More Crackdown 2 Exclusives

Here you go then even more Crackdown 2.

SquareGo's exclusive interview with Billy Thomson (Creative Director) and James Cope (Producer) of the, potentially, legendary Crackdown 2.

Take it away gentlemen.

SG: We've seen the multiplayer options but are you looking for a split screen mode as well?

James Cope (JC): Due to a limitation from the old game we can't so split screen. With the work on the multi-player game we simply don't have enough space.

SG: In Co-op mode are the achievements shared or do you have to be the person signed on to get them?

JC: If you get a global achievement, like missions, on anyone's game everyone gets it. As there are individual achievements to get in co-operative as well.

Billy Thompson (BT): The actual save game wouldn't be carried over. If I'm in your game and we achieve one of the core objectives then that's completed on your game rather than mine.

JC: You get to keep all your progressions all your skills everything you get to pick up, they're yours. You get a copy of those to keep but the state of the world belongs to the player who owns the game. We've looked into ways of dealing with that but...

BT: It gets messy really quick

JC: We'd love to do it but it's horrible to test...

BT: ...and nasty to explain to the player how it works, that's a tricky one.

JC: If four of us had the game and then one wasn't able to come back to the game tomorrow night what state does that leave them in? They've lost that experience for ever so we just said lets just limit it.

SG: Given the fact that you said the story wasn't really fully developed from the first game how long has Crackdown 2 been in development and when are you hoping to push it out?

JC: Development started in December last year. Once Ruffian started we got cracking. We don't have a release date yet but we're happy with the way that things have gone along. We've got a good team who have made a well developed product quickly.

SG: Some of the original Crackdown team who now work for Ruffian have told us this is more like the product that you wanted in the first place. Having set up Ruffian Games how do you feel about making a sequel to a game rather than making a wholly original product?

JC: It was something we wanted to do.

BT: From a personal point of view I was lead designer on the first Crackdown game and many of the team worked on the first game. I think it's more to do with the game than the studio is the honest answer. We all want to make this game and people who joined the team did so purely because of Crackdown 2, not because of Ruffian. It's all about Crackdown 2 at the moment but moving forward that'll start to become Ruffian.

JC: We've also been lucky and that luck has come at the cost of other studios. It was a shame they had to fold but we gained good talent from Midway. Crackdown 2 is lucky, Ruffian has evolved into something we've got very strong identity with and everyone absolutely believes we can produce these AAA console titles. When we look at the objectives of Crackdown 2 versus the objectives of Ruffian we want to carry on doing that very tight action game AAA experience whilst keeping a tight team of about 50.

BT: The objective of Ruffian is to produce AAA console games and not expand one bit as when you expand over one hundred it's much harder to be creative because you start putting in processes and it all becomes a little too bureaucratic. Less people means you can see someone across the room and go and talk to them. There are no e-mails going back and forth or through higher management.

Through the day SquareGo can confirm the tight family apparent in Ruffian Games. In fact all the staff we talked to mentioned how much they enjoyed the experience working at Ruffian due to this lack of barriers in all parts of development.

SG: What made you stick with Pacific City?

BT: To carry on the story and area from the first game. We wanted to push forward and introduce the Freaks. A tiny not fully realised character set from the first game storyline becomes an enemy fit to challenge a fully levelled up agent in Crackdown 2. In the original you could easily reach level 5 and just mop up enemies but here we want a greater threat. If you're targeted by five or six of these more major Freaks then you're going to want to run to a point of cover where you can fight them from a safer position.

SG: So is there going to be a similar way of levelling up as the first game?

BT: Yes. Very similar but with new abilities that open up based on the different levels. The driving has been tweaked a little to make it more fun so there are actions and activities you can do in a car other than killing.

SG: You've brought in underground areas as well which are going to have face offs?

BT: I'm not sure how much we're allowed to talk about this.

JC: No but what we can say is one of the aspects we wanted to get in those underground areas is that it lets us increase enemies, putting the player in an enclosed game space for half an hour of gameplay. It's even more ridiculous than above ground.

SG: And claustrophobia as well?

JC: Exactly. It was a nice excuse as technically we couldn't expand the city in any obvious way and so adding up high and down below allows us to extend the play mode in the third dimension.

BT: The big thing for me is the ability to switch off certain things that are above ground and expected and focus on the few elements that are important here, ramping them right up in the confined space.

SG: Another question we think you're not going to answer fully. On the main screen you have the hex design that's like a honeycomb or hive, you have The Cell and the insect type sound over the title screen. Is there anything in that.

BT: [laughs]

JC: No I think you're being very astute. The hexagonal cell motif is fairly critical in the game and it will become very prevalent. It's something The Agency, The Cell and Freaks use and that is the big interplay we have between all opposing forces. It's important to style, the way the game plays, the way we want mission mechanics to work and the way we want the game to present the end plot.

In fact the entire game is made out of hexagons. If you want to say one thing then hexagons are important.

SG: What influences have you had in making the game?

BT: Well Mad Max is a definite influence. The idea is getting things from any source in order to survive so the vehicles definitely have this feel. The Cell is much more a city based militia from an urban warfare from their point of view.

JC: We had such a great vision for the game we didn't need a lot anyway.

BT: For The Agency suits the Batman mix of material and armour plating was cool. I Am Legend is a good one for the City.

JC: We're trying to view the agents as mindless killing machines.

BT Yes an organic weapon. They don't care how often they lose them. They're cloned and so there's an infinite supply of this remote controlled resource.

SG: Music? Have you got any licensed tracks, what's been composed.

JC: I don't know how much we can talk about this. We've sort of got a mixture. What we want to do is present music as this urban weapon within the game. We're trying to create the essence of The Cell using speakers as terrorist devices.

BT: It doesn't make sense to me for an Agent, this monosyllabic mindless killing machine to get into a car activate the radio and go "Oooh, I've always loved The Carpenters". We've moved to make the music more a part of the environment and linked to the characters and propaganda of the situations. There is definitely a two sided approach to the way the music is presented. There will not be any Freak music.

SG: Do you see Ruffian exclusively dealing with the 360? Is that where your team is best placed?

JC: We've been working with Microsoft for a long time so we have a lot of experience with the 360 but not so much with the PS3. We don't think of ourselves as exclusively 360 for the rest of time. As a company we have to keep things open and think about how to survive without Microsoft sometime in the future but that doesn't mean we're set in our ways. We're happy with the situation at the moment. We don't contain ourselves in any way. We want to make great games and we want to make great games on any console.

There's a few things we'd have to learn about to change over...

BT: ...and I prefer the 360 controller which is a big reason for sticking with the 360.

SG: Why are you based in Dundee?

BT: Well there were a lot of people who approached us when we got the original contract and it made more sense to be Dundee based as a lot of the team who worked on Crackdown were here and it was the best way to get most of those people to work on the project.

It's also cheap up here as well and Dundee Council are great. They put us in contact with the people who we lease the building off now as well as other contacts, making things incredibly easy. The main reason was getting the right people for the team.

SG: Why form Ruffian? There's a lot of rumour and conjecture in the press but what are you willing to say?

BT: It's been around for ages this whole thing. In the end of the day I left Realtime Worlds to join Xen Group and they wanted to create a company that was an actual studio rather than working from home being contracted out to work on site. They wanted to create an established development studio that worked primarily on console games and I joined them to create this new company which was Ruffian.

We managed to get the rights to make Crackdown 2 from Microsoft and once we had the contract we could start hiring.

SG: What do you see as your next project?

BT: Right now I'd like it to be Crackdown 3 personally.

JC: We all want to do it.

SG: Would you be leaving certain storylines open then?

JC: Yes. It's now been designed as a franchise.

BT: The third ones already... in my head. It's just getting the contract. The game has been laid out to go a certain way but is flexible enough that if Microsoft want to go in a different direction they can.

SG: With three different factions will you be able to play all the factions?

JC: No. It's something we'd have liked to do but we don't have the time.

BT: It's a bit of a rabbit hole and sucks up time. You need to keep an eye on the business as well as the game company.

DLC in the future?

BT: There's a lot of ideas we have for DLC but the best bet is to get the game out there and see what people want. We have a lot of ideas but the whole team is working on the game at the moment so that's the most important thing. We want to make DLC that's value for money and it's something both we and Microsoft both agree on.

We'd like to thanks Ruffian Games, James and Billy for their input in this interview.