Evidently, Crysis is coming back [2020]

[PSman1700]

I still love Crysis, I loved that massive open world full of tactical possibilities, just as I did the original Far Cry, but the PC controls took considerable practice to get in the groove.

Far Cry just played like any other FPS game (on pc) to me. Crysis had this ingame weapon/gadget menu, which was one of the first games to do this, which was a getting used to thing, but i did adapt quick to it. They didnt only push graphics (game still holds up today even @ stock), they pushed AI, physics, gameplay and even controls like the ingame weapons/powers altering menu. They kinda had to, you needed to be able to cloack, armor or speed changes mid-game.
But a mess, nah, wouldnt call the controls to be that Also, many played at unstable framerates, which made the controls jerky.

 

[AlNom]

The original Crysis controls were ditched in Crysis 2 on PC following the controller scheme introduced in the 360/PS3 console Crysis port. There was just a lot going on, particularly for keyboard and mouse players - the word "messy" is thrown about a lot. I originally played Crysis on PS3 but later got the Crysis bundle for PC and that controls were an adjustment - but horses for courses.

I still love Crysis, I loved that massive open world full of tactical possibilities, just as I did the original Far Cry, but the PC controls took considerable practice to get in the groove. The console scheme simplified it (dumbed down) but it was better for a lot o folks. I guess that's why Crytek changed it.

I sort of remember them combining some nano abilities for C2 onwards, but I don't recall what was complicated in C1.

Tbh, having the suit be upgraded to combine abilities doesn't seem that crazy. It's nanotech!1111

 

[Svensk Viking]

I don't know how the console versions changed it but I always found the suit in the PC version to be too limited. You had all of these abilities, yet the moment you used even just one of them, the suit's energy drained in just a few seconds.

 

[PSman1700]

I don't know how the console versions changed it but I always found the suit in the PC version to be too limited. You had all of these abilities, yet the moment you used even just one of them, the suit's energy drained in just a few seconds.

Yeah i remember that, you had to use your powers wisely.

 

[AlNom]

hm... just redownloaded the 360 version (yay BC).

• Armour mode is a toggle.
  
• Cloak is a toggle.
  
• Strength jump, melee & throw require holding said buttons to activate - can still be used while in armour/cloak.
• Sprinting assumes nano-speed when Armour and Cloak are not in-use.

Seems just a little less complicated for the strength abilities.

Physics seem intact. Shooting trees down and breaking apart, blowing up building pieces.

edit:

Also can confirm it plays awful on a gamepad.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I sort of remember them combining some nano abilities for C2 onwards, but I don't recall what was complicated in C1.

Me either, I would also have to replay it Crysis and Crysis 2 to remember how they changed up the controls. I think it had bigger implications for people using controllers.

 

[Mobius1aic]

Also can confirm it plays awful on a gamepad.

I thought it played pretty good on gamepad. It was one of the first high profile PC games to really have proper plug and play USB 360 gamepad functionality, vibration and everything.

I like to pretend Crysis 2 never happened BTW. I do remember firing up the multiplayer beta/demo thingie on my 256 MB Geforce G310M equipped laptop though. Didn't expect it to work . There were also people out there proving the game worked on a DX9.0C codepath, even though it officially required DX10+ hardware. Still a sad day for PC gamers.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Looking back there's things that Crysis and even the original FarCry did that we just don't see in games much anymore.

1. Large playing field where most scenery can be dynamically destroyed with destruction being physics based instead of canned animations? Yup.
2. AI actors moving around independently of the player LARGE distances away? Yup.
   1. Most shooters nowadays have AI that are inactive until the player gets within X distance (usually pretty short) of them.
   2. In most cases, this is just a graphical enhancement as it doesn't significantly impact gameplay, but it sure is neat to watch the AI move around on it's own far FAR away from the player.

It's understandable since game development transitioned to requiring some level of console support and thus that placed limits on what you could do with the relatively anemic CPUs in consoles.

Hopefully, with the relatively massive increase in CPU power for the next generation of consoles we'll see more things return that enhance the experience we have in games. And maybe we'll get to see at least a shadow of what game development on PC was like before consoles took over.

Although being realistic, probably not. Costs for development are going to increase further and that's going to be a larger constraint on game development than hardware ever was.

Regards,
SB

 

[PSman1700]

Yes even the first Far Cry was doing new things for it's time. That said, the first Halo also did wide-open battlefields, and very well at it too.

And maybe we'll get to see at least a shadow of what game development on PC was like before consoles took over.

And that's where scaling comes, never before have games scaled so well between high and low end hardware. If that trend continues we won't have to have another 'Crysis' again. Such projects are rare nowadays. SC is doing it and the tech/graphics are amazing.

 

[Inuhanyou]

just based on what i've seen...with the same development workflow, next gen machines could hypothetically make games as expansive as SC or run SC itself (despite SC never coming to consoles)

again, just me talking out of my ass, but i've seen some videos from DF about that game and what kind of specs have been used to run it, and the stuff the team is creating is some next level stuff...but it really shows the potential of simply not having to account for basic things console lead development has had to contend with up until this point...like making a focal point for development SATA SSD's and much more powerful CPUs as the baseline for development as opposed to HDDs which cant display the game properly and jaguar level CPU's like consoles.

Just like Crysis and the witcher 2 which look average in the modern era of game development, SC has been showing the future of game development before it comes around into the mainstream for years now. Its only this year that consoles finally hit that threshold which is what makes me most excited for the next gen when the hardware becomes less of a barrier than ever to making content.

 

[Mobius1aic]

Part of what makes Halo (specifically in Halo 2 and later games), Far Cry, and Crysis is the sandbox-ish nature of them. Alot of "open-world" games are not what I'd consider a sandbox because they may lack dynamic and open gameplay systems to exploit, sometimes quite deliberately. Vehicles and characters may be overly stuck to the ground. There is a lack of physicalized objects, and gameplay is built around a single or sometimes a couple points of movement. Basically, new games are very grounded, sometimes quite literally, which goes against the sandbox ideals.

Battlefield 2 was the last of that series to feel like a true sandbox to me. 2142, despite being based on BF2's format, and still having alot of exploitable systems, started to take the series down into the "mudbox". There it became more focused on specific gameplay scenarios and putting more restraints on players including more linear map formats. BF3 really started to hammer home animation timing and preset ways of movement like the consolized automatic melee system, and vaulting over objects as opposed to forcing players to actually jumping over said things or using a combo button press like jump and then crouch in air to lift up your legs. Getting your bipod stuck to the ground or an object was consistently annoying too. These systems have carried over to the current BF game.

 

[Cyan]

hm... just redownloaded the 360 version (yay BC).

• Armour mode is a toggle.
  
• Cloak is a toggle.
  
• Strength jump, melee & throw require holding said buttons to activate - can still be used while in armour/cloak.
• Sprinting assumes nano-speed when Armour and Cloak are not in-use.

Seems just a little less complicated for the strength abilities.

Physics seem intact. Shooting trees down and breaking apart, blowing up building pieces.

edit:

Also can confirm it plays awful on a gamepad.

in my case I've redownloaded Crysis Warhead, the GoG version. Well, the game hasn't aged that well after all. Even on Gamer/Enthusiast settings, some vegetation generates in front of you. The particles though are still amazing. Another issue is that for whatever reason the game runs at the lowest refresh of your monitor/TV -minimum of mine is 60Hz-. There is a fix for that, but it takes some fiddling around.

The simplest fix I found is running the game in windowed mode pressing Alt + Enter, in that case the game runs at 165fps. Even so, the framerate goes up and down most of the time, even on medium settings. Still on medium (mainstream) it looks light years ahead of the console version though.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Looking back there's things that Crysis and even the original FarCry did that we just don't see in games much anymore.

1. Large playing field where most scenery can be dynamically destroyed with destruction being physics based instead of canned animations? Yup.
2. AI actors moving around independently of the player LARGE distances away? Yup.
   1. Most shooters nowadays have AI that are inactive until the player gets within X distance (usually pretty short) of them.
   2. In most cases, this is just a graphical enhancement as it doesn't significantly impact gameplay, but it sure is neat to watch the AI move around on it's own far FAR away from the player

Playing Far Cry immediately before Half-Life 2 hugely diminished my enjoyment of the latter. Far Cry felt like a step forward - literally removing boundaries in the environment and giving you so many options in any encounter. Tehn Half-Life 2 is mostly back to rat-maze environments with cooler physics. I played it again earlier this year and so of the earlier game is about flushing you through the rat maze as quickly as possible.

 

[iroboto]

just based on what i've seen...with the same development workflow, next gen machines could hypothetically make games as expansive as SC or run SC itself (despite SC never coming to consoles)

again, just me talking out of my ass, but i've seen some videos from DF about that game and what kind of specs have been used to run it, and the stuff the team is creating is some next level stuff...but it really shows the potential of simply not having to account for basic things console lead development has had to contend with up until this point...like making a focal point for development SATA SSD's and much more powerful CPUs as the baseline for development as opposed to HDDs which cant display the game properly and jaguar level CPU's like consoles.

Just like Crysis and the witcher 2 which look average in the modern era of game development, SC has been showing the future of game development before it comes around into the mainstream for years now. Its only this year that consoles finally hit that threshold which is what makes me most excited for the next gen when the hardware becomes less of a barrier than ever to making content.

The challenge with SC isn't so much what the engine is capable of. I know if all studios were just ask to make the craziest stuff possible they could get pretty serious and go well beyond what SC can do. It's the issue with building the tools and the content to fill out a game like that. And that's where the challenge is really going to sit on top of other things. Unless your game is purely sandbox, content creation is a massive issue for almost all studios. There is a reason why Bethseda games continue to look dated, and that's because their content creation tools are so massive, that they can only make relatively small changes to the engine without nuking over all their creation possibilities.

I like the idea that games could behave *like real sim models*, but only games that want to be like that (directionless), ie: EvE Online, SC, sandbox style games like Battle Royale, Mincraft etc, work like that. Everyone else has to spend a ton of time building curated content and storylines and suddenly all of those cools toys start getting tossed out the window because of game design and narrative logistics. They are trying to curate an experience for a player, as opposed to letting them discover their own. Once you get into curation, you start taking away a lot of awesomeness.

It is nice that the option exists; but I don't expect TLOU 3 to have players to be peering through portals and having their foot on each side each at the same time.

 

[Inuhanyou]

The challenge with SC isn't so much what the engine is capable of. I know if all studios were just ask to make the craziest stuff possible they could get pretty serious and go well beyond what SC can do. It's the issue with building the tools and the content to fill out a game like that. And that's where the challenge is really going to sit on top of other things. Unless your game is purely sandbox, content creation is a massive issue for almost all studios. There is a reason why Bethseda games continue to look dated, and that's because their content creation tools are so massive, that they can only make relatively small changes to the engine without nuking over all their creation possibilities.

I like the idea that games could behave *like real sim models*, but only games that want to be like that (directionless), ie: EvE Online, SC, sandbox style games like Battle Royale, Mincraft etc, work like that. Everyone else has to spend a ton of time building curated content and storylines and suddenly all of those cools toys start getting tossed out the window because of game design and narrative logistics. They are trying to curate an experience for a player, as opposed to letting them discover their own. Once you get into curation, you start taking away a lot of awesomeness.

It is nice that the option exists; but I don't expect TLOU 3 to have players to be peering through portals and having their foot on each side each at the same time.

Yeah thats true. But if the barriers to creating said content come down its also much easier to put in more impressive stuff while still making a game that needs to ship and be a cohesive product.

I dont know how the team who works on star citizen creates their workflow but console devs have proven to make best use of what is at their disposal while still being generally realistic about timetables and making actual games. Which is why console developers having access to a much higher baseline is so exciting. Its less next gen about working around hw limitations and more about making games out of a vision that doesnt have to be constrained...

Of course then on the other hand there is risk of things like feature creep where the more freedom you have the harder it is to focus on a singular game design philosiphy.

 

[iroboto]

Of course then on the other hand there is risk of things like feature creep where the more freedom you have the harder it is to focus on a singular game design philosiphy.

more or less yea. It'll take a while I think to make games like the ones you're envisioning. Most of the growth will be in the graphics department before we get into that level of creative freedom I suspect. Game developers are smart, but publishers don't like to take risks until proven

 

[PSman1700]

The challenge with SC isn't so much what the engine is capable of.

But somewhere your going to be hardware limited, as in the way their going now, they can only exist on pc.

Which is why console developers having access to a much higher baseline is so exciting.

Ye we go from 7850/7870 to RTX2070/2080 level just for the GPU, and seven years of development, like every gen a jump in tech, which some thought we wouldn't see anymore.

 

[Rangers]

Heh, I am futzing wth the old games in the Origin launcher since I rebuilt my PC with a Ryzen recently and wanted something to do. What's funny is Crysis 3 is a whopping 14GB. Nowdays with my 400mbit connection that's nothing, like an indy title or something, will take under ten minutes to download (even over wifi halving my connection speed)

 

[SlmDnk]

Trailer was supposed to release today, but got pulled and the remaster delayed due to negative reaction to the leaked trailer.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1278342913144033281

Screenshots:

https://www.dsogaming.com/screensho...stered-look-as-disappointing-as-they-can-get/

Comparison screens

https://www.dsogaming.com/screensho...-vs-crysis-pc-vanilla-comparison-screenshots/

 

[AlNom]

The colour grading reminded me of Far Cry 1.