Crysis, Consoles And Crytek: Cevat Yerli Interview
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When we spoke with Crytek earlier in the year – around the time that Crysis 2 received its Direct X11 upgrade – we discussed the way that Crytek is now a multi-studio business. But now you’re focusing on binging your biggest in-house title, Crysis, back to consoles. Is this something you’ve always wanted to do?
Well, I wish we were actually able to launch the original Crysis on consoles at the same time we launched it on PC. There was a lot of constraints and knowledge that had to be broken down before we could do this, and a lot of content had to be broken down from an engine perspective as well.
The maturity of console platforms also had to be dealt with. We had to better understand the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 first, and overcome some of the boundaries that everybody in the industry faces with those platforms.
Crysis has required a lot of optimisation, and a lot of new technology. But we’ve done a lot of smart streaming implementation and memory management that goes way beyond the typical streaming capabilities in most games.
That tech enabled us to deliver Crysis 2, and then we realised that we might be able to bring the original Crysis back as well. As we started to give it a try, things looked very promising and we built a small team to try and bring the first Crysis to home console – not as a port – but as a remastered edition.
The timing is perfect as well, given the success of Crysis 2 on consoles.
I’m very excited about this, because Crysis was a game that not many people have played, or certainly not enough people have played. This is due to some people having a preconception around the game’s demand on PC hardware.
The difference is that consoles now are very cheap, and so the access barrier to Crysis has been reduced, as most people in our target market have a console now. The low price downloadable game cost helps, and from my perspective, there was also a tremendous amount of requests for the first Crysis on consoles, round the time we shipped the game on PC.
Unfortunately, we had to tell people back then that Crysis on consoles wasn’t possible, which was honestly the case at that point. We never imagined it could be possible at the level we wanted, so that we wouldn’t compromise the quality of the game.
It almost seems as if Crysis 2 came about as a result of your research into bringing the first game to consoles. Is that right?
No, it’s the other way around. Our research into Crysis 2 has resulted in the first game coming to consoles. Without Crysis 2, we probably wouldn’t have had Crysis on consoles. Most people aren’t aware of this, but Crysis 2 is actually pushing more textures and data than the first game.
Would you say that technically, that Crysis 2 is the superior game on all formats?
Not from all angles, but in regard to the amount of texture detail per frame, Crysis 2 is like two or three times more intense than Crysis. However, the first game offers greater horizontal play space, and this also takes a lot of memory.
When we discovered we were dealing with more textures but less space in Crysis 2, we said, “OK, maybe we can actually deal with more space but less textures on consoles.” So when we went about to try it with the original Crysis on consoles, it actually worked very well, because we had more, smart ways of dealing with memory management.
Was that the biggest, most technical thing you had to overcome to make Crysis on consoles a reality?
Memory was the biggest challenge, and then the amount of shaders. I thought the visual fidelity was as good as Crysis 2 already, but dealing with memory management in the innovative way that we did was key to cramming all the data from Crysis on PC, into Crysis on consoles.
Does the finished product on consoles run at the specs you would like?
Yeah, it runs at the same fidelity as Crysis 2, but the frame rate is a solid 25-30, it’s not a 60FPS game. It feels very fluid on consoles, and we’ve also made an effort in remastering the content for consoles.
What I mean by that is we’ve given it a whole new lighting path, quite a few new special effects, we’ve added the Nanosuit 2 controls, and all of this has added to, as well as improved the experience.
I want to be clear; when I say the console versions look better than Crysis on PC, I mean that as a factual thing, not in terms of technical specifications.
So you mean as more of an art consideration?
‘Artistic perspective’ is better. But then if you look at it from a purely technical perspective; the original Crysis on a super duper PC will always run better than on consoles. There’s no doubt about that.
But from an artistic lighting and gameplay perspective, if you look at Crysis 2 on consoles, which runs on similar specs as the PC version – just to get the same resolution and so on – the first Crysis on consoles looks much better.
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Can we ask you about the price point for Crysis on consoles? We’re talking about a game with triple-A visuals, but you’re only charging £16 for that in the UK for that – are you trying to pioneer a different model with Crysis on consoles?
We’re just hope that we get as many as possible users playing Crysis 1, we want the community of Crysis 1 to increase. It’s kind of a unique kind of scenario where we bring a game that has been successful on PC – and for many a benchmark on PC – to consoles many years afterwards. I mean, it’s almost four years later.
There is some aging on the content, but I think it still holds up there. I think the price point is fair, and I think that people, hopefully, are going to enjoy it a lot. And maybe this will enable to offer more of these kind of offerings in the future.
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