Crysis interview exposes interesting facts

In an interview over at Gameinformer President of Crytek, Cevat Yerli, has been discussing Crysis, the relationship between Crytek and Microsoft and the DirectX 9/10 debate. We've had a look through the rather lengthy interview and compiled below what we believe to be the most interesting points:

Everybody expects Crysis to be a massive hit including, it would seem, the development team:

"We are shooting for single player as well as the multiplayer at the same quality bar – the priorities are equal now, which means a lot. So we are shooting for, in the single player part -- well, it might sound a bit arrogant to say this – but we are shooting for the best shooter of all time."

It looks like there's a lot of shooting going on, which can only be a good thing in an FPS. He also discussed story issues, with the most interesting news being his attempt at developing game storytelling. He wants his game to be full of twists and turns, comparing it to Shyamalan's 'The Village'. It has always been a difficult proposition, making games that have compelling and twisting storylines, due to the fact that a lot of gamers can't/won't play a game all the way through to the end.

Yerli even went as far as explaining why your character is called Jake Dunn. Jake comes from the name Jacob, which apparently means someone who neutralises evil from the sky. They chose Dunn because it represents the phrase 'done' - this apparently all ties into the games grand storyline. It all sounds rather complicated and a little bit mystical.

Nanosuit

One of the most interesting new features will be the nano suit, which Yerli describes in the interview:

"We developed that to give you speed, strength, armor, and there are updates as well. It’s all for expressing your intelligence and it’s a little more detailed whenever it’s needed from the player’s point of view. Even down to the customizable bullets where you can customize the tactile bullet. You can give it up to four functions, where after you shoot up to four bullets and they stick, you can control their functions.

So you can shoot three guys, for example, and then wait until they separate and then put them all asleep at the same time. You can coordinate your tactics that way. In multiplayer you could mark the pilot of the helicopter, wait till he’s in the air with passengers, and then put him to sleep to make them crash land. It’s a standard toolbox. It’s an immersion in gameplay that we have not seen before."

We're all for dynamic gameplay, which Crysis certainly looks like it will deliver. Yerli said the game has done things 'he never dreamed possible' allowing for moments that resemble action from The Matrix. That isn't the only movie tie in either, the game will allow users to get hold of a cloaking device that, when combined with the nano suit features, will give you an almost Predator like experience. Sounds brilliant!

Vista

Microsoft has been talking up Crysis as the headline title when Vista is launched, obviously many gamers are concerned that the game won't run as well on their XP systems. Yerli discussed the issue in depth:

" Actually we are so close that we get new [Vista] drivers everyday, new hardware, and new builds. You know, our programmers are crazy about it. It’s an insult that they go crazy because what happens is that everyday potentially a new thing has to be rebuilt. Since it’s Vista we are working with Alpha versions of Vista, we are working with drivers that get updated everyday with new source code, we work with hardware that are prototypes, everything is just unstable. And then our game is unstable in development. We want to understand where it crashes, and why and who caused it.

So it’s a nightmare, but, it just means that we are working so state of the art it means we are able to put in DX10 rendering inside the game before DX10 is available. DX10 is available as a SDK, it’s not that it’s not available, but DX10 rendering or DX10 hardware."

Much has been said about whether the game warrants upgrading to Vista, Yerli had something to say on that issue too:

"What I said was DX9 on Vista runs better than DX9 on XP. So if I have a gaming PC, and I’m comparing DX9 on XP versus DX9 on Vista, Vista runs better. The operating system is optimized for graphics drivers and optimized for gaming. It’s optimized for more controller functions – the game simply runs more smoothly. "

We'll see about that when the game is launched. If you've got a spare 15 minutes then the rest of the interview is certainly worth a read, so check it out.

Even more excited now? Let us know in the forums.