Q&A: Crytek details weapons, abilites in Crysis

GamePro's Mr. Marbles chats with Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek to uncover some breaking details on Crysis. Read on!

This isn't all! Want to read GamePro's CRYSIS COVER STORY?



GamePro: Can you talk a bit about the story and the alien race? Does it tie into Far Cry in any way?

Cevat Yerli: There's no connection to Far Cry. Crysis is an entirely new game. We are featuring an alien race that remains a closely guarded secret. What we can say is that early in the game that it becomes obvious that the aliens have been on Earth for quite a while. The aliens appear to thrive in super cold, frozen environments, need zero-g to move, and are highly aggressive and intelligent.

GP: What specific engine enhancements have been made for Crysis?

CY: CryEngine 2 has been improved in almost every major area. Shadows are now soft, dynamic, terrain has support for voxel technology to offer real 3d carving, physics does support real-time breaking of vegetations, soft-deformations, advanced vehicles and an improved human physics simulation. Graphics received a major boost in shaders delivering day-night cycles, clouds, sub-surface scattering on human-skin, vegetation and materials like ice. Many major changes in all modules allow a bigger more interactive world. We also optimized our system for new graphics hardware generations and multi-threading support for the new CPUs.

GP: Can you explain what differentiates Direct X 10 visuals from the Direct X 9 ones? If you put both versions side-by-side, what would you notice that's different, and what does DX10 do to improve Crysis?

CY: Major focus around DX10 is to provide a higher degree of immersion and visual density of all simulations. Every pixel should make you feel there, at higher framerates. So you will see improved lighting simulations, volumes and particles. Shadows will feel more crisp, fast motions will look accordingly realistic. DX10 allows us to reach our video-realism goal we have been saying for 2 years now.

GP: Can you tell us something about weapon and ammo customization?

CY: The idea behind this was to re-invent literally core-components of a shooter, whilst providing the player more options than he had before. For the weapons, we decided that we wanted players to be able to customize on the fly (rather than in a non-immersive menu) so we took the concept of the rail system (modular attachment mount points) and applied this to our game.

Through an immersive, real-time display of the gun, the player can quickly choose the items they want to use to customize their weapon. We then constructed a lot of cool things for players to use. Among these items are different types of scopes, tactical lights, laser sights, and silencers. In most cases, players can take one item from one weapon and put it on another. There may be no obvious reason to put a sniper scope on a shotgun but it makes for really interesting options.

In keeping with this philosophy, we created 'tactical munitions'. These are small, programmable bullets that allow players to manipulate their effects after they have been fired. There are a number of modes. For example sleep mode is a quick and silent way to down an enemy. You can then activate the trigger and put that target to sleep. Distract mode emits a sound that is very useful for distracting enemies away from your position. The player can have up to four of these bullets active at one time giving a huge number of options to the player and introducing totally new gameplay.

GP: Can you explain some details about the alien race? What are they called, and are they the reason many of the environments frozen?

CY: In the fiction of Crysis there has been no contact with Extra-Terrestrials before initial contact so, believe it or not, they are referred to as the 'Aliens'. We call them aliens, because for us Crysis is a realistic Sci-Fi game. Their language is so exotic we don't even know what they would call themselves - that's if we could take the time to talk to them. They don't seem very keen on conversation. They thrive in their native super cold zero G environments.

GP: What are the mechanical advantages of the "super suit"? What can it do to enhance game-play?

CY: Our Nano Muscle Suit is an extrapolation of real designs for military suits planned for introduction to the battlefield in the next 15 years. Not that far off. We've added our own ideas of course but the basis of the suit isn't as Sci-fi as you'd think. It's main function is to enhance the soldiers abilities in the front line - strength, armour, speed and stealth, all vital functions to the soldiers of the future. The suit has an onboard cold fusion reactor (that's from us!) that channels energy into the different functions of the suit. See the artificial muscle skin on that suit, that's iconic design.

For instance, if you channel all power into your armor, the suit takes on a near liquid state that helps absorb damage. It also keeps you battle-ready by slowly restoring your health. Strength mode enables you to jump very high and punch with great effect. You are even able to pick up much bigger objects than normal and move them or throw them at enemies. Speed mode takes all the energy and diverts it to the legs which enables you to move very fast and jump longer. The core of the gameplay in Crysis is built around this functionality giving even more flexibility and choice to the player for any given situation to cater the experience to his own desires. And the best thing? It all carries over into the multiplayer...

GP: What is your basic strategy for multiplayer? With Crysis leading the pack in single-player technology, are you pushing the boundaries in multiplayer as well?

CY: We want to make a multiplayer game that everyone is incredibly excited about and features our core-idea of the Nano Muscle Suit. That means doing it well but it also means doing something different at any core-experience. As in single-player it's all about gameplay choices and so now the suit becomes the centerpiece of gameplay for multiplayer. Imagine being up against an opposing force who are at the other side of the map. You dial up your speed to cover the distance quickly, then strength to jump over a compound wall. As the opposing teams approaches you go into stealth mode waiting to ambush them, but of course their players have stealth too and you have limited armor in that mode so the player running towards you with strength dialed up will almost certainly kill you in one blow if he spots you. You'd better not miss.

Even more than single-player we expect to be surprised by what tactics and skill based gameplay will emerge out of the choices the gamers will take, using the suit functions and interactive environments.

In addition to that we have an entirely new and innovative mode - Power Struggle - an objective based multiplayer experience. To create Power Struggle, we started working on Multiplayer at the same time we began working on single player and gave it equal emphasis. The goal is to present an MP game that is as highly regarded as our SP campaign and we are well along the way to accomplishing this.

GP: Do you have plans to include online co-op play?

CY: There are no plans for online coop play for our initial release of Crysis.

GP: What can current PCs do that new consoles can't? With new-generation consoles booming in popularity, do you think upcoming PC titles like Crysis are going to prove again that PCs lead gaming technology?

CY: Crysis is taking full advantage of DX10 with our initial release so, in this case, PCs still have a significant lead as far as gaming technology is concerned. Our vision is to deliver the best FPS experience and we believe that's only possible on PC.

GP: What kind of system will you need to run the game at high-end?

CY: One of our key focuses is that the Crysis experience is designed to scale across a wide variety of PC specifications, not just high-end rigs. Suffice it to say we will optimize CryEngine 2 and Crysis to a degree that you'll never have seen anything like Crysis running on a high-end PC and will scale back for specs being about 3 years old, by the time we ship.

GP: What do you think Crysis does better than any other shooter on the market right now?

CY: We innovate the genre. We did re-invigorate the non-linear gameplay choices into the core-components of the shooters. The hero, through the Nano muscle suit, its weapons and the ammunition through the customizable weapon-system, the environment the game is placed in through open, wide and interactive arenas, the enemies through adaptive intelligence and first in gaming, aliens that have true sensors (hearing and seeing). Obviously we are also very proud of our graphics and we feel they are the most realistic and interactive, a very difficult combination. There are many other features that we are extremely proud of like our "through the gun" experience and our fantastic vehicles but the core gameplay is the key.

GP: In Far Cry, using the game's physics was key to progressing through the game (for example, jamming the chair into the closing door to access the ammo stock)? Does Crysis use physics in the same way, and how advanced is the physics engine?

CY: The chair trick in Far Cry was actually a bug, but we liked it so much we left it in! :) That being said, in Crysis every map contains multiple physics challenges or puzzles (usually accessed by good suit control) so if you like physics in your gameplay this is the way to go. Physics is one of the core ingredients to our core-gameplay and you will find it present in multiple forms of experiences.

GP: Are the any plans for an Xbox 360 version, and would cross-platform compatibility be possible?

CY: The inevitable question! Of course we're looking at the options but now we're working hard to bring the Crysis as a PC game to market, one which will hopefully set a new bar for FPS games, that's our goal, and we will push very hard to deliver this.

GP: What's next for Crytek?

CY: Crytek is a rapidly growing company and we intend to put all our effort in making Crysis the best game ever. Afterwards, the next big thing?

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