Crackdown 3 Dev Explains Why Cloud Based Destruction Won’t Be Present In Single Player

Reagent’s Crackdown 3 continues to be the centre of attention following its demonstration during Microsoft’s Gamescom 2015 presser. However, there have easily been more questions than answers – as is usually the case with these kinds of reveals – especially since the game’s developer announced that it would be the multiplayer component releasing in summer 2016. If that weren’t enough, the city won’t be completely destroyable in the single-player of Crackdown 3.

Dave Jones, Crackdown 3 creative director and Reagent Games founder chipped in his thoughts on why single player won’t have cloud based destruction. He believes that since players are going to be the hero in the campaign, it does not make sense for them to make the city completely destructible. The reason is simple…heroes are meant to save cities.

“So we haven’t discussed much about the multiplayer side. We will be bring some of the things from the campaign. Crackdown has always been about going into this city as a top down agent and you have your character progression so that is a big thing about the main campaign which we will probably bring into the multiplayer and it’s all about taking down your enemies, finding them out and figuring out the best way to take them out so we have some great characters in it. We thought what elements can we bring across where you are going to have loads of players in a fully destructible world which will make sense in the story. One of the things that we want to do is that we don’t want to destroy the city in the campaign, you are going to be the good guy in the campaign, you will be saving the city so we came up with a whole new way to take Crackdown to this multiplayer experience,” Jones said in an interview with Twitch.

Senior producer John Noonan also offered some good reasons why the single-player component doesn’t rely on cloud computing though. Though one fan on Twitter expressed the desire to remain always online in order to take advantage of the destruction in single player, Noonan responded, “We have lots of customers that aren’t always-online though!”

Noonan also added that with regards to adding online connectivity for the single player as an option, “It’s too fundamental of a game design change to make it an option. It changes literally everything.”

There’s still plenty we don’t know about the campaign and the multiplayer, so it will be hard to judge just how fundamentally such destruction would affect Reagent’s designs for single player. We’ll find out more in the coming months though so stay tuned.

@braynbasher We have lots of customers that aren't always-online though!

— John Noonan (@JohnNoonan) August 10, 2015

@braynbasher it's too fundamental of a game design change to make it an option. It changes literally everything.

— John Noonan (@JohnNoonan) August 10, 2015