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CRYTEK VISIT: Crysis Q&A Feature
Gwynne Dixon
11/10/2007
During our quick nip over to Franfurt this week to see EA's Crysis, Lead Level Designer Sten Hubler took a moment to tell us about the game...
It's been three and a half years since Crytek's debut title, the groundbreakingly original Far Cry. Back then, the open world gameplay style of that Micronesian archipelago was almost unknown within the first person shooter genre. Now, Crytek tell us why Crysis is about to rock the worlds of PC gamers around the globe.
TVG: What can you tell us about Crysis' story? From what we can gather it starts with an American incursion in North Korea. The Americans have their nanosuits and, of course, later on some aliens appear. Can you expand on this? How far in the future is it set for example?
It's set in 2020 and, first of all, it's not North Korea. It's more or less an independent Island and it's in the Philippine seas - it's a bit away from North Korea actually. What happened was that North Korea was kind of involved there and when the game starts the back story is that there was a US science team that was doing archaeological research there. Suddenly their contact breaks and it's like 'Hey! What's going on there?'
The US sends this Special Forces team over there, which your character is part of. They go over there to find out what's going with the five scientists missing, plus there's an added state of alert because North Korea is sheltering the whole Island off. They won't let anyone get there and they actually took the civilian population away and completely sealed it off. So obviously that's quite a move and the civilians are also quite interested to see what's going on.
That's how the game starts and in the beginning you don't know that much about it - you just know there's some weird stuff going on. The first couple of levels are a bit more about figuring out what's going on, why the Island has been sealed off and what's happened to those hostages, which is revealed step by step. Once you get proof that there was a very significant finding there - in the level you played... the first one - the US decides 'We have to take this back. Whatever they've found - we have to protect that because who knows what will happen if it falls into North Korean hands? Who knows what they would do with it?'
The levels from there are more about a struggle, with both sides fighting about those things. Eventually the US push them back and they get to what they want to find, but I don't want to give away too much information here. That's when the whole alien involvement kicks in and so suddenly they figure out 'Oh! There're aliens involved and there's this mystery element to it.' Then the game actually changes quite a bit because now the aliens are too strong, people are running away, it's a bit more hectic and chaotic, and things go on from there.
TVG: So the nanosuit technology is the United States'? It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the aliens?
The nanosuit itself is totally US military technology. It's the stuff that normal humans don't ever see but they already have it. It's really new equipment so this is the first mission that they would've actually used this.
TVG: Getting onto the gameplay a bit more; obviously Crytek is famous for pioneering the sandbox FPS. We've only had a brief hands on, but it seems that on each level you'll have a large map which will have objectives throughout and you're sort of led through, but you can attack it from whichever angle you want. Do the maps from one level to the next blend into each other - kind of like Half Life 2 for example - or is it just that there's a map for one level and you can attack that how you want?
It's a bit more like that. We tried to make the connections between it somewhat loose, but it's not entirely seamless. There are levels where you jump down somewhere and, on the next level, that's where you start. Some levels will have more of a break in between where there's a scene at the end, and then the start of the next level is a bit different. So, it's more like that.
Most of the levels are pretty open so it's not that all of the levels are like that. Sometimes, when you want to tell a story or convey elements of the character, you have to limit it just a little bit to get this across, but then you can open it up more so there's a certain balance you have to find there.
TVG: With the nanosuits you have stealth, strength, armour and speed. They all seem to balance themselves out really well and obviously it's great in the multiplayer. Can you talk us through the development process with that, such as how you went about balancing the abilities out?
In the beginning we had a difficult interface, with a lot of sliders and things like that. I think the basic concept was always the same, to have those sorts of abilities. But to create an interface that was relatively fast and easy to get, and to balance it out, took some time. With each iteration we simplified it and so we came more or less to what we have at the moment, with the different ways to activate the suit modes and the HUD.
For single player, once we got our head around the nanosuit, one of the important things was to integrate it in the levels. At first we didn't really figure out how we could use the nanosuit really well in the levels so we had to create some prototypes until we got a core idea as to how the suit could help a player in each situation, while still being balanced. But, in a way, this balancing out never really stops and before we release this to the public, we will make a few fine adjustments I guess.
Specifically for multiplayer, it was actually interesting because it got picked up in a different way by people because they use it in a more emergent way than single player. In single player it's like 'Why would I use this mode?' And you also have to give them reasons to do it. In multiplayer it was quite interesting to see how quickly people would actually utilise it. Then it's a lot of balancing, a lot of play testing and figuring out the upshots of players using certain combinations. So, we were worried that players could use the suit modes too quickly and we created a quick-access for that.
TVG: On the multiplayer we've seen Power Struggle and Instant Action. Power Struggle is very tactical, much like Battlefield 2 or the forthcoming Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. It's that sort of depth of tactics and objectives. And then on the flipside you have Instant Action which is a very fast paced, classic deathmatch game. Are there going to be any multiplayer game modes other than those two?
No. I mean, not at the moment - we can always see. We want to keep Crysis multiplayer alive so we'll see what we do in the future. We really want to make sure the gameplay remains balanced and patch things to make sure that the game stays alive, so we'll see what we do.
TVG: The game is out on November 16th and I haven't seen an announcement that the game has gone gold yet. How long do you have left before it's all over?
Two days. [Said on October 9th 2007]
TVG: Are you going to be feverishly working around the clock until then?
Yeah. We've been working through the last four weekends. There's obviously a few of us here right now [at the event], but there are still one or two people at the office going over the last few bugs and making sure we get the last few issues out. It's really close.
TVG: Are there specific issues that you're still trying to get right in these last few days?
It would be dangerous if we still had really big things left, right?! At the moment we have a few bugs, maybe one or two crashes, things like that. There's still a bit of balancing - you play the game a lot and think 'What's with this enemy? Is he too hard?' And you do a bit of tweaking on the weapons just to make sure that their fine, but that's almost done as well. It's just one or two things, for example, that I'll have on my mind and I'll look at it again and give it a tweak or something. I think generally we're pretty much done.
We're still doing the customer test, so in a few days we'll have a really good version that we'll send out for quite heavy testing on different hardware, just to see if there are any issues. We'll see... there might be a few things that come back, we'll fix those, and then we should be gold really soon.
TVG: So is the build we've been playing up to date?
That's a bit older actually. I think it's about two or three weeks old and there are a few bugs that actually annoy me a bit because I'm like 'Ah, man! That's already fixed.' That's just how those kind of things run - you take a build that you've actually tested with but on different issues. This one is a bit older and we've had one or two crashes today - they are fixed - and there are one or two bugs that I've seen that are already fixed and addressed.
TVG: At this stage it's all tidying up AI and things like that I suppose...
Yeah, exactly. You play along and go 'There's something! I'll fix that.'
TVG: There were reports last week that you guys at Crytek were actually running Crysis builds through the next-gen consoles. That seems ridiculous to me, but is there any truth behind it?
I'm not an expert but, for example, the PlayStation 3 has completely different hardware that doesn't just work. I guess it's like trying to run this on a Macintosh. I don't know if somebody wrote some incredible emulator that automatically runs Windows code, but on a PS3 or an Xbox 360 - I think that's rubbish.
TVG: If Crysis is successful, do you see it going to the consoles? If so, do you see Crytek taking on these responsibilities?
It's safe to say that we'll obviously look at the consoles. You've got to; you can't just say 'We do PC and that's what we're always going to do in the future.' I mean, you have to think about it, but as for what our concrete plans are going to be? We'll see. At the moment we'll try to get the engine ready for performing on all those platforms and we'll see about that.
TVG: The Cry Engine 2 does look stunning. Just seeing leaves shimmering in the wind and the gorgeous water, which is right up there with some of the most stunning water effects we've ever seen in a game. How much has the engine helped you in that sense? Are we seeing what it's fully capable of or will we see more in the future?
In a way you're always a bit ahead. A lot of times you have to wait for the hardware to run what you actually want to do on it and there are a few things that we have in mind. You can still implement cool things and make things look better. I
mean, Cevat [Cevat Yerli, Director] said this earlier: "Crysis is not just a game for the moment, it's actually a game for the future as well." It runs well on the recent hardware but just wait for the hardware that will come in a year and you'll be able to crank up all the effects and put it in an incredibly high resolution, and it will look a lot better then.
Already now, if you have a normal machine then you can run it in a high resolution and it still looks okay. Dial it up to a 2,600 resolution, or whatever and it looks really fine and crisp. I guess that really adds to it as well.
TVG: It's a hardcore PC gamer's game...?
It is for people who really like PC games and want to see the finest graphics. We still want to make it approachable to somebody who doesn't play a shooter each month, for example. You've got to find a balance there, but we still want to make it look great and make sure that people who really like shooters have a lot of fun with it.
TVG: I think a lot of shooter fans are going to have to upgrade and get excited about Crysis? It's the time to do it, isn't it?
What other game will you have been waiting for where you'll be saying 'I've got to buy this graphics card or invest my money on new hardware'? I think it's a good time to do it because winter is coming, Christmas isn't far, so what better present than a copy of Crysis and a new piece of hardware that makes it perform well and look good?
TVG: Crysis looks like it'll be one of the first games to take PCs beyond the next-gen machines. Typically when the next-gen consoles come out the games tend to look more impressive than PC titles for a while, and then the PC catches up and overtakes them again. Crysis looks like the first game in this generation to do that...
In a way I think that's what we've been aiming for. We've always said that we'll make a next-gen title and I've even heard a few people say 'it's a next, next-gen title'. We really wanted to make an engine that looks a lot better and really photorealistic.
TVG would like to thank the Lead Level Designer at Crytek, Sten Hubler, for taking the time to talk us about their forthcoming release Crysis (in shops November 16th).
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