I just hope it has splitscreen this time around cause i'm not really that interested in co-oping online to be honest.

I hope they accomplish nothing you wish to see in this game

Dundee-based Ruffian Games would much rather talk about Crackdown 2 than David Jones, but sadly it’s not that simple. The founding head of Realtime Worlds confessed this month to being “a bit miffed” at Microsoft’s choice of developer for the sequel: Ruffian isn’t just on his studio’s doorstep, but home to many of his former employees. From Redmond’s angle, though, surely that makes it the perfect choice, especially when so much of its workforce was instrumental in building the original. After a successful reveal during Microsoft’s conference at E3, creative director Billy Thompson, producer Jim Cope, and executive producer Peter Connelly share their perspective.

How do you respond to David Jones’ remarks?

Peter Connelly: The bottom line is that, at the end of Crackdown, we were in negotiations to get Crackdown 2 moving. But logistically the business stars wouldn’t align, and we respected Realtime Worlds’ decision to move on to APB. They’re a strong team, a great company, and still a great partner. But we’re super fortunate to have found Ruffian, who are the right people to take the franchise forward and build its next great game. We’ve absolutely no animosity towards [Realtime Worlds].

How did Crackdown 2 come about?

PC: It’s hard to put a timeline on it, but we investigated several companies to try and do this game. You’ve got to be careful you don’t hand it off willy-nilly. You wouldn’t put a boxer into the UFC and you wouldn’t put a UFC fighter into boxing. But with the skillset Ruffian has and the horsepower, married with a lot of the creative from the previous game, it’s the perfect fit. It really kicked into gear last winter.

Is there some resentment of the fact you’re enjoying the series’ fame, whereas the original was treated with caution by Microsoft?

Billy Thompson: That’s a tricky one to answer because, if you think about the first game, a lot of people say that Crackdown was a sleeper hit. I think that’s quite fair. But I wouldn’t say it’s fair to say we’re being better treated by Microsoft this time round – Microsoft backed us all the way on the first game, it just had bigger franchises to put its marketing weight behind.

How much of the original Crackdown team is working on the sequel?

BT: Close to half of our team worked on the original game. We’ve got core members from every discipline who worked on it, the majority of the design team, and, depending on whom you speak to, some of the best coders and most talented artists. But there are still guys at Realtime we want to be friends with, so we don’t want to get dragged into a slanging match.

Jim Cope: We still maintain a really strong working relationship with Realtime; they’re our neighbours in both personal and professional relationships, and we like that. But leaping to our defence, in a sense, we firmly believe we’re the right people to make Crackdown 2.

What’s the make-up of Crackdown 2? Is it a different game in the same city?

BT: From an environmental point of view, you probably would look at it as being an entirely new map. It’s still Pacific City but further on in the timeline. We’ve altered a great deal, and think people who enjoyed the first game are going to be really pleased when they enter this one. And we’ve made sure the gameplay’s altered significantly.

JC: It’s a really important part of what we think players identify with in Crackdown. The aspect of the city is part of the whole experience, and we need to maintain that familiarity.

BT: It’s something Jim says quite a lot and I think he’s spot on: the original environment in Crackdown is one of the key characters. We think bringing that character back and making it bigger and better is the way to go.

And the music?

BT: Obviously, we’re going to have really good music in there, but it’s hard [to talk about] because our audio director at Microsoft has got us a fantastic idea for how he wants to take the audio forward. It’s one of those things you can’t describe without giving it away.

JC: It’s one of those ideas where you instantly buy into it and start frothing at the mouth, and you instantly regret not thinking of it yourself. One of the things we find is unique with Crackdown is that there’s not this one identifiable attachment you have to it. You don’t have a lead character, in a sense, but all of these other things come out of the game in powerful ways, like the voice of the Agency, the areas you play in, and the whole freeform nature of it. We really want to preserve that. It’s what Crackdown’s all about – bringing all these sensory areas together.

Not everyone connected with the freeform nature of the original. Will the sequel feature more visible characters and interactions?

BT: One thing we’re not getting caught up in is dialogue-driven cutscenes. It’s not what we do and we’ve no business going towards that kind of thing. If we got dragged into the fight that’s going on between other games in this genre, I think that’d be a bad move. We’ll definitely have variation with the objectives and push forward with the freeform structure; we don’t just want ‘find-the-boss, kill-the-boss’. We made the first game and we know what was lacking. We’ve listened a lot to the community and the reviews. Obviously, we can’t take every comment on board, but we’re doing our best to address the biggest issues.

JC: A few of us found it difficult to deal with the fact that a lot of the freeform elements of the original were weak in certain areas. But we’ve learned from that. Billy won’t say this himself but he has an incredibly strong vision of what Crackdown 2 is. Moving the original on with that we believe was an incredibly powerful and important piece of DLC – that kind of evolution is something we’re keen to pursue.

Have there been any mechanical changes in the genre you’ve had to keep up with?

BT: If I’m being honest, not that much. We’ve improved the technology and we’ve probably got one of the better engines for long-distance vistas for both characters and vehicles. We don’t use depth of field and we don’t use fog. Control-wise, the mechanics are still right for the game we’ve got. We don’t want people to get right to the top of the Agency tower in the first five minutes; you’ve blown your money shot then. I don’t see the point in emulating games that aren’t moving towards our approach.

JC: One thing we’re pretty proud of is that people don’t look at it for the technology; they look at it for the game. It’s very easy to get lost in technical achievement. We have to make technical leaps to benefit the gameplay, but we only think in terms of the player.

There seemed to be an infected or zombie-like element in the teaser trailer. Many games use that as a cover for poor AI or limited action.

JC: I’ve publicly put on the site before that I think our trailer completely won E3. It did a fantastic job. I share the concerns about the infected thing, but we had those elements in the first game. It’s right for people to theorise and expect, but we’re not going to support one theory over another – we’re just excited that there are so many opinions.

BT: It’s hard to say without giving everything away early on, but it’s about how well the AI get around the environment. And it’s looking pretty good right now, I’ve got to say.

I think some mission variety would do this thing a great deal of good too.