Confidence of Crysis: Crytek Interview

Senior designer Bernd Diemer tells us what makes Crysis different, and why the developer isn't ready to announce console versions of the shooter.

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If this all sounds like it will punish your puny PC, you're probably right, but not as much as you might imagine. While Crytek has been one of the earliest adopters of Direct X 10, Microsoft's new graphics tech, and Crysis is being groomed as one of the showpieces of the technology, the team is adamant that it will support lesser machines as well.

The idea is for the game to work on systems that are around two to three years old, ones that run on Direct X 9. The reason is likely one of economics, with the vast majority of people not having made the jump to the next level, though Crytek is hoping its game will be a spur.

"We hope that we will be an argument for everybody to say, 'OK, now's the time. The software's ready, the machines are ready. Now it's the right time to switch'" says Diemer.

Apart from being a bellwether for Direct X 10, Crysis is also among the first games released under the Games For Windows brand. This is part of Microsoft's reaction to the complaints that buying a PC game is sometimes a crap-shoot, as many people bring a game home only to find out that the specs on the box aren't quite as forgiving as they hinted at.

One feature of Games For Windows that won't be making it into Crysis is the idea of Achievements. Already in place in Shadowrun and some other PC games, Achievements in Games For Windows games are identical to their Xbox 360 counterparts, small rewards for a job well done.

But for Crytek, the idea simply came too late. "We didn't plan for that. It wasn't in the original design. It's not something that you want to slap on the game in the last second," Diemer explains.

All the talk of Games For Windows leads to the much-rumoured console versions of Crysis - the "inevitable questions", he puts it, with a laugh.

With Far Cry having made the jump over to consoles and now CryEngine 2, the heart of Crysis, being sold to licensees making Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games, it seems only a matter of time until Crytek confirms console versions of the game. "It's not that we haven't though about it, but until Crysis PC is done, there are no fixed plans for that," Diemer says.

You can't blame him or the company for being cagey. A hit game is big business these days and squeezing the maximum out of a successful intellectual property frequently comes down to proper timing, especially when it's a new property, as Crysis is. While we wait, though, the rumours swirl.

Some say the game will be completely different, while sources have told us that it will be largely the same, only scaled back to better suit the features of the PS3 and the Xbox 360.

Diemer dismisses this speculation. "Doing completely new stuff from the ground up takes a lot of work and also you have to be really careful how you set up your world, and your universe, the franchise, and your hero and everything," he says.

"It's our IP, which we developed, so we will think very carefully about what we want to do next."

Crysis will be out for PC on 16 November.

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