Interviews// Crysis 2: Nathan Camarillo

Crysis was undoubtedly one of the technological highlights of the games industry in the last five years, instantly putting the PC back in the spotlight as a gamer's platform for the hardcore. Now Crytek are continuing the series with Crysis 2, and the studio is doing things a little differently.

For a start, the game is hitting consoles as well as the PC. This might raise some eyebrows with those used to the extremely high fidelity found in the original Crysis, and during my chat with the game's executive producer the graphics difference was one of the first subjects on the table.

You needn't be worried, however. Nathan Camarillo assures me that while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions look as fantastic as they do already, it's only going to get better for those with a hefty gaming rig.

There are other things to consider as well - a brand new enemy, a new location in New York, and even a brand new nanosuit. Exactly why the change? And with all the alterations, can we really call it Crysis anymore? All questions addressed in the following interview...


SPOnG: One of the things that a lot of people remember about Crysis, being a PC only game, was how much it actually pushed the technical boundaries. In fact, a lot of people still joke about having to have a nuclear-powered computer just to run it.

Nathan Camarillo: That's true (laughs).


SPOnG: Here with Crysis 2 though, you're going for an even higher quality game, but including the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 – which, it can be argued, don't have as much horsepower as most gaming PCs. How have you managed to build a game with those limitations in mind?

Nathan Camarillo: We had really inefficient code. No, I'm joking (laughs). The truth is, even we at Crytek said 'there's no way a game like Crysis can ever run on a console.' But, we thought about it really hard and thought that if we didn't at least try to do it, someone else will. So we set that challenge for ourselves to get that same level of quality packed into those machines.

We looked at what we were doing, and how we were accomplishing it. We also researched into the power of the consoles and how much we could push them, and our engineers have been working on them for some time. The CryEngine 3 was also structured around being able to pull this off, and made it scale everything based on platform. It gets the most power out of the Xbox 360, out of the PlayStation 3 and PC.

If you have a PC and it's on a specification close to a 360 or PS3, you can expect a similar sort of experience and it'll be good. If you have a PC that cost you $4000 or more, you'll get all this upgraded stuff that will make this awesome visual experience too. But nobody should feel like they're missing out, because the core experience is still the same. Same levels, same environments, same objects, interactions and enemies.

You don't miss anything, it's just – if you've spent the money on your hardware, your experience should benefit from that.


SPOnG: So did you guys have to overhaul elements from the CryEngine or cut bits out so that it would run on consoles more efficiently?

Nathan Camarillo: We overhauled some of it, yeah. We didn't overhaul all of it, but there were some core things that we looked at and optimised and addressed. We've made those things more scalable than they were in the past so... quite a lot of voodoo happened.


SPOnG: One of the biggest complaints in Crysis 1 was surely the anti-gravity bit. Will that return in Crysis 2?

Nathan Camarillo: I don't know if anyone's really looking forward to the anti-gravity bit, but we certainly heard about the criticisms about it. We took all of the community comments very seriously and there were things internally that we didn't like either.

If it wasn't well-received, you can bet that it won't be in Crysis 2, I mean I don't think anyone would not buy Crysis 2 if we have anti-gravity in there but you know (laughs). That was definitely very well-criticised, internally and externally, so...


SPOnG: Crysis is largely considered a PC game, but for the sequel today you showcased it on an Xbox 360. Was that your decision, to show exactly how well you can perform on consoles?

Nathan Camarillo: Well, that was EA's decision to go with a 360 showcase. That was their choice, and the message we want to give out is that feeling of how good it looks on a console. People are really amazed at what we're doing on the consoles here.

If you consider that it looks that good on the 360, and the development is scaled upwards across the platforms... then you know that the PC version's going to look fine. If we were showing PC as an example, people would go 'yeah, that's nice, but does it run well on consoles? What is it going to look like?' So it's easier to wow everyone from the bottom and then continue to wow them as you show them better and better stuff.