As cliched as it may sound, sometimes explosions, setpieces and unholy amount of post processing CAN make your game stand out even when the underlying tech isn't the best. Besides can the game even afford to apply those effects while maintaining those level of detail? You used to talk about trade offs Laa-Yosh, so maybe The Division is trading off some of those here. But honestly it's just not on par with a game like BF4 or Killzone SF, either could have tons of geometry on screen, with excellent lighting, realtime reflection, Area Lights, volumetric, complex high res particles and spectacular draw distances. While the Division does have nice lighting and dense geometry but it sorely lacks the bandwidth heavy effects which are evident in the aforementioned titles.