jjndu from IGN boards got the new GI, the cover story is a game called Crackdown from Realtime Worlds. He typed up a summary of the 10-page story:
The basis of the game is that you are an officer in a city overrun with violent criminal organizations. As a member of a secret government organization, "The Agency" (creative...), you are a last-resort experimental procedure to clean up the city. Pumped full of experimental drugs, you're set out on the city to clean shop. The drugs give you extraordinary powers - much like superheroes - leaping over buildings, hoisting vehicles, super speed, etc. The idea is that, as an agent, you will eventually be powerful enough to replace an entire police force.
And example given of this power: you could pick up a car, carry it to the top of a building, drive it off, jump out in mid air, blow it up on the way down (shoot the gas tank) as it crashes into the side of a building - blowing open a passage way for you to get to your targe.
The game goes wtih a comic book visual style with light cel-shading. The developers claim that since games of this nature can't achieve the same visual quality as other titles, it's important to keep them visually appealing and distinctive.
my opinion: it's a good effort but it's not celshaded enough - by just a bit. It looks as though it's almost trying to be realistic but not quite making it. I'd have to see it in motion, though.
Mission Progression
Unlike other games in the genre, Crackdown doesn't have a linear mission structure with bursts of "free roam" gameplay. Instead the two are integrated to give a more seemless experience and avoid the "fail/succeed" structure of most games of this type. Instead, playing around with the world is essential to your progress and part of the structure. Like in San Andreas, you'll be able to level up your player in various skills and develop much like in Fable. The more you use certian techniques, the better you become at them (it's visually represented - bigger guns, more muscles, leaner body, whatever)
These skills are necessary for advancement in the game. If you need to reach a certian part of the map, you may need to be agile to jump/platform up there, or strong to stack cars to make it up there, etc.
There are four main gangs (like in mercenaries) and 7 key figureheads each. If you take out a figurehead, it'll have an impact on that gang - for example, if you take out their vehicle specialist, they'll drive around in worse cars. If you take down their recruitment specialist, their numbers will dwindle.
Level Design
Taking a page from spiderman 2, the worlds are very vertical as well as horizontal. The idea to have gameplay "volume" as opposed to just gameplay "area". There's platforming elements like in Prince of Persia, with wall jumping, swinging on ropes, shimmying across ledges, etc.
The level design also allows you to be more creative with how you go about reaching your goals. Since the cities are vertical, many of your targets will be inside of heavily protected highrises. You can become athletic enough to scale the building prince of persia style, you can snipe from afar to trim their numbers to make make your assault easier, or you can just take a heavily fortified 18wheeler and drive it right through the side of the building.
"Everything in the game can be broken down to bits, stacked, or used as a weapon." Unlike current gen free form titles, Crackdown can track more information and doesn't have to rest the world as much. This gives you more freedom to be creative with the world and using elements in it to reach new heights.
The roaming population is randomly generated from a database of clothing, faces, and accessories to keep clones from happening. You can't target the civilians (thankfully, that can be frustrating in a gun fight) though.
Vehicles
Like in other titles of this nature, cars on the road are for your taking - as transportation or as weapons. But, the agency also provides 3 vehicles for you - the SUV, the semi, and the sports car. As you level up, so do the cars (stats wise and visually). The sports car becomes like a batmobile (capable of launching oncoing vehicles high into the air), the semi transforms into an immense armored terror capable of plowing through buildings, etc
Multiplayer
Crackdown will support a dedicated multiplayer arena. Details to be released at X05. Co-op (over LIVE dancing ), however, has been confirmed. You can play the entire game co-op or have a friend jump in and out whenever you want - i.e. a friend can leave his/her game to throw you up to the top of a building and then go back.
There are no restrictions on co-op, so you don't have to stick together - you can just roam around doing missions individually if you like. The developers expect some emergent gameplay from the combination of skills. You could blow a hole in a building and then get into a car. Your friend could then pick up the car and hurl you into the building, to get a vehicle into a heavily protected area.
Crackdown will also have tons of achievements for gamercards adn will also have "community goals" for the entire community - I guess. This is to enhance the feeling of being part of the "Agency" all working toward the same goals. The game will pass messages in real time, so if a friend falls 1,744 feet to his death, you can take that as a challenge (just to add to replayability).
These messages can be read on billboards via a special view mode called "Agency Vision". These messages will serve as benchmarks to encourage players to compete against each other - sort of like trying to beat your friends lap times in a racer.
They also have an innovative use of the friends list. There is an agency ability called "Absorbtion". Your agent can absorb the experience of any other agent on file - but for only 30 seconds. So, friends can pass agent files back and forth and absorb a wildly different skill set to try a new approach to a situation.
This isn't limited to just your friends list, though. You can also do the same with save files on your 360. This allows you to build a "vault" of differnt agents during different play throughs and use them when you see fit.
This ability will also spill over into the multipalyer aspect, but it's not revealed how that will play out.
Downloadable content, like new skills and new gang compounds (basically extra "levels") are expected.
