When Dave Jones, one of the chief creators of Lemmings, Grand Theft Auto and the first Crackdown game, took to the stage during Microsoft’s 2015 Gamescom media briefing to present pre-alpha in-game footage of Crackdown 3, gamers were promised a competitive multiplayer open-world experience with “100 per cent destructible environments”. By connecting to the Microsoft cloud, Crackdown 3 would benefit from 20 times the computational power of the Xbox One, we were told. As virtual buildings blew apart in the most realistic, expansive way we’d ever seen in a video game before, Crackdown fans dared to dream about the kind of game they would eventually play.
As with so much to do with video games, however, dreams rarely turn into reality.
Fast forward to 2018 and Crackdown 3 is in a tough spot. It’s suffered multiple delays, met with apathy online and was even rumoured to be cancelled. Behind the scenes, developers – a raft of developers – have worked hard to turn Crackdown 3 into a real video game that will actually come out. They have faced multiple challenges along the way, which, people close to the project speaking with Eurogamer anonymously have indicated, has a lot to do with that pesky cloud-powered multiplayer, its “100 per cent destructible environments” and exactly who is – and isn’t – working on the game.
Source: Eurogamer Four years after it was announced, Crackdown 3 is in a tough spot