Free-Roaming Nirvana

Real Time Worlds and Microsoft Game Studios are teaming up to bring a new action-driving franchise to Xbox 360™ with upcoming Crackdown™. We had a chance to sit down with Dave Jones, Managing Director of Real Time Worlds, for an insider peek at what's in store.

Xbox.com: With sandbox games becoming a staple genre, what about Crackdown will immediately separate it from similarly designed games?

In Crackdown, fight crime at all levels of Pacific City.

Dave Jones: In a word: interactivity. The open-ended, urban world of Crackdown takes full advantage of the power of Xbox 360 to create a living, breathing, virtual playground. Players can now fully manipulate the surrounding environment to their own destructive advantage in a way that more effectively ties the story to the landscape in which the story takes place. Many "sandbox" games provide only the illusion of a sandbox—offering a sprawling, static world in place of a setting with real consequence and depth. With Crackdown, we're making good on the promise of that experience.

Xbox.com: Is there any multiplayer planned for Crackdown and, if so, how will it be implemented? Co-Op? Versus?

Dave Jones: Crackdown will take full advantage of co-op multiplayer gameplay and is designed so that the single-player experience evolves significantly by approaching it with friends. Strategies that simply weren't available with only one player suddenly prove to be deliciously destructive as gamers tackle each situation from multiple angles.

Dish carnage with sniper rifles, RPGs, and more.

Xbox.com: What keeps the game living on after the primary mission is finished?

Dave Jones: The freeform exploratory nature of the gameplay gives you two compelling directions to pursue when you have completed the single-player portion. You can either take your agent(s) online and play cooperatively with others or you can create new agent(s) to explore different ways of cleaning up the city. How players are ranked is based on a combination of speed and skills so there will be an emphasis on honing your strategies either by exploration or learning from those you play cooperatively with.

Xbox.com: Can you customize the look for your character and, if so, what options are available?

Dave Jones: Your character in Crackdown is largely created by your actions. So while you can't specifically design yourself into the game, your character will physically change over time in accordance with how your approach the world around you.

Xbox.com: How do your character's skills evolve over time?

Dave Jones: As in life, you become better at the things you do most often. Running, driving, lifting, shooting, jumping—all of these skills improve as you put them to good use. Toss around the occasional armored car and you're going to develop some serious muscles. Spend a lot of time with the game's arsenal of firepower and you're going to become a first-class marksman.

Explore Crackdown’s huge world on foot or wheels.

Xbox.com: Are there any concrete plans to make downloadable content available for Crackdown?

Dave Jones: With a world this large, detailed, and interactive, the potential for Xbox Live® to make the game even larger and more dynamic certainly exists—both in theory and in our heads. Stay tuned.

Xbox.com: What kind of unique weapons and vehicles can we look forward to using?

Dave Jones: Crackdown of course has the usual suspects—RPGs, machine guns, pistols, sniper rifles, and so on. But, really you can use whatever you can get your hands on as weapons—trash cans, vehicles, even people—to clean the streets of crime. The world is one huge chemistry set where the possibilities are endless and the outcomes are simply wild.

Xbox.com: Can you give us the basic framework for the Crackdown story?

Dave Jones: Crackdown revolves around the overthrow of three crime syndicates that have completely overtaken the city—the Volk, Los Muertos, and the Shai-Gen Corporation. Standard law enforcement has been proven relatively useless under their criminal rule, so gamers are thrust into the frame of a newly minted member of The Agency. Your character is the literal one-man army assigned to dole out judicial oppression and take back the city.

Xbox.com: Crackdown has been described as a "vertical world." Can you clarify just what that means to the player, and how it offers something different than what we've seen in the past?

Dave Jones: Many other titles present the idea of a world with height as well as depth, but only in very few of those games have you been given the opportunity to climb to the very top of the city. For the most part, these titles are largely horizontal—left to right, front to back—but never top-to-bottom. With Crackdown, we've created a world from sea-level to sky, and, with that in mind, crime is happening everywhere—every street, every alley, every rooftop.

Xbox.com: Is the entire world available from the get-go, or do you unlock sections as you play through?

Dave Jones: From the get-go, the entire world of Pacific City is available to you. Available is a term that should be used loosely, though. There will be areas that you could get to, but unless you have a powerful agent you'll likely end up dead there. So while the entire world will be "available" you are going to have to spend a bit of time increasing your skills so that you can reach the highest rooftops or penetrate the most heavily guarded compounds. But believe me, there are plenty of freeform things to do in Crackdown. Those freeform activities directly influence your Agent's tendencies, which in turn influence your ability to penetrate that heavily guarded compound.

Xbox.com: Thanks for your time.