Crackdown 3 has been brewing for quite a while. Crackdown 2 released in 2010 and word of a sequel was nearly non-existant until it was revealed four years later at Microsoft's E3 press briefing. All they were willing to share was a cinematic trailer but they promised that they would make full use of cloud computing features that would allow the player to play in a fully destructible city. We've seen immense amounts of destruction in games like Battlefield but there's few titles that allow you to completely wreck the world that you're in.
With a game that ambitious, it's no surprise that Sumo Digital has taken so much time to get it just right. In an interview with GameReactor, Design Director Clint Bundrick gave some specific insight on why the game has taken so long to release.
"A game like this is just incredibly ambitious. The campaign world is twice the size of the city in the original Crackdown, and not only in terms of footprint – the tallest building is also twice as tall as the tallest building in the original game. So it’s a super ambitious game for the campaign and then an incredibly ambitious game for the competitive multiplayer mode. This is a franchise that deserved to come back right and we wanted to take our time to do it right."
Bundrick went on to talk about the superhero-like movement the series is known for and talked about how they'll expand on it in Crackdown 3.
"Crackdown has always been a game about a verticality, a bit of a vertical platformer, and it’s still very much about that. We’ve added some stuff like the double jump and the airburst, so now players can combine those moves and make this long, crazy jumps that not even we are anticipating. Players can also use that in combat: you could be in the middle of a big jump and if somebody fires a rocket at you, you can airburst to dodge it. It gives the player way more choice and in the moment to moment makes the jumping a lot more fun."
It sounds like Crackdown 3 is going to be a grand return to the series that stays true to its roots rather than straying away from them.
Crackdown 3 will release on November 7th, 2017 alongside the brand new Xbox One X which boasts 4K graphics, better performances in games, and much more.
