Crackdown Interview January 05, 2007 John JCal Callaham

Introduction

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FiringSquad: First, how did the idea for Crackdown come about?

Billy Thomson: The original high level concept was to make a MMORPG based in a real world city. So, on paper Crackdown actually began life as a fairly heavy RPG game, we had designed far more skills, and as I mentioned we had originally planned of going MMO. As always the first step of game development is the prototype phase, so we prototyped the foundations of what we believed to be the most fundamental areas of the game – the progression of the key skills, Agility, Strength, Firearms, Driving and Explosives – and started playtesting. What we very quickly realised was that these core skills were incredibly good fun to play around with in the test environment we had built, but they were far more fun when played as a fast paced action oriented game rather than the slower more deliberate pace of your standard MMORPG. So, with this information we made up our minds to take Crackdown down a different road, one that still had RPG elements but was more focused on fast paced action based gameplay similar to that found in an arcade game. At this point we decided to forget about any plans of making Crackdown a MMO game, we knew what we wanted. We wanted RPG based character progression in 5 key skills, a solid physics model to create fantastic vehicular based gameplay and allow for a huge amount of object interaction, to design our own city from scratch, with zero loading times and the ability to constantly be able to see the vistas of the environment that you would be playing in, a truly freeform mission structure, and a density of characters, vehicles and street furniture never seen before in a city based game. Our goal was to cram each and every one of these features into the most intense action game available on the Xbox 360, and we wanted it all available for co-op play too – doesn’t sound like that big a job if you say it really fast!

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FiringSquad: How would you catagorize the game? Is it an action game? Is it a super hero title? Is it sci-fi?

Billy Thomson: Now that is a difficult question, is it an action game? Absolutely, I don’t think I’ve played a game that can produce the same type of intense sweaty palmed action that Crackdown does, but I wouldn’t limit ourselves to being tagged as a simple ‘action’ game. Is it a superhero title? Well we obviously don’t have a movie license with an already established superhero, but I’d say that our Agents could give Spiderman, Superman, the Hulk or Batman a run for their money! We have a solid RPG based progression system for our 5 skills, but I can’t see us ever being labelled as a dedicated RPG. We have explorative platform based gameplay throughout the entire game world, but I wouldn’t want to say we were just a ‘platform game’, and we have as much combat focused gameplay as any of the recent ‘shooter’ titles that have come out in the last few years, yet I wouldn’t say all we were was a ‘shooter’ game. We also have a vehicle physics model that’s as good as most driving games out there as well, but there’s no way we would say that Crackdown is a driving game either. I think this type of game is almost impossible to categorise, it’s not a basic action game, it’s not a Superhero game, it’s not an RPG, it’s not a platform game, it’s… well it’s just Crackdown!

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FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the fictional backstory for the game?

Billy Thomson: I can provide you with a little backstory to give you an idea of the state of play is within the game world.

Pacific City is no longer policed by the Government, it is now ruled by three rival gangs. The Los Muertos, the Volk and the Shai-Gen Corporation.

The Los Muertos gang was established by Don Domingo Garcia and his unwaveringly loyal sidekick Rodrigo Alvarez. They served parallel 20 year prison terms for murdering a policeman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time during a botched sting operation, they were subsequently released 5 years ago. Regardless of his newly found freedom, Garcia wasn’t about to surrender the empire he had built while inside, he had a massive following numbering around 100 hardened convicts, but he didn’t need them all, he only needed his top men to help him manage the new army he planned to build on the outside. Garcia and Alvarez returned the night after their release to undertake a violent and bloody prison break ‘with a twist’, fighting their way in to the prison using automatic weapons and explosives, releasing a selection of their men and then making their escape as the Peacekeepers arrived. 27 Peacekeepers and 68 prison guards died trying to prevent their escape. Since that time, and with the demise of a state controlled operational police force, Garcia and his men have been left to flourish. They emerged on the east side a couple of years ago running some small time narcotics operations. The Agency, somewhat foolishly, decided to leave them alone, as resources were at a premium and they were loathe to risk another costly bloodbath. Unfortunately in the last year, their activities and membership have mushroomed – they have recruited another few key men and women to help run the expanding gang and their presence on the streets is there for all to see.

Intel reports lead us to believe that the key members of the Volk were originally a loose collection of soldiers at various outposts, who formed an organised crime cartel to facilitate the illegal smuggling of various types of military equipment across various Eastern European borders. Their focus was mainly on explosives, firearms and vehicles – where the real money was. Circumventing the massive bureaucracy of their mother country by criminal means became second nature to them, and on their subsequent arrival in Pacific City, they were able to hit the ground running with their massive collection of explosives, firearms and armoured vehicles at their immediate disposal. Once they had gripped the industrial area of Pacific City in their strangle hold, they began to bring in hordes of immigrants from their homeland to replenish their Workers who were lost in battle, any immigrants unfit to join their gang were left to fend for themselves and eventually created an unsuspected but welcome source of constant income, the Volk regularly steal from the stranded immigrants and force them to work to earn enough money in order to buy back the goods that were stolen from them in the first place.

The origins of The Corporation can be found in a government ruling several years ago to set up a commercial company to develop and market defence solutions. This company gradually attracted more and more funding until it became more heavily financed and better staffed than the government it supported. A subsequent buyout by an unnamed figure was reputed to have cost a sum of money which the government was unable to refuse in the face of mounting debts due to the constant war against the gangs who were fighting for control of the cities across the nation. Since that time, The Corporation has been in control of many government areas which it now refuses to vacate, and kept possession of all intellectual property belonging to the government. The Agency was set up to counter this threat to security and as a direct result of increasing gang activity in the city.

Pacific City’s future is hanging in the balance, the city is teetering on the edge of anarchy, law enforcement recruitment has plummeted. In a final attempt to overpower the ruling gangs, all forms of policing across the country have now combined forces to give strength to the Agency’s efforts. The Agency is making its last stand in the heart of the metropolis, in a high-security compound known as The Keep. Of course, access is restricted, and the compound is guarded by Peacekeepers, who are being challenged far beyond their skills and resources. Desperate times require desperate measures... The Agency is exploiting the controversial work of disgraced scientist Doctor Baltazar Czernenko. His underground human-modification program uses a cutting-edge cocktail of technology and selective breeding to propel the human race to a whole new level. Now Czernenko's sick science is being used to create new recruits for The Agency, new Agents of justice, who are superior to conventional law enforcers in every way, and who are capable of unparalleled physiological evolution and regeneration. As the Agency's first prototype, it is your job to track down the Kingpins and bosses who run the gangs and take them out one by one…

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Playable characters

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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! :)

Crackdown Interview (con't)

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Billy Thomson: There are three different gangs that control the streets of Pacific City. The Los Muertos, a south American street gang with a massive street presence, they mainly deal in petty crime, stealing cars, modding the nice ones for their own use and selling on the others. They also have an unhealthy obsession for firearms, which they use to terrorise the civilians who inhabit the district they control and make sure they are well equipped to fend off attack from the Agency. The Volk are an Eastern European organisation formed by a group of experienced ex military who have trained a well organised troop of fearless soldiers. They are heavily involved in the importation of illegal immigrants, and decommissioned military equipment – firearms, explosives and vehicles. The Shai-Gen Corporation are the most powerful threat to the Agency within Pacific City, on the surface this corporation appears to be a legitimate company, running scientific research facilities, hiring and training a Security Teams to patrol the district, essentially running and governing their own district with Pacific City, this all seems benign but if you scratch beneath the surface you will discover a different, more sinister side to the Shai-Gen.

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FiringSquad: Besides the character's abilities, what sort of weapons and items can be used?

Billy Thomson: I think we’ve got a really well balanced spread of firearms, projectile explosives and grenades. I love our shotguns, the homing rocket launcher is just immense fun and there’s nothing better than laying traps with the sticky remotely detonated limpet charges, triggering them and watching the resulting chain explosion take out all of the unsuspecting bad guys in a fiery ball of death and destruction – great fun! Other than that you can use just about anything in the game world as a weapon, just pick it up and throw it at your target. We’re talking about anything here, even the smouldering remains of an old lady who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. L If you get caught low on ammo, just hoist her above your head and throw her into the face of your foe, now I’m not saying this is the way to go here people, but let’s be honest, Grandma would have wanted to help!

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FiringSquad: Crackdown takes place in an open world game setting. What can you tell us about the game world and how much access will the player have in it?

Billy Thomson: Crackdown’s game world consists of three main Districts. La Mugre – two islands controlled by the Los Muertos. The North Island is a rocky, rugged, tree lined landscape that’s really only accessible to the player if they’re on foot – or in the Agency SUV! J The South island has many steep twisting roads that are great fun to drive around, we’ve got quite a few vehicle races dotted around this island that make great use of the curving, sloping roadways. There are also many low level rooftops dotted with Agility orbs to allow the player to learn the basics of scaling buildings while increasing their Agility skill. The Den.– controlled by the Volk – is a large industrial island that is split in two by a large canal. The island to the North is home to the Refinery and the Quarry, two massive locations that house two of the Volk gang bosses. The South island is the larger of the two, it has many high rise apartment buildings that sit alongside the Power Station, Sewage Plant and the Docks that face out to sea, where an oil rig can be seen in the distance. The Corridor – controlled by the Shai-Gen – is the last of the three districts that form Pacific City. The Corridor is home to the highest buildings in the city, these massive architectural masterpieces dominate the skyline of Pacific City. The buildings are so high that only an Agent with very high Agility skills will have any chance of using the rooftops as a safe haven from any pursuing Shai-Gen security teams. As for access, every single structure in the city was constructed to be scaled by the player. The player has access to absolutely any section of the city from the very first minute of play, all they need to do is fight their way past all the bad guys and figure out how the hell they can get their way up to the top. :)

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FiringSquad: What multiplayer elements, if any, will Crackdown have?

Billy Thomson: We have the best multiplayer element of all, we’ve got the entire solo game available for anyone to play co-operatively with another player. There’s no change at all from playing on your own to playing with one of your friends, all of the missions, the ambient population, the races, the orbs, the Achievements, the draw distance, they’re all there for you to experience co-operatively with a friend of your choice. One of the cool features we implemented was the ability to join in play, so you can setup your solo game to accept someone to join your game as you’re playing – your preference, a particular person, a friend, anyone or nobody – then if someone becomes available to join while you’re playing the game solo, you’ll be asked if you wish to accept them to your game, if you do they can instantly jump into your city and you’re off again! I can’t tell you just how much fun co-op is, especially when it stops being co-op and you inevitably turn on each other for some Agent v Agent deathmatch fun – which we keep score of! This can all be done via system link or over Live.

Crackdown Interview (con't)

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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! :)

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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.

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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)

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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!

Gallery

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