Playable characters

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about creating your playable character and what sort of abilities will they have?

Billy Thomson: Each time the player begins a game or loads a saved game they have the option of choosing from eight different Agents, which will allow players to choose one that best fits their mood or personality and it will also allow players to differentiate between their Agent and another Agent during co-op play. The choice of Agent has no bearing at all on how the player will progress their skills, every Agent has the same scope for levelling up regardless of the Agent the player chooses – we didn’t want to complicate matters by having different Agents capped in certain skills, our design goal has been to have the entire game open and available to any player regardless of how they play or which Agent they choose, and we believe that this would fly in the face of that goal.

FiringSquad: Are there ways to "level up" your character to increase their abilities?

Billy Thomson: Our design goal for skill progression was to ensure that skill points – which is what you need to level up your character – were provided for actions that the player frequently performed, not through necessity, because they had fun doing them. Our main method of gaining skill points is killing bad guys, we refer to this internally as ‘skills for kills’. We track the type of attack that caused the damage on the bad guy and then when they are killed, we divide the rewarded skills based on the percentage of each type of attack used. So, if the player uses a firearm to kill a bad guy they are rewarded Firearms skill points, an explosive weapon provides Explosives skills, Strength skill points are awarded for hand to hand combat attacks or any thrown objects. Agility is awarded for a few different things, if you take out a bad guy from an elevated position you will not only receive skills points for the offensive skill you use to kill them, you will also receive Agility skill points too. We also have rooftop races that the player can try out, if they beat the set time they’re rewarded with Agility skill points, and we have also placed 500 collectible Agility orbs up on the rooftops of the buildings, each orb provides Agility skill points when collected and the harder they are to reach the more valuable they tend to be. Driving skill point are also awarded for a few different activities, if you take out bad guys by running them over in a vehicle you get skill points, similar to Agility we also have vehicle races for the player to try out, and again if they can beat the set time they will be rewarded with Driving skill points, and my favourite way to get Driving skill points is to perform vehicle stunts, barrel rolls, long jumps, front flips, back flips, etc. if you can perform any of these and land the vehicle on it’s wheels you are rewarded with skills. We also provide skills for Achievements, whichever skill is relevant will be awarded for each one gained during play, and our final way to increase your skills are the hidden Agency orbs. 300 of these hidden pickups are scattered across the city, and every one you collect gives you a bunch of skill points for all 5 skills at once, very handy, but tricky to find.

FiringSquad: The game also features vehicles. What can you tell us about them and how the player character interacts with them?

Billy Thomson: As I touched on earlier our vehicle physics model is a very good one. We used Havok as our foundation for the vehicle physics and made some tweaks ourselves to get it feeling just the way we wanted it to. We’ve got some insane Agency vehicles available in Crackdown. The Supercar can travel at a frightening speed – you can just about make out the sonic boom – and it sticks to the road like glue, we’ve also given it the ability to scoop anything in it’s path up into the air, allowing it to stay on course. The SUV has truly amazing grip on any surface at just about any angle, explosive acceleration in first gear and an insane amount of torque – it’ll climb up and over anything it’s path, even vertical walls. The Truck is basically a massive vehicular battering ram, when this thing gets up to speed it takes some stopping and if any vehicles do make the mistake of getting in the way, they will explode on impact! Each one of these vehicles also has a special ability when they are at their top level, twin machine guns for the Supercar, a way of using the compressing and releasing the suspension to make the SUV bounce into the air, and a nitros boost for the Truck. As you can imagine we needed a little bit of coder black magic to allow us the ability to make these features possible. The rest of the vehicles in the game are great fun too, we went for a setup that was somewhere in between the arcade style handling of the GTA games and the super realistic simulation setup of the PGR series, and I have to say I’m very pleased with the results. J We have a really wide range of vehicles all with their own unique handling setup, going from small electrical powered vehicles, to standard civilian saloons, vans, buses, trucks, massive military vehicles and then on to all different types of sportscars, nimble yet powerful hatchbacks, gas guzzling muscle cars and blisteringly fast supercars. They’re all there, they all feel different requiring different techniques to get the most out of them and they are all fantastic fun to drive. The most pleasing thing for me about the vehicle setup is that almost everyone here at the studio seems to have a different favourite, which is a real testament to the quality of the vehicle design and setup.

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the game's storyline and how missions are handled?

Billy Thomson: In Crackdown the player can tackle any mission at any stage during play. There are no lock and key scenarios within Crackdown, we have two simple factors, player ability and player character skillset. Then it’s a simple case of having what you need in one or both of these areas to take out a boss or you don’t. Some people may well be able to take on the Shai-Gen boss with a base level Agent because they are incredibly skilled at actually playing the game, while other people may need to advance certain in game character skills of their Agent before they have any chance of taking on the same boss. This is a unique feature of a game in this genre and due to this open ended nature to Crackdown it has meant that we have had to handle the storyline in a different way to most other games. The very fact that we have a completely freeform mission structure means that we can’t actually use a standard unfolding storyline as this requires a certain degree of linear progression which is simply not present in Crackdown. So, we have relied more on telling the story of the history of the gangs and their gang bosses, and describing the subtle connections between them in play. Some of the bosses have a more tangible connection with their Kingpin than others. Each Kingpin has additional defences based on certain gang bosses who work for him. For instance Don Domingo Garcia – the Los Muertos Kingpin – is protected by men trained by Rodrigo Alvarez, these men are incredibly strong and can take massive amounts of damage before they are killed. Garcia also has an unlimited supply of these men because of the recruitment of new blood by Violetta Sanchez – who draws the eager men into the gang with her womanly charms. This never ending supply of super fit guards are armed with a set of powerful weaponry by Ramon Gonzalez, he brings in shipments of firearms to a secluded Cove on the North Coast and distributes the best of the equipment to Garcia’s guards. If you can take out any – or all – of these three bosses this will weaken the Kingpin as their particular role within the gang will no longer be available. This type of connection between bosses and their Kingpin is in place for all three gangs.

FiringSquad: Will there also be side missions in Crackdown and if so what can you tell us about them?

Billy Thomson: We certainly have other areas of the game that the player can focus on while playing Crackdown, although I don’t know that I would call them side missions as such. We have many races placed around the city to challenge the player, which can be played solo or with two players competing against each other in co-op. There are two types of race, rooftop and road. The rooftop races are focused for on foot Agility based gameplay, they snake along the very tops of the rooftops requiring the player to perform leap after death defying leap of faith. The roads races are obviously meant for vehicles – although you can run round them if you like! – these races have the player speeding through back alleys, over freeways, ramps, rocky terrain, etc. and all with a massive amount of traffic on the streets to negotiate! We also have jump rings placed around the city that tease the player into wondering how in the hell they are going to get a vehicle to jump through the purple ring that is floating in mid air – maybe one of those trucks with the ramp on the back could help? We also have hidden orbs scattered around for the player to explore the city and collect, then there are all of the Agility skill orbs sitting on the edges of the rooftops like beacons, can the player reach all of them? Then on top of that we have all of our 40+ Achievements – with the races having online Leaderboards too – for the player to try to complete, they are great fun and believe me we don’t give them away easy in Crackdown, you’ll need to work for these babies! :)