Few days ago Norwegian Gamer.no website had a chance to Interview Crytek's Vice President Faruk Yerli and Community Manager Alexander Marschal, they also had a chance to play first three levels of Crysis. Find out how did they get on with it, what is the maximizing possibilities of today's hardware  and much, much more. Thanks to Kent William Innholt for Interview and Bombadil from incrysis for translating it.

Interview by Kent William Innholt, October 20, 2007

Will Crysis be the best FPS game of the year? We have met Crytek and played the game.

It has already been three and a half years since Far Cry entered the FPS game scene – and made the German development studio Crytek known. The negative sides to the game, like the awful voice overs and the unappealing visual style were like drops in the ocean when it came to all the games qualities: Far Cry posed with open, tactical situations, lively and colourful graphics – and the gaming history's best attempt at trying to make forests and bushes to feel real. It involved the player in the action and was rich on highlights – and we were exited.

Faruk Yerli and Alexander Marschal from the German gaming company recently visited Norway, and they had lots to talk about. About Crytek, Far Cry – and about their newest game Crysis. We sat down to have a chat – and to get a broader understanding of how the German developers work.  Cheers to Bombadil again for translating it.

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Does Alexander Marschal (left) have a reason for having the businesses broadest smile?

A dream that came true

It is two devoted and pleasant men that we meet this October evening, and even though the interview is about Crysis, it is tempting to hear a little more about the background of how the company is where it is today.

- How did the story of Crytek begin?

- If you look back at what has happened, it is obvious that Crytek is a dream that has come true. You have an interesting concept, and you bring it to publishers, who themselves are so fascinated by the project and decide to provide financial support and publish the game. That is how we started Crytek – we consisted of three different groups who had found each other through the internet, and who had spent their free time creating three different prototypes for games that they would like to develop, Yerli tells us.

Crytek got a deal with the French company Ubisoft.

- The prototype they were most interested in was the one that we called “Exile”, which today is known as Far Cry. After that we had a nine months long negotiation process – which is long, but not abnormally long. The actual deal was something out of the ordinary though, because we got financial support without having too much to show. At least when it comes to a project of this size – it was about several millions of Kroners [1$ = 5.4Kr / 1£ = 11Kr]. And we had never made a game before!

But even though Crytek had struck gold, it was far from only good times.

- Unfortunately it was only a limited few from the original development team that could move to Germany to produce the game after we got the deal with Ubisoft. Many had families they couldn't leave, and working with people spread across the entire world would be too impractical.

I have a nanosuit. You guys don't. Too bad.

Far Cry made us proud

A few years ago the game was done, and at the time there was plenty of time to brag about the contents prior to the games release. This resulted in large parts of the FPS community keeping a close watch on the game.

- How well did Far Cry do when it first entered the market?

- Even though Far Cry was our first game, we had big expectations. We wanted to produce a really good game, and we wanted to be innovative. And when the success came – when our new franchise hit the market and was looked upon as a worthy competitor to Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 – it made us proud. We were in the same league. We had had large expectations, but the response succeeded what we had hoped for.

- Has something happened to the design process of games at Crytek after you made Far cry? What did you learn from the development of this game?

- When we made Far Cry between 70 and 80 percent of the team were new when it came to games. It was a very young, talented development crew, and... well, I wouldn't like to say that we made so many direct mistakes during the development, but we have passed on many of the things we did right. For example, we innovated at the time the use of map editors – which had what we like to call “What you see is what you play” - what you saw in the editor was identical to what you saw in game, and you didn't have to export or load in something different to see what the result would look like. This proved to be a major strength for us.

There existed also parts of the development that Yerli wished could have been done better:

- We didn't like the animation system – it was weak. Many players would maybe like to protest on this, but for us the animation was a sore point. And the story was weak. These problems should be eliminated to give a better, more cinematic experience and to connect the gamer closer to the game. And these areas are, naturally, improved in Crysis.

A new generation for FPS games?

Much has been said and written about Crytek's new FPS game Crysis – and there is only a few weeks before it is available in the stores. Prior to the interview I got the possibility to play the three first levels of the game, and I'm left with the thought that this, more than anything, is a clear continuation of Far Cry. Open maps, attacks on different enemy bases, beaches, open sea and jungle – everything seems to be pretty familiar.

- It seems to me like Crysis in many ways finally makes the Far Cry-concept like it should have been three years ago. Many of the game elements – at least in the first levels – are like before?

A cold war against aliens

- No, it is not the same as before. It might feel like it is similar, but it is not the same – the story is completely different. I mean, you start the game in the jungle environment, something that is explained by the story, but as the game progresses you will understand how it differs from Far Cry. Everything we have done with Crysis is new. The technology, content, there is not one single element which is reused. We have created a new technology which has let us make new content of much higher quality.

- Yes, but what I mean, is that one can still recognise many of the wishes and ideas when it comes to the actual game design. For example that Crysis, like Far Cry, is a very open and free game – and offers a world where the player can attack the situation from multiple angles?

- That is one of the improvements we have made – we have taken the non-linear gaming experience we invented with Far Cry one step further. Surely there are similarities between the games – non-linear gameplay IS non-linear gameplay. You can't do it in a completely different way, but you can expand it. That is just what we have done – Crysis is even more open, and at the same time we are ensuring that the cinematic experience works no matter what choices the player makes.

This is not so easy, I understand – and Crytek has created lots of trouble for themselves with the extra freedom that the game includes. Yerli explains:

- In linear games you can control the pace of the excitement, tempo and action more easily. The AI is much easier to control. Crysis is different. We have to take into consideration what choices the player takes, and the enemies have to react naturally no matter what direction the player comes from.

Flexibility is important

- What kind of philosophy lies behind the way you create game situations when the player gets the kind of freedom they do in Crysis?

Bloody jungle fight

- First we set up the actual mission, the map. On this we set up a path that the player follows – while giving the feeling of freedom, but there are still boundaries. A cliff can for example make it impossible to move in a specific direction, thus “pushing” the player in the direction we want to. At the same time flexibility is important, and there are many possibilities you can take use of. Of course we are trying to lead the player to the right path, so that you don't get lost. If we identify an area where the player might risk to get lost, we either fill it with gameplay, if possible – or just place a rock or something in the way which makes him turn back.

Marschal adds:

- On every level we have a certain number of goals that the player has to complete – some of them are required to move on, while others are optional. So if people are interested in finding out more about the background story or the different characters they can do these extra missions as well.

One of the challenges that arises when you “open up” the gameplay and allow the player more freedom, is that it crashes with the need to tell a story. Yerli is convinced:

- We need a certain degree of control over the game experience, because if you want to tell a story, you can't make the game completely free and open. It isn't enough to say “The world is facing some problems, please save it.”

Technological beauty

Where Far Cry for me went over the top with the testosterone-filled action sequences so that it started to mess up my engagement in the game – which other than this was top notch – Crysis looks like it is much more balanced. The enemies no longer run around and scream that “they are going to put bullets in my ass”, my allies seem more believable than before, and even though we are still in the jungle environment – at least in the beginning – the colour palette has been toned down. It is difficult to avoid thinking that photo realism was an important factor.

- It seems like very much time went into making the experience as photo realistic as possible. What kind of problems have you run into when you have this focus on realism?

- I think we are at the point now where we extract the maximum possibilities out of today's hardware. We could have done real time photo realistic graphics if the hardware was powerful enough – so the limit still lies there.

- So no problems then?

- We had a challenge when it came to making the movements natural enough. When the characters in the game are talking, when the eyes are moving, when the face moves, the mimic, all of that. It takes many extra systems to make what is being said sync with the lip movements. It is not just about opening and closing the mouth at the right time.

Maximizing the possibilities of today's hardware

- Have you managed to bring the quality of the animation to the point where you can look at it and be happy? Where you think it works well enough for the player to believe the characters and get involved in their destinies?

- Well, the quality lies in the way that we create the game objects. For every object we firstly create an object containing several millions of polygons, which we then scale down so that the game can handle it. If you look at the faces in Crysis, they look like real faces, and the light setting technology we are using there – I think is the maximum of what is possible to do with today's hardware.

Chilly in the enemy camp

- Yes, but I was referring to the actual quality of the animation – isn't it often bad movements that can ruin the believability?

- Yes, which is the reason that we have our own motion sensing studio. In addition we have also created a system to mix together movements, so that the characters can switch from walking to running in one fluid motion-change. Our technology allows us to do this seamlessly and automatically. The result is that it will look more natural when the enemies run around, hide behind things or do other activities. You don't have the sudden changes from one movement to the next.

- But isn't the mix of different movements pretty common to see in games these days? Is your system different compared to other studios?

Of course this is common, but we believe that our system is... better. I'm not saying that other systems are bad, but just that ours is better, because we have put lots of time into animation in Crysis. We have a large animation group, and a separate research group of two persons who work with animation.

Yerli's eyes light up while he tells us about more fine details in their system.

- The nice thing is that the good animation makes the enemies and your team mates look better. We have a separate system in place that makes them take use of distances in the game world as well. The enemies can use different objects as they want to – hide behind them, jump over them – and nothing of this is scripted.

He is smiling broadly now.

- It can almost be frustrating, sometimes – something cool can happen, like for example that one of your enemies jump over a fence and immediately hide behind it – but it's impossible to show to others, because it only happened there and then.

Difficult to copy reality?

While playing the levels, I saw a couple of technological innovations that really show a large step forward – almost in a way that the first time you see them you are kinda shocked. The first time you are standing inside of a metal shack, for example, and realise that it can be completely shot to pieces, and crash down over your head. Trees can be broken if you have enough bullets – totally there are many things that can be broken.

The problem with this is that you will more easily notice everything that doesn't work exactly like in the real world. It might be natural that concrete buildings don't fall down after a couple shots from a gun, but what about woodwork?

- I found a boat somewhere on the first level which looked like it could be made loose and be driven. It was supported by a couple pieces of wood, but these were impossible to destroy?

- Yes, and there are many reasons for that. Again I can say that it comes down to hardware limits. Memory allocation and processor power. We can't do everything dynamic. In theory it is possible, but there is no hardware configuration on the market today which will be able to run a completely dynamical game world. Maybe it will be possible in the next generation of consoles, maybe in two to three years.

Not everything can be destroyed

Ready for attack

Yerli doesn't look at this as a particularly large problem.

- Obviously some players are going to be frustrated by everything that they aren't able to destroy, but we have tried to make it obvious what is what. I think our designers have managed to do this very well. But if you tell me exactly what boat you were talking about, it isn't really a big deal to fix just this one, Yerli laughs.

Another problem that might arise when you make games in the scale that Crysis is claiming to have, is simply generating as much content as is demanded.

- How are you attacking the problem of creating so much content?

- Firstly, our level editor is very good. We can create worlds from the top, paint the higher grounds, or say that everything that is from five hundred meters and below shall only be grass, and from there and up only rocky ground. After that we can paint in trees, caves, and place enemies and other persons around the map. You can actually paint an entire forest in the matter of seconds, and it is in this we make our areas.

- How effective are these tools?

- You can, without difficulty, create a level in one day. Modders will easily get used to the system. By releasing the level editor and the toolbox with the demo – which is soon out – we think that there will be many home made levels to try after we release the game. People can get used to the system even before the game is out.

Aliens = silly?

One thing I was very interested in hearing Crytek's version of, was why they have chosen to include the alien opposition in their game. The mutants in Far Cry was a controversial game element, and many have meant that it would be better to leave such “unrealistic” elements out and rather have more action against soldiers.

- Many of our readers could easily hide their enthusiasm for the mutants in Far Cry, and look at Crysis with a sceptical mind because of the alien aspect. Any thoughts concerning this?

John and Anthony aren't fascinated by a really special light bulb

- I don't think your readers have really seen so much of the alien enemies, and I don't think they are in a position to judge this yet. The aliens in Crysis offer in one way something completely new. They won't ruin the game – quite on the contrary they enrich the gameplay. The way they behave, and the new demands they put on how you play. We have done a whole lot of focus-group-testing – and concluded that the aliens really add something new to the game – a “second game” almost. You could actually make two games out of Crysis – one with aliens and one with human enemies.

-So they are there to ensure variation?

- Of course, and we also have a surprise in stock. I'm not sure whether or not your readers have have read this somewhere, but... I'm sure they will like it. They will appreciate it.

Yerli is also clear on the point that it is impossible to make everyone happy with the result.

- Obviously there is a small percentage who will never like the alien aspect – basically because they don't like aliens on a general basis. It is impossible to satisfy these people – but we have so much else going on in Crysis so it will be tempting, even to them.

It is easy to believe in Yerli now.

Beautiful sun rise

- We have spent lots of time on this. We didn't want to ruin the game with aliens, or to give the player the feeling that it suddenly turned into a completely different game, or that it was inconsistent, or that it didn't fit the game. It does fit the game. It fits really, really well. We have designed the weapons for aliens, made them really fun to play against. We have spent lots of time on everything, and those who now say “we don't want mutants or aliens” will probably change their opinion.

Impressions

After playing Crysis for a couple of hours, and talked with the developers about what is to be expected, I am really looking forward to sitting down with the finished product. The graphics maintain a magnificent standard, the gameplay seems to be a polished and extended version of the tactical freedom we got in Far Cry – and the animation and story have both taken huge steps since Far Cry.

What left me with the largest impression wasn't either my allied soldiers or the smart enemies – but something so simple as a sun rising. At one time in the game you have moved through an area of the game at night, and come up through a canyon just as the sun creeps up from the horizon. The effect is very realistic, but first of all it creates a feeling of being present in the game and I hope to see more of this when the game comes in just a few weeks.

As usual it is difficult to say something concrete about how good this will be before we sit down with the complete experience at home, but so far my guess is that this will be a very impressive piece of FPS game.

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