IGTV: Crackdown 2 Interview

23 Feb 2010 at 14:26:28 by

IncGamers caught up with Ruffian Games' James Cope and Peter Connelly at Microsoft's X10 event earlier this month and quizzed them about Crackdown 2. Find out how Ruffian will handle the game's storyline and what didn't make it into Crackdown 2.

So what brings you and Crackdown 2 to X10?

Peter Connelly: We're here to demonstrate to people what we've been building since the Tokyo Game Show. People haven't seen a lot – they've seen the VGA Awards, they've seen trailers, but we've been really hard at work building a four-player co-op experience for Crackdown, a 16-player PvP game, and an online experience that's online and live all the time. We think it's one of the most rewarding games you can play, and we just want to show people the progress that we've been making. The guys have been really, really hard at work at Ruffian for the last six months since we've seen it, so we want to demonstrate to people what we're up to.

It is massive progress, and an epic progression from the first title. What've you changed, and what's new for Crackdown 2?

PC: That's a big question! More toys, for a start. We're a big believer that Crackdown was a great demonstration of a toybox and a sandbox for people to play in, so we're enhancing that. You've seen some of that before. We want to add in a deeper mission structure to find things for people to do, as opposed to rinse-and-repeat 21 times, kill the badguy. We feel we've got a pretty compelling story there. Graphically, we've enhanced the game a whole lot. You can see that yourselves in what you're witnessing here today. We're adding a whole multiplayer component. 16-player Crackdown is something unlike anything people have, I think, experienced on the box so far in terms of fast-twitch, rapid gameplay. It's a real Crackdown experience; that's a blast. And then we're adding four-player co-op across the full world, so all those toys, all those goof-off moments you had with your friends in the first game with two-players, we're doing with four-players this time. That's just some of the things we're adding, as well as new agents, new characters, new weapons, and more... blow shit up!

Bigger, better, and bolder?

PC: Definitely. We're adding in more depth for people, too. We're adding in some story that we didn't tell. We have a great story for Crackdown – we just didn't tell it last time, and so this time we're hoping to expose more of that to our players as well.

I was going to say, story-wise the first game attracted praise but also a bit of criticism. Have you taken that on board?

PC: Absolutely. We've taken that on board. We think people wanted to get a deeper understanding of what was going on in Pacific City, and we very much believe that the city is a character, so we want to demonstrate what's happened in the ten years since you've played the game last. The outbreak of the Freak Virus and what's going on with that... we want to tell people more perspectives, as well. People like yourselves, in the news, for instance, will appear in the game. So we're really happy that we've added in some story elements for people that we feel, while maintaining the fact that Crackdown is, in of itself, its own game and it doesn't try to be a story-driven game, but it's there for people now and we feel good about it.

Crackdown 2 is one of the most anticipated games on the Xbox this year. Open-world game, proper sandbox game... what have you done to make it better?

James Cope: [Laughs] A lot of things. Really, it's about taking that experience that people loved from Crackdown and addressing some of the faults, like the repetitive nature of boss battles, and the whole mission structure from Crackdown was very repetitive – 21 bosses, kill them. What we're talking about today is having a core objective in the game: it's Project Sunburst. It is the assembly of a giant energy weapon to destroy Freaks once and for all and rescue Pacific City. There's a good intent to that. What that allows us to do is have lots of framework that hangs around that, so we can have much more variety in what you're doing towards that major objective. You have tactical locations which you have to capture from Cell control, rescue items back into Agency power, capture, defend; that kind of flow of gameplay means that we can do more things but still with that completely open-world experience where players can approach is part of that in any order. We don't limit that. We don't channel them down a particular path through that. We say to the players, look, here it is. Go and find all of these bits and pieces. You put it together, assemble this giant bomb, and save the world. That's fun.

Comment