The game features the "Skills for Kills" system as found in previous games, in which killing enemies with different tools and finding pickups hidden throughout the city award the player with orbs, which increase the player's core skills – agility, firearms, strength, explosives, and driving.

[3] Ten years after the events of Crackdown 2, a massive terrorist attack from an unknown source cuts electrical power around the entire world.

The player characters - super-powered Agents - are called into the field by Agency Director Charles Goodwin (Michael McConnohie) and led by Commander Isaiah Jaxon (Terry Crews) to drop into New Providence and dismantle Terra Nova any way they can.

The agent also investigates the mysterious disappearance of many New Providence citizens, discovering they have been kidnapped by TerraNova in an attempt to brainwash and create an army of genetically enhanced super-soldiers.

Audio logs found throughout the game allow the agent to learn the existence of an anonymous client who reportedly paid TerraNova to perform there Eventually, the agent assaults Elizabeth Niemand's tower and ascends to the top, where they confront Niemand, who is piloting a massive Chimera-powered dragon mech; Neimand states her desire to use the Vitalis project to make herself immortal.

Crackdown 3 was announced at Microsoft's press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014 in June 2014, as an Xbox One exclusive.

While the game was still at an early stage at the time of its reveal, Microsoft's Phil Spencer said that the title came about from talks with Dave Jones who, after leaving Realtime Worlds, joined Cloudgine, a software company that is developing technology allowing game developers to take advantage of cloud computing features.

[5][6] Spencer revealed that the demo world was the start of this newest Crackdown title, with ability to destroy any part of the city expected to be carried over to the final game.

During an interview at E3 2018, Microsoft Studio's Matt Booty stated that Sumo Digital was now the principal developer on Crackdown 3.

Jones did not believe there was any stumbling blocks due with Cloudgine, Reagent, or himself leaving the development at that point, since they had done what they had needed for cloud computing support, and considered that now, "it's just the technology stack, it's pretty straightforward" for Sumo to complete.

[20] EGMNow wrote of the game, "It’s a blast when you just feel like zoning out, hunting orbs, jumping across rooftops, and blowing up bad guys" and closed by saying, "It’s good, solid fun, but it’s not going to completely revolutionize the industry.