Crysis was undoubtedly one of the technological highlights of the games industry in the last five years, instantly putting the PC back in the spotlight as a gamer's platform for the hardcore. Now Crytek are continuing the series with Crysis 2, and the studio is doing things a little differently.
For a start, the game is hitting consoles as well as the PC. This might raise some eyebrows with those used to the extremely high fidelity found in the original
Crysis, and during my chat with the game's executive producer the graphics difference was one of the first subjects on the table.
You needn't be worried, however. Nathan Camarillo assures me that while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions look as fantastic as they do already, it's only going to get better for those with a hefty gaming rig.
There are other things to consider as well - a brand new enemy, a new location in New York, and even a brand new nanosuit. Exactly why the change? And with all the alterations, can we really call it
Crysis anymore? All questions addressed in the following interview...
SPOnG: One of the things that a lot of people remember about Crysis, being a PC only game, was how much it actually pushed the technical boundaries. In fact, a lot of people still joke about having to have a nuclear-powered computer just to run it.
Nathan Camarillo: That's true (laughs).
SPOnG: Here with Crysis 2 though, you're going for an even higher quality game, but including the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 – which, it can be argued, don't have as much horsepower as most gaming PCs. How have you managed to build a game with those limitations in mind?
Nathan Camarillo: We had really inefficient code. No, I'm joking (laughs). The truth is, even we at Crytek said 'there's no way a game like
Crysis can ever run on a console.' But, we thought about it really hard and thought that if we didn't at least try to do it, someone else will. So we set that challenge for ourselves to get that same level of quality packed into those machines.
We looked at what we were doing, and how we were accomplishing it. We also researched into the power of the consoles and how much we could push them, and our engineers have been working on them for some time. The CryEngine 3 was also structured around being able to pull this off, and made it scale everything based on platform. It gets the most power out of the Xbox 360, out of the PlayStation 3 and PC.
If you have a PC and it's on a specification close to a 360 or PS3, you can expect a similar sort of experience and it'll be good. If you have a PC that cost you $4000 or more, you'll get all this upgraded stuff that will make this awesome visual experience too. But nobody should feel like they're missing out, because the core experience is still the same. Same levels, same environments, same objects, interactions and enemies.
You don't miss anything, it's just – if you've spent the money on your hardware, your experience should benefit from that.
SPOnG: So did you guys have to overhaul elements from the CryEngine or cut bits out so that it would run on consoles more efficiently?
Nathan Camarillo: We overhauled some of it, yeah. We didn't overhaul all of it, but there were some core things that we looked at and optimised and addressed. We've made those things more scalable than they were in the past so... quite a lot of voodoo happened.
SPOnG: One of the biggest complaints in Crysis 1 was surely the anti-gravity bit. Will that return in Crysis 2?
Nathan Camarillo: I don't know if anyone's really looking forward to the anti-gravity bit, but we certainly heard about the criticisms about it. We took all of the community comments very seriously and there were things internally that we didn't like either.
If it wasn't well-received, you can bet that it won't be in
Crysis 2, I mean I don't think anyone would not buy
Crysis 2 if we have anti-gravity in there but you know (laughs). That was definitely very well-criticised, internally and externally, so...
SPOnG: Crysis is largely considered a PC game, but for the sequel today you showcased it on an Xbox 360. Was that your decision, to show exactly how well you can perform on consoles?
Nathan Camarillo: Well, that was EA's decision to go with a 360 showcase. That was their choice, and the message we want to give out is that feeling of how good it looks on a console. People are really amazed at what we're doing on the consoles here.
If you consider that it looks that good on the 360, and the development is scaled upwards across the platforms... then you know that the PC version's going to look fine. If we were showing PC as an example, people would go 'yeah, that's nice, but does it run well on consoles? What is it going to look like?' So it's easier to wow everyone from the bottom and then continue to wow them as you show them better and better stuff.
SPOnG: You mentioned in the presentation that you kinda renewed the nanosuit, instead of latching new abilities to it. You've retooled it so that each element fits together more logically. Was there a danger of getting an imbalance there? What were the dangers of changing the suit up to such a degree?
Nathan Camarillo: Some of the challenges are just in fundamentally changing the way that we thought about the suit. The last iteration of the suit only came about a month or so ago (April) because we were internally exploring with having different suit modes and other stuff.
There were some previews that we gave in early January where we had a totally different control scheme, and we thought for sure that that was what we were going to do – turns out something about it wasn't sitting right with us internally. So we totally changed it.
We're always looking at our projects, trying to make them better and we thought 'what if... we did this?' It was a total departure to what we were already doing, but we realised that it would just make for a much easier experience for the player. We kind of sold ourselves on the concept of the control changes, and then spent the time implementing it and exploring it and realised that it worked so much better.
SPOnG: Has that affected the design of your levels at all? Did you make any changes to the controls or other mechanics mean you had to do away with other elements planned in the levels?
Nathan Camarillo: No, not really – we always had these concepts of mobility, stealth, armour and gathering information, so level design doesn't really change. It's more about how quickly you can get to the gameplay, how we can combine these elements together and what that means for the gamer experience.
It's hard to say that we're always trying to improve our products, but hopefully you can get an idea after hearing about the number of times we've changed up
Crysis 2 so far! We're always trying to revamp this and make it better. Now that we're 100 per cent sure of where we're going, we're feeling awesome.
SPOnG: Crysis 2 seems like an entirely different game – it's on consoles, there's a different setting, new suit, new alien menace... How much of the game is built on its past success, and how much is it about taking the game into a completely different direction?
Nathan Camarillo: Well, the core nanosuit gameplay is the same as in
Crysis 1, on top of the AI, really strong combat mechanics and the whole humans and bipedals thing. We did all of those things really well in
Crysis - we had really good weapons in
Crysis, but they weren't necessarily appreciated by the player.
A lot of what we're doing in
Crysis 2 is simply highlighting those original elements a little more. We want to expand the range of the arsenal a little bit – some are very conventional, others are science tech, close to what the nanosuit itself is. We wanted to broaden that a little bit, along with the audio – that was good in
Crysis 1. We wanted to continue to keep doing it and make sure players notice and benefit from it all.
The things that we really wanted to address required some drastic changes though, which is probably why that's all being highlighted. We couldn't just do
Crysis 2 in a jungle with two new suit powers, that would make for a rather watered down sequel and if it was running on a console it would impress nobody.
We had to take some really bold steps because we're building a franchise, and if we can prove that we're able to do this and wow the audience still then we can take the franchise anywhere we want to. So we could even say that the third one could stay in an urban environment - or we could mix things up a bit because we've proved that this is a personal game can exist anywhere. Then it's up to us what kind of story we want to tell beyond
Crysis 2.
SPOnG: I guess it's the new alien menace that gives that feeling of freshness, because not a lot of information is out there about them and after seeing them today they just seem entirely different. How deliberate was that - did you just want to create a totally different bipedal warrior with different tactics?
Nathan Camarillo: Partially. Some of it was based on criticisms from
Crysis 1 as well, because the flying aliens weren't necessarily well-received. You spent half the game learning concepts of hiding and cover, gaining vertical advantages and things like that.
What happened was that you'd play through the game environment in this way, and then all of a sudden we'd introduce flying aliens which would just invalidate all of your cover and you can't really take cover from them – and then we threw you into this Zero-G environment with no cover at all.
So we wanted to leverage some of those systems a little better and introduce a new bipedal enemy that can take cover and challenge the player. But there are also other aliens that we haven't revealed yet – some of those are much more mobile, just like you are and can come into the environment in ways you wouldn't expect. They will jump up on things and challenge you for vertical supremacy, so if you're on the ground they're going to try and get higher and get the advantage on you.
And it is an advantage because it invalidates your cover. On the other hand, if you fight for vertical supremacy you lose whatever cover advantage you would have if you stayed on the ground.
SPOnG: How much stock do you put into Crysis as a product, in your personal view? When the game was announced Crytek's story writer went on to make some bold claims about the quality of Crysis 2's story over Modern Warfare 2's and other games.
Nathan Camarillo: Ask him (laughs).
SPOnG: What's your personal thoughts on that though? Do you feel the same way, that Crysis 2 is the very pinnacle of first-person shooters?
Nathan Camarillo: Well, my goal is simply to make the best possible product that we're capable of making. So yes, my lofty goal is to make the best first-person shooter ever, but how we go about that and how we accomplish that is subject to what we're able to do and how we approach it.
Is it all about having the best story? Yeah, that would be awesome. Is it about having the best weapons? Absolutely. Is it about having the best tech and visuals? Certainly. It's also about having the best aliens and AI. We strive for all of these things, and hopefully we hit all of those targets. Maybe it is all about those elements. Maybe it's not, and that still might make our product the greatest.
I'm not the kind of guy that's going to talk trash about other games – I'm a huge fan of games in general, and I love playing and making games. A lot of my friends work on some of our biggest competitors and we've worked together at previous companies, so badmouthing their games is badmouthing them and I don't do that.
SPOnG: On the other hand, Richard Morgan had some good things to say about a few games, like Uncharted 2 and Batman Arkham Asylum. Going on that, are there any titles that you would say have been a big influence to you and Crysis?
Nathan Camarillo: We're all inspired by other people's games. We don't make design decisions by looking at whatever is the flavour of the moment in games right now, or mimic other people's work, but we definitely get inspired.
The team here are great fans of team deathmatch and multiplayers games, and we've all put loads of hours into games like
Modern Warfare 2,
Battlefield: Bad Company... I even went back to playing
Counter Strike again a few weeks ago. So on that level, we're definitely enjoying improvements and features that others take the time to implement in their games.
On another level, I really appreciate story-led games like
BioShock... even platform games can give me some inspiration to create. It doesn't have to be a related genre either - I've learnt just as much from racing games as I have from FPS games.
Project Gotham Racing totally shook up the racing genre and made driving round in a circle fun. There's nothing inspired by
Gotham in
Crysis 2, but I'm very intrigued by the Kudos system for example, and where they got the idea to implement that into the game. And subconsciously it makes you think about other games, and how you can work trick systems and whatnot into other genres.
SPOnG: Finally, one of the best experiences found in playing the original Crysis has to be chucking chickens into the air, waiting for them to fall and avoiding them before they hit you and killed you. Is there anything like that in Crysis 2?
Nathan Camarillo: In the demo I showed, where you have to evade capture in New York city, you can take a guy and throw him out of the window. You can, if you like, switch to the strength power and chuck him really high into the air. I like to shotgun him before he hits the ground.
That's just one of many ideas. Another, in that demo, is on the rooftops there's a few lampposts that you can grab if they fall over. It's fun to pick one up and smack some guys around with it. It's better to throw the pole into the air, catch it on the way down, and melee a falling enemy before he hits the ground. It's stuff you don't have to do, but it's just really fun to experiment.
We wanted to keep having stuff like that in the game, because we love keeping an eye on what people come up with in the community. There's one particular mod that I love, where the story in the game has been changed and instead focuses on a chicken. It's so funny. We laugh at stuff like that and love the things our fans do.
They're probably not aware of this, but we sometimes have meeting of about 20 of us, and have a big projector running all kinds of community mods and tricks that we think are really cool. We just hope the community keeps doing stuff like this because we get really entertained by it.
SPOnG: Thank you for your time.
Nathan Camarillo: Thanks a lot!
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