Crackdown Interview (con't)

FiringSquad: What other unique features will the game have?

Billy Thomson: I think I’ve listed quite a few unique features in my previous questions, transforming Agency vehicles with insane physical capabilities, an evolving Agent with skills and abilities to rival any Marvel superhero, a full solo game available to play with 2 players co-operatively via system link or Live, a truly freeform mission structure – there are no dead ends, no fail conditions, no keys required to unlock doors, you can do what you like when you like and a full streaming city with zero loading times once you are in the game. I may be a little biased here, but I read that and I’m impressed, so I think we’ve got enough unique features to fit the bullet points on the back of the box, with a few to spare for the manual! :)

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the graphical look of the game?

Billy Thomson: Dave’s (Jones) vision for Crackdown has always been to have everything turned up to 11, and that goes for character abilities, population, physics, as well as the art style. So in the same sense that we weren’t content with the player simply jumping to a normal height – he has to jump up and over buildings – we also couldn’t get away with a generic set of photorealistic textures of drab cracked concrete and rusting metal, we needed something far more in your face. Thankfully we had the perfect reference point for this approach to our visual style – the graphic novel.

Jeff Cairns our Art Director says…”We looked at a lot of different comics and graphic novels (always in abundance in a games studioJ) and it was the intensely detailed and dynamic works of Frank Miller that really seemed to hit home as what Crackdown should be all about. There were also a number of movies that influenced our design; ‘Batman’ for the inimitable Deco/Gothic style of Gotham city, ‘Equilibrium’ for its austere and foreboding buildings, ‘The Fifth Element’ for its bold palette… and a Mange movie called ‘Blood – the Last Vampire’ for its sumptuous lighting. An eclectic mix if ever there was one... There have been criticisms leveled at the game about our not using next-gen graphics technology and suggestions that we are a cel-shaded game but nothing could by further from the truth on both counts. In fact the irony is that we actually had to use some extremely cutting edge techniques in order to achieve the look and detail we wanted given that our budget had to be spread so thinly across such a large volume of assets on screen at once.”

Personally I love the look of Crackdown, there’s not much out there that looks anything like it, and that was one of our goals. We wanted to make sure that people would recognise Crackdown just by looking at a screenshot. The graphic novel style also meant that we didn’t need to blow our entire graphical budget on insanely detailed characters, vehicles and environment, which allowed us to push an area that we believe is a key feature of Crackdown – population. I think it’s safe to say that no other game in this genre has ever seen the density of characters and vehicles that Crackdown offers, we have literally thousands and thousands of characters and vehicles visible in the scene that stretch all the way out to the horizon. This was one of our greatest technical challenges on Crackdown and I have to say that the coders at Realtime Worlds did an amazing job delivering on what was an incredibly lofty design goal. All in all I think Crackdown is a real visual treat, there’s nothing out there right now that competes with our vistas, population or visual style.

FiringSquad: What is the current status of the game's progress and when will it be released?

Billy Thomson: We’re in the final stages of post-production right now. Some of the team have stopped work completely and if they’re not off somewhere nice recharging their batteries they’ll be sitting in front of their 360 playtesting the game. The majority of the coders are still diligently working away making all of the final fixes and tweaks to make sure that Crackdown is as solid and fast as they can possibly make it. As for the release date, it’s looking like spring 2007, and I really can’t wait! (Editor's Note: Microsoft has since announced the game will be released on Feb. 20)

FiringSquad: Finally is there anything else you wish to say about Crackdown?

Billy Thomson: We have a fantastic demo planned for release – the marketing guys will tell you when though (Editor's Note: The demo will be released via Xbox Live Jan. 18) – that you absolutely must download and play! I’ve demoed the game to a lot of people over the last year and some of them instantly loved the visual style, the frantic gameplay and the freeform nature of the game structure, but some guys just didn’t really ‘get’ any of it…until we stopped demoing and put the controller in their hands and let them play. It’s amazing how many doubters have had a complete turnaround in their opinion of the game once they’ve spent 10 minutes playing. It’s such a great feeling to watch as these guys are literally shocked to find themselves whooping with laughter as they try to keep a grip on their controllers with their sweaty palms. As one of the guys on the Usertest team at Microsoft said “the demo is like crack!”. I just hope everyone downloads the demo and ends up as hooked as we are on Crackdown!