Interviews// Crackdown 2: James Cope, Producer

SPOnG: How many different types of Orbs are there? I've only noticed a couple of colours, but chasing after some of them is great fun!

James Cope: You're talking about the Renegade Orbs (laughs). There are Agility Orbs, which are the green ones you collect and there are Agility Renegade Orbs which are green ones that run away from you.

We also have Driving Renegade Orbs – ones you need to catch in a car, they're really quick. A little bit like street racers, but more evil. There are Online Orbs, and these can only be collected in co-op.

Some Orbs have other functions, like Audio pickups that tell a different story from the perspective particular characters... So yeah, there's quite a few. That's the list in terms of collectibles, really.


SPOnG: What was the idea behind the Audio Orbs – was it another method of trying to tell a story through optional narration? Because from the start of Crackdown 2 it gives you an intro and then brings you straight into freeform gameplay. How are you pushing that intro story forward?

James Cope: The Audio Orbs are about telling a story. We can't tell an unfolding story in Crackdown 2, because it's not the game for it. It's not an open-world game; we believe quite strongly that you cannot tell a story in a truly open-world game because you can never know where the player is or doing, or what the player is about to do. You could have the most amazing set-piece in Crackdown 2 and the player may end up looking in another direction and miss it completely. It would be a horrible situation.

So what we've done instead is created a very big timeline and story arc, that is told from a historical perspective. You find out what's happening in Pacific City through your actions right now, but you also discover what's happened in the past to learn about the situation you're in and why your character is motivated to do what he has to do.

It is a simple mechanic, the audio pickup is quite familiar to a lot of games. However, the great thing about it is it allows us to give context and characterisation where we otherwise wouldn't have been able to. Because we have no way of knowing the player's actions, it makes the most sense to present it in this format so they can figure it out in their minds and go “Aaaah! I know what's going on now!” (Laughs)

And I actually think that fits into the Crackdown gameplay anyway because it is all about imagination, and creating your own fun in a way, so that all makes sense for us.


SPOnG: I'm curious as to how you have structured the missions within the freeform gameplay and balanced it all together, because the first few hours of the game seem to be focused on reaching solar panels and taking over strongholds. It seems quite structured for a freeform game, something you said you didn't want dominating the gameplay...

James Cope: I reserve the right to change my mind (laughs)! No, those objectives are all there for a very specific reason. We realised that we didn't make it easy for players of Crackdown that were new to the experience. We dumped them in the middle of Pacific City, they had no idea what they were doing and on the back of that people either loved it or hated it.

Some people need a helping hand and others are happy to go off and do whatever they want. We lost a lot of players early on in Crackdown – we know that Crackdown is a fantastic experience when you get to the mid-point of the game. Once you've invested a few hours into the game, it returns value and it's a really rich and rewarding game in that sense.

But we lost a lot of players in that first hour or two, because they didn't know what they were doing. So we kind of had to accept that we had to hold the player's hand a little bit and that's what this training point is all about. We pull them through an initial mission at the docks, and once you've completed that you reach the power station and by then we've already explained all of the mission mechanics of the game.

From that point on, the game completely opens up so that everything's active. We wanted to have this gradual introduction into the Crackdown world so that we didn't lose that engagement with players. And for people who do understand that open-world mechanic there's no barrier to them – it's the kind of stuff they'd be doing fairly quickly and enjoying anyway.