Crackdown 3’s Ambition Is Why Its Development Took So Long, Says Director

Crackdown 3 has been almost inordinately long in the making and coming- four years after it was originally announced, we will finally get to play it later this year. Whether or not it lives up to the expectations built up around its protracted development cycle is up for debate, but Sumo Digital certainly thinks that the game’s ambition is why it took so long at all.

“A game like this is just incredibly ambitious,” Sumo Digital’s Design Director Clint Bundrick said to GameReactor.”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.”

I can only hope that the final game is indeed all that it is being billed to be- what we saw at E3 wasn’t the most encouraging, and hands on impressions haven’t been glowing either. Still, Sumo Digital is a talented developer, and Microsoft understands the importance of this game. I will hold out hope. Crackdown 3 launches on Xbox One and Windows 10 on November 7.