling you. There’s no way you got that shit pretty much spot on with the meeting of the minds so to speak as to avoid spoiling it for others.
As far as I Remember, his Eclipse was designed to phase through air filters, witch is why breathing masks don't help as much as they should. So maybe his missle was aimed for Sokolova's Bunker. If it hit the Air supply, it could phase through the filters and still kill everyone inside. That would explain the BT-Involvement. So either he succeeded in destroying the BT-Bunker, or he gets killed by an Agend, what leads to the agends see the bigger picture. Both way's would play in Keeners favour
So this is not related to the Keener lore, but hey isn't it cool we got some LMB reference in the new gear set, mainly the chest piece and backpack!? Hopefully this points to us having a LMB apparel event or bundle.
One of the only parts I disliked about WoNY was that we had to ice Keener at the end. I think he might be in the top ten shadow threats of all time. When he was in the shadows taunting us I really developed a dislike of the man. Now Nat is in the shadows and thinking several moves ahead of us. While I enjoy that I kind of would have liked to see Nat and Keener playing us like a twisted game of chess.. which might be what we get.
Came back to the game yesterday, fought keener today and was disappointed. My active thought was: "this cant be it". And then he shocks you, runs away and dies. How pathetic.
If the rogues use ANNA then what do the Hunters use? Season 05 is going to bring in some interesting bits. Keener wasn’t a villain. He knew something that everyone else didn’t
Div 2 really need another keener, someone that is actually on the field making moves unlike sokolova and the other guy just sitting on their lab testing shits.
I feel like keener helped set up the division and help train the agents and hunter program. Then he started to hear McManus was working with a pmc, keener was then activated and McManus pulls the jtf to eliminated a loose end and leave keener and his crew to die.
Its a shame that tom clancy bit the bullet,but interestingly,the division seems to be one of the last of the games with his name that remembers what he wrote
What was that sniper build featured in the video? You were one shotting just about every challenging lvl enemy. 2 for named, and not from scope either.
Keener was a truly remarkable one. The ending always felt wrong to me, and his dialogue to you specifically always made it feel like he was prepping you
it's a headhunter build. go with 4 piece hotshot, chainkiller chest piece, airaldi backpack with vigilance. put "determined" talent on your sniper. when you get the first shot and a headshot kill, all next shots count as headshot because of determined as long as you are killing enemies with 1 shot. headhunter talent on chainkiller will increase your headshot dmg by each headshot kill
Nice to see my own thoughts on all this validated. I've been saying for a long time now that I think Keener may have been right, and the big twist will be that we shouldn't have offed him. There's still the gigantic mystery of what the F happened with our Div 1 Agent as well, whom Keener took great personal interest in, almost like he was grooming them.
Keener’s death always felt like the team being asked to give a big splash to the DLC as a last big hurrah for Div2. It really felt like they were going to put it on ice. Then they turned things slowly around and revitalized it. So this all feels like a bit of retro-active re-work. And I’m happy for it! But it was definitely a too-quick end for his character. I hope they can weave him into things in an interesting way.
