Several speakers come up in succession and below are the only things pertinent to a gamer:
From Cevat: “Crysis 2 is going to focus in on three main areas. One is highly interactive destructibility. Second is Nanosuit 2. And third is what we call catastrophic beauty of New York. The interactive destructibility aspect will be driven by technology. The most exciting feature of Crysis 2 will be the Nanosuit feature. We have been refining this since Crysis to make it more seamless and a smoother interaction for the player. We have enhanced the two most popular modes - stealth and armor - complimented by power, speed, and also tactical readouts. Another exciting feature that has been a popular request and exciting for me is the ability to customize and upgrade the Nanosuit as they play through Crysis 2. So everyone will start the game the same, but everyone will finish differently depending on your style of play.” The Nanosuit 2 trailer is then played and his speech continues, “The next star in Crysis 2 is New York. We wanted to introduce something called urban jungle. Urban jungle stands for jungle gameplay with vegatology in an urban environment. So you play out different levels of height that are featured in-game, as you will see later in real-time, but also the organic and artificial power of a jungle that allows the player to move in and out of cover and to allow the A.I. to excel, of course. The location of New York allows us to elevate feelings that are more emotionally more relevant to the player. New York is the city we’re most proud of and symbolically the most unforgettable. So, we said if the gamer cannot save New York, then the aliens have won and no other city can be saved. Catastrophic beauty is the art direction that allows the player to have an emotional tie-in, but even in a catastrophic environment there is beauty.”
He then introduces Richard Morgan, the lead writer for Crysis 2. He’s a very animated Brit who is definitely very passionate about working on this project. He says he’s been a console gamer for about eight years and that has helped him dive into this project. He then goes on to point out the flaws in the Far Cry and Crysis storylines and he intends to improve them for Crysis 2. He specifically points out the first game was too predictable and that the fact that the Delta Force team and some North Koreans had the suits and no one else, but this was never explained. He then explains his strategy to fix this, “After an absolutely amazing opening, I mean it’s brilliant... incredible... the player will start with nothing. I mean you will have your nanosuit and a weapon, but then you’ll be like ‘shit, shit, I have to get behind some cover!’ and after the dust settles, through interaction and narration the story will unfold for the player.” He also says that he plans on fixing some storyline issues from the first game, giving them meaning and purpose though you won’t need to have played the first game in order to stay with the flow of Crysis 2. It will be added details that the Crysis player will have more to refer back to. As he exits the stage, I can’t help but think to myself that Cevat did introduce him correctly when he wrote some kick ass Sci-Fi books and now he is kicking ass for CryTek.
Cevat retakes the podium and explains that we’re about to see a real time demonstration on a work-in-progress (WIP) Xbox 360 build. He says that the Executive Producer for CryTek, Nathan Camarillo, will be playing the build. He asks us to “...pay particular attention to the Nanosuit 2 which is the heart of Crysis 2 and our new IP (Intellectual Property). Nathan will be switching between stealth and armor, with power and tactic as well. The power mode will allow large leaps from building to building and to move things. The tactic mode will be used to get information. You will see a green glow around enemies once they have been spotted. But mainly stealth and armor, which will be used when he is under heavy fire. All of which is being used in Sandbox which is completely unscripted so it can be completely different than what I just said.” He and the entire room laughs. “The second part is the catastrophic beauty. Catastrophic beauty is the art direction we use to make you want to protect and save New York. We wanted to show the catastrophic dimension it could take should this happen for real. Catastrophic beauty is caused by the aliens, but it’s unclear at that point whether it’s caused from the top down or where it came from. Anyway, I took up the time of the load screen so let’s just get on with it.” Simply priceless. For the record, the load time was about 2:20.
The level starts with the player very high up in a building, I’d say about 20 stories up. Nomad is given some brief directions by his commander, because it’s hard to pay attention as Nathan pans around from this high vantage point.
Crysis 2 on an early 360 development build months away from release is, regardless of platform, flat out the most visually stunning game in history. Period. I cannot adequately describe the richness, depth of detail, and the pure sensation that you are in a Nanosuit 2 bustling about New York City. I had a flashback to the very first time I walked out of the bunker and into the tropical paradise in the first level Far Cry. There aren’t enough superlatives to put his correctly on paper.
Nathan turns on tactical mode, pans down and to the left of him, and you begin to hear chatter from your newest human enemies. They’re wearing a Nanosuit that’s darker than Nomad’s, looks like it has a gas mask on the helmet, with daunting blue eyes. Nathan switches to armor mode and jumps down from his perch. I was upset he had to come down, but my anger quickly subsides as Nathan switches to power mode and jumps to the next building and the immediately goes into “maximum stealth”. He creeps up on an unsuspecting enemy and grabs him. Unlike the first game where it was by the neck, he actually palms his head like a basketball. He is palming and dragging this guy for a few steps and then squeezes his head crushing it like a grape. I can’t help myself and audibly say “NICE” quite loudly. He then switches to armor and takes out an enemy and quickly reverts to stealth mode. A nearby enemy goes behind some wooden structure in front of Nomad for cover. The enemy is still on his radar from being tagged in tactical mode, so Nathan positions himself on the opposite side of the structure. He switches to the shotgun, turns on armor mode and blasts away. The wood splinters fly everywhere as round after round takes the structure and enemy down at the same time. He works his way towards a brick wall for cover and being a good player knows that there’s a sniper rifle conveniently right there. He scopes, zooms and snipes an enemy that is on the rooftop of the building directly across the street. His companion with a rocket launcher gets a bead on Nomad from the sound of the shot and fires away. What happens next is the next “oh shit” moment. As the rocket zooms towards Nomad and hits the brick wall in front of him, the bricks correctly hurl towards Nomad partially destroying a correct proportion of the wall. It was not the entire wall or a pre-baked hole. The engine correctly estimated the size of damage from the explosion and rendered it in real time. As the bricks settled and the dust flew up, I couldn’t help but ask myself “did I just see that”? I didn’t care that he was in god-mode and should have died. Amazing. I hardly had to time to recover from seeing that when he starts panning for more rooftop enemies. He spots a few more, walks over to a machine gun mounted on the rooftop and picks it up. Much like the video of the first Crysis game when he fires the Hurricane into the trees, Nathan turns on armor mode and proceeds to lay waste to anything and everything in front of him. Again, I didn’t care that he should have died like five times. The sheer amount of carnage in front of the machine gun more than made up for the lack of any sort of tactics. I didn’t even think of it at the time, but now writing this, it also showed the raw power of the new engine. Even with all the destruction going on, the visual feedbacks from taking damage (screen edges, blur, etc.), and intense amount of audio, the game did not hiccup one bit. Nathan proceeded to mop up the few extras that wisely ran for as much cover as possible and heads to the checkpoint. The level fades and a VERY loud applause ensues. I’m in complete awe of what I just saw.
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inrysis.com as I post more throughout the day.
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