What is the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Crysis? It’s not the cool suit, it’s not the long list of weapons, and it’s definitely not the plot. What most of us remember about Crysis was that our PCs just couldn’t handle the game. For some reason, Crytek decided to make the game so graphically intensive, that unless you had a really powerful setup, you were forced to lower the graphics settings.
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At the time, this made a lot of us believe that maybe our setup wasn’t up to the standard of games. However, we soon learnt that it was the game’s fault, and “can it run Crysis?” eventually became a meme. Now, years later, the director of the game revealed why it was so hard to run Crysis.
Crytek Wanted To Make Crysis Future-Proof
In a retrospective for Crysis in PC Gamer‘s print magazine, Cevat Yerli, the director and founder of Crytek revealed why the game was launched with graphical and performance settings that very few PCs in 2007 could actually handle. Supposedly, Crytek wanted to make sure that Crysis would take advantage of next-generation tech which would be able to run the Very High or Ultra modes.
“I want[ed] to make sure Crysis does not age, that [it] is future proofed, meaning that if I played it three years from now, it should look better than today,” said Yerli.
The game’s highest settings were created in order to run with tech that would launch in 2010, according to Yerli. However, it seems like we didn’t get the message, as we all became worried that our PCs could no longer run modern games. “A lot of people tried to maximize Crysis immediately,” he continued. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s not why we built the Ultra mode, or Very High’.”
Even Crysis Remastered made GPUs and CPUs melt so much that it actually required a patch that allowed it to run on more hardware. In fact, the graphical fidelity was so high, that once that game’s website launched, Yerli was invited to a conference about nanotechnology. He had to tell the organisers that the CryNet Nanosuit wasn’t an actual thing.
Crysis
What begins as a simple rescue mission becomes the battleground of a new war, as alien invaders swarm over a North Korean island chain. Armed with a powerful Nanosuit, you must achieve your objectives by any means necessary. Become invisible to stalk enemy patrols, or boost your strength to lay waste to vehicles. An advanced AI controls your enemies, so play smart. One wrong move out here could be your last.