September 24, 2008

GameZone chats with Crytek’s Bernd Diemer, producer of Crysis: Warhead
By: : Steven Hopper

"It was great that making a second game in the Crysis franchise allowed us to take a close look at what we did and hopefully fix the most glaring issues our fans had with the first game."

Last year, Crysis was easily one of the most hotly anticipated PC games around. The game had great gameplay elements, but the real thing that had gamers chomping at the bit was the graphics. Crysis was (and still is) one of the best looking games on PC or any platform.

Now, less than a year later, Crytek and EA Games have launched the game’s follow-up, Crysis: Warhead. Putting you in the shoes of a different soldier, Warhead provides a different interpretation of the events in the first game while adding some great new situations and even offering up some improvements on the game’s aesthetic, both technically and performance-wise.

GameZone recently got the chance to fire off some questions to Bernd Diemer, producer on the game, to find out what the game has to offer both fans of the original game and newcomers alike.

What are some of the biggest changes or additions included in Crysis: Warhead?

Bernd Diemer: Sgt “Psycho” Sykes plays the central role in Warhead. He is a more direct and brash person, and we tailored the new weapons and vehicles to his more explosive personality.

We worked a lot on the pacing, mixing different environments and gameplay styles a bit more than we did in Crysis. Under the hood we did a lot of improvements on the Cryengine to make Warhead run better. The AI got a lot of attention. We were able to have more AI on the screen then we were able to do in the original game, and we wanted them to react more fluid to player actions. The Alien AI received a large workover- we gave them a lot of the human tactics like flanking, using cover and group tactics. Lastly we did a lot of new particle effects- mainly explosions.

Would you describe Crysis: Warhead as a sequel/prequel/expansion to the original game?

BD: Warhead is not a sequel to the original game, it tells a parallel story that takes place during the timeline of Crysis. It started its development as a standard expansion pack, but it sort of grew into the standalone single player campaign it is now. We do not see it as a sequel or prequel, we call it an installment in the Crysis universe.

It was great that making a second game in the Crysis franchise allowed us to take a close look at what we did and hopefully fix the most glaring issues our fans had with the first game. We as a team also feel a lot more comfortable with designing features and how to build levels for the Nanosuit.

We do have a ton of great ideas about what we could do next, but nothing we are ready to talk about yet.

Crysis was a game that pushed PC’s graphically, but some gamers complained about the steep recommended specs. What have you done to lower the requirements in Warhead?

BD: When we started developing Warhead, we knew that hardware requirements and performance would need a lot of a lot of love and attention. At the same time we did not want to sacrifice graphic fidelity, we as Crytek like pushing the boundaries and make really pretty games. The whole team feels like it, so artists will always try to push in an extra polygon and level designers just one more AI, even if the performance budget warming in the editor is already flashing red.

The idea we came up with was to put a mid-range PC which at that time came to about $700 in parts in the middle of the studio and do all our presentations on it, for Cevat, for EA, for our hardware partners, press and also the team. After a while we started calling it the Warhead PC and it was our merciless benchmark- if it didn’t run well on it, we had to come up with a solution.

Crysis’s story ended with a bit of a cliffhanger. Will Warhead tie up any loose ends?

BD: Warhead has its own story arc. It tells the story of Sykes adventures on the other side of the island from start to finish. We do not continue the story of the original game, but we have a couple of scenes that hook into the story of the main game.

Will we see any new improvements made to the Nanosuit?

BD: We are very happy with the Nanosuit and did only minor tweaks to it. In single player it is almost identical to the original game. We also realized that multiplayer has different requirement, so in Crysis Wars we did make changes to integrate the Nanosuit better into the gameplay. As an example, the suit regeneration is interrupted when a player is taking damage, and only resumes once he is in a safe environment, allowing a better readability for the attacker: it always takes the same amount of shots to score a frag, since target health does not regenerate anymore during a fight. For a faster game flow, the suit regeneration speed is also increased, allowing players to come back into the fight faster if they took heavy damage and could find a place to recover.

Can you describe the new multiplayer element, Crysis Wars?

BD: Crysis Wars is a new multiplayer package for Crysis, including everything from Crysis MP plus a new game mode (Team Instant Action), a sum of additional content (7 new maps for a total of 21,2 new weapons, 1 new vehicle…) and features (new HUD, automatic map and patch download, improved game rules for Power Struggle…). It also integrates all of the rebalances for the nanosuit, vehicles, weapons, and corrects most of the bugs, exploits and security holes. All in all, it is a really exciting offer that improves on everything Crysis MP.

Have any changes been made to the Sandbox Editor?

BD: We realize that the Sandbox Editor is a critical part of every Crytek game and that the community wants to get their hands on it as fast as possible. We are working very hard a new editor version and a mod SDK, but have no date for it yet.

Will there be any new weapons/vehicles featured in the game?

BD: We have two new signature weapons for Psycho, a dual-wield SMG called the AY-69 and a six-shot grenade launcher with two firemodes for maximum mayhem, plus a couple more surprises. We also have two new vehicles in the singleplayer campaign, an armored scout vehicle with a lot of firepower and a hovercraft. You will be able to use the same weapons and vehicles in Crysis Wars.

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