Crackdown 3 is a third person shooter, open world sandbox game that is developer by Cloudgine and Reagent games and published by Microsoft exclusively for the Xbox One. The game is a continuation of a series that had its previous installation back in 2010 on the Xbox 360. The game relies on Microsoft’s Azure servers in order to allow the environment to be completely destructible.
Crackdown 3 was officially announced back at E3 2014 and was slated as an Xbox One exclusive. At the time of its announcement, the game was still very early in the development cycle. Xbox One boss Phil Spencer later said that the new title came about from talks with Dave Jones who left Realtime worlds and then joined a company called Cloudgine. This company is a firm that has been working on helping game developers come up with cloud-based solutions for games.
Cloudgine has long been rumored to be a company that was going to be a core part of the Xbox One software. The company’s technology was prominently displayed and focused on at the Microsoft developer’s conference in April 2014. At that presentation, the technology was shown off as a method of speeding up the physics modeling and rendering in a fully destructible city environment. This is an important part of the basic architecture of Crackdown 3.
The game had previously been identified as a numberless Crackdown and Microsoft had actually gone out of its way to tell games journalists that the name of this title was not Crackdown 3. At Gamescom 2015 in Germany, the company did a 180 and announced the official title of the game as Crackdown 3. While talk of using the cloud to power a destructible environment had been floating around since the first official announcement, this Gamescom event was the first time the cloud was shown off as being used in-game.
Microsoft claims using the cloud allows for 20 times the computing speed of a single Xbox One. The developers have talked about the challenges that can come with relying so heavily on an online connection but believe they have solved a great deal of those problems. Reagent games has said they understand that Internet speeds of some users can actually cause bottlenecks when it comes to the online multiplayer and they are working on ways to get around this problem as well.
The game is relying on the Microsoft Azure servers and this means that the entire destructible environment will only be available in the online multiplayer mode. Microsoft also said it is releasing the multiplayer option in beta form in the Summer of 2016 and that the full release for the game, which includes the single player mode will be released sometime after that though an official release date has not been announced.
There is not a great deal known about the actual story behind Crackdown 3. Microsoft has said that this game will be set about 10 years in the future of the conclusion of Crackdown 2. The game appears to feature the return of The Agent who has been a star of the series since the launch of the first game. Beyond that, the enemies and what the Agent is going to have to do have not been announced or revealed. Microsoft has focused more on showing off the physics that will exist in the game, rather than why players are doing what they are doing.
Crackdown 3 features the use of a cloud component in order to offer a world where everything is completely destructible, as long as you are playing the online multiplayer mode. Buildings and vehicles can actually be torn down if you direct enough of your energy to them. Being able to destroy literally anything is a concept that has long been tied to the Crackdown series but Microsoft has said they will be able to take it to the next level with the advancements in the cloud.
The game will use a third person perspective and will feature missions as well as an open world sandbox approach. Not only is the entire world able to be destroyed, but players can actually take down enemies using the rubble that has been created with the massive destruction of that world. The developer has said that users will be able to hurl rocks and boulders at the enemies in order to take them down. Conventional weapons have been a centerpiece of the game series and will likely be featured in this game as well. The series also has a number of “super” weapons that are a part of the futuristic world the game series is set in. These will likely be included in Crackdown 3.
While there isn’t a great deal known about the characters that will make an appearance in Crackdown 3, promotional materials indicate that The Agent is going to return in some form or another. The end of Crackdown 2 might have seemed to make it impossible for the character to return but there is plenty of futuristic technology that could for some kind of return as the hero of that game yet again. The Agent has had superhuman abilities in the previous installments of the game that have allowed him to take down enemies that an ordinary man would be unable to stop.
The Agent’s enemies are not yet known, nor is the main villain which normally feature prominently in the series known at this time. Microsoft has focused on unveiling the physics of the game over the characters featured in the title so far in its marketing campaign. Previous installments of the game have featured additional agents that will help the main character at different points in time during the game. The previous games have also featured a number of NPCS to serve as innocent bystanders as the action unfolds.
Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game