CRACKDOWN 3
SUMO DIGITAL & MICROSOFT STUDIOS
Crackdown 3 is a third person action game where you control an Agent of Justice with a toolbox of weapons at your disposal. You can explore a fully open world to take down the sadistic corporation of TerraNova and even include a friend with online co-op play.
My role on the project began as an Intern Level Designer and making my way up the ranks to an intermediate Level Designer over the 2 years I spent on the project. My contributions and work on the project are explained in detail below.
Level & World Design
Crackdown 3 boasts a large, open world sandbox to explore, take down enemies and collect treasures in. Being a part of the design team, we had to ensure we took into account:
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Level scaling - How the world could always challenge you as you grew
With the player being able to unlock new abilities for each of their core skills each time they leveled up, design made sure to focus on creating a constant challenge for the player at all levels whilst still making them feel like an all-powered super agent when they hit max level. By taking into consideration the different skills we were able to construct a world that did this especially taking advantage of Crackdown's vertical level design.
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Online multiplayer capabilities - Making the world accessible and fun for 2 players
The campaign mode was created with 2 players in mind. Whilst creating the level design, we had to bare in mind simultaneous 2 player interactivity in all aspects of the world and the technical online capabilities of the engine and hardware.
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Narrative flow - How we can make the world tell a story
Since the Crackdown series has existing lore, we wanted to make sure we stayed true to the original narrative and design but with a modern take.
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The Fun Factor - Let's make this boss explode!
The ultimate goal for design - making it as fun as possible. Each part of the design process I tried to create a new and different event that made the player enjoy using all the gadgets and powers they had at their disposal.
Mission Design
Throughout my time on the Crackdown 3 team, I was able to conceptualise and execute some new and classic Missions and collectibles.
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Rooftop and Vehicle Races
From prototype to final iteration I assisted with the creation of both rooftop and vehicle races. This included the blueprinting and world placement considering the levelling of each race, the vehicle used and the route that made the most fun in each area.
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Agility and Hidden Orbs
The series' most iconic feature; the orb. I began placement from the E3 demo all the way until final release keeping balance of placement and reward in mind for each orb. The goal was to create small 'paths' to encourage players to explore the verticality of the world and be rewarded in the process.
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Monkey Moonshine
A side mission that was created to help drive the narrative of TerraNova polluting the city. I assisted in the design of the mission, placement, balance and blueprint work.
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Agent Bio Tags
Early on in the design process I spent time creating different side missions to encourage player exploration. The Agent Bio Tags were one of the missions I designed, combining it with the multiple player skins we wanted to create to marry up into one collectible side mission.
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Prisoner Hardpoints
Whilst creating the various side missions, we wanted to give the player more opportunities to help the city. I assisted in establishing the definition of the side mission, world placement of each objective, AI placement and balancing and the mission narrative flow.
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Tutorial
During the later parts of development I assisted in finalising the flow of the tutorial; placing AI, timing the opening cutscenes and timing the dialogue (further description of dialogue below).
Narrative Design
During the later parts of development, I took on the role of our in-house narrative designer, primarily in charge of the in-game dialogue. Being that Crackdown 3 is an open world, multiplayer game, it brought a challenge in the organisation and implementation of dialogue. This included:
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Creation of Dialogue
Working alongside the senior narrative team over in Microsoft to create temporary and permanent lines of dialogue for the game. This process involved the creation of triggering parameters, Line ID's, writing context and keeping tabs on what features and missions need accompanying dialogue.
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Maintaining Dialogue Documentation
During the dialogue creation process, I was in charge of maintaining the Dialogue documentation so that it was up to date. Collaborating with the Senior Narrative Designer frequently to update scripts, new lines and toggling the parameters.
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Dialogue implementation
Each time a new change was made to the game's dialogue, I exported the data we needed to generate the correct audio files ready to implement. I made sure new dialogue was implemented through blueprints and code, either by myself or another member of the development team. Regular playthroughs meant I could review missing and overlapping dialogue as well as fixing dialogue related bugs.
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Localisation
Throughout my time working on the dialogue, I was also in contact with the localisation team, making sure the documentation was correct and up to date whenever I exported the new data into the game.
