Cracks in Santa Fe knockdown

I have these two cracks in my ceiling and finally decided to fix and repaint the whole house. I screwed the drywall down and was getting ready to mud and tape, but then started watching some more youtube vids and saw I should scrape the texture off first. I would rather get it flat so I can embed the tape then try to match the texture, but that stuff is solid. Any tricks to make that possible, or should I just tape what I have and hope for the best? Thx for the help in the past.