EA officially reveals Crysis Warhead

By Robert Purchese Published 5 June, 2008

Standalone expansion to retell story.

Electronic Arts has officially unveiled the much talked-about Crysis Warhead.

It turns out it's a standalone expansion to Crysis and, despite much piracy belly-aching, will retain its PC exclusivity when it hits shelves this autumn.

Warhead retells the events of the first game through the eyes of Sergeant Sykes who his friends affectionately call "Psycho".

He, too, has a fancy nanosuit for throwing cars around and running as fast as a very fast dog, plus he's being treated to plenty more weapons and vehicles than there were in Crysis.

It will be the first game from Crytek Budapest, and is promising fresh multiplayer content on top of everything else.

"We were very pleased with the reception of Crysis from both gamers and media after our launch last year," said Crytek boss Cevat Yerli. "That being said, one of the key principles of our studio is to always raise the bar.

"With Warhead, we are focusing on refining our storytelling and game performance, while also delivering more of the visually stunning graphics and immersive, free-roaming gameplay everyone loved in Crysis."

Look out for more information on Crysis Warhead this summer.

Meanwhile, head over to our Crysis review for what was arguably the finest of a strong bunch of shooters on PC last year. You may even be able to afford a decent enough computer to play it by now.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (36) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Dynamize #1 4 years ago

    Ooh, fun!

  • bdc #2 4 years ago

    Patch 1.3 gets a name.

  • Eraysor #3 4 years ago

    Retells the story?

    For fuck's sake. The ending of Crysis was so abrupt it probably means that this one will be too, if it's just a different perspective. I really hope it goes on a bit further than the original, because I was getting ready to end the aliens once and for all only for the credits to start scrolling up the screen.

  • Killerbee #4 4 years ago

    Excellent. Very pleased to see that they've neatly sidestepped the question of how to pitch the player against the Koreans again (fun) instead of the aliens (not fun) by making it play along the same time period as the first game, rather than being a direct sequel.

    It'd still be nice to see what happens in the story after the first game ended though. Do we have to wait for sequel / expansion pack number two?

  • sergeantdisco #5 4 years ago

    \resurrects plans for new gaming rig.

  • smoison #6 4 years ago

    They need to fix the damage model and AI.
    That's what ruined it for me.

  • Shrub #7 4 years ago

    Retelling the story of the first game? Huh? By first game I must assume Crysis since there hasnt been a Crysis 2 yet.

    So what we have here is a Crysis remix then (hardly what I would call an expansion)... what's the point?

  • gallow #8 4 years ago

    Good. More humans less Aliens please. Looking forward to it.

  • ps3owner #9 4 years ago

    I wonder what the specs will be in order to get it to run "smoothly" on max resolution... or even mild resolution

  • Freelancepolice #10 4 years ago

    Bit cynical you lot

    I hope it'll be like opposing force was in halflife, same story from a different angle

  • sergeantdisco #11 4 years ago

    ....but without horrible dark tunnels of doom.

  • TheDifficult3rdAlbum #12 4 years ago

    Did Crysis actually sell all that well in the end?

    Considering you needed a monster PC rig in the first place combined with the ongoing concerns about piracy levels, how many units did it actually shift in the end? I can't think it would be all that many.

    I am a PC gamer myself, so I am not trolling, I am literally actually interested to know.

  • Bitkari #13 4 years ago

    I'll be interested to see what multiplayer features they implement.

    Although, perhaps the better plan would to have been to better court the mod community to create a great multiplayer mod for Crysis.

    Something like project reality for Crysis would be two spoonfuls of awesome.

  • Dynamize #14 4 years ago

    It went platinum within the financial quarter of its release, "exceeding" EA's expectations for it apparently.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #15 4 years ago

    Psycho - that was the Jason Statham clone wasn't it?

    Mockney quips ahoy!

  • penhalion #16 4 years ago

    Dispite cryteks moaning, Crysis wasn't that great a fps. It ended abruptly as someone else here mentioned and couldn't run well on all but the most well spec'ed pc. I uninstalled it about five minutes after completion. Re-telling the story from another perspective is pointless. It's Cryteks version of blue shift only without the compelling Half Life story to draw it along.

  • Katsumoto #17 4 years ago

    "how many units did it actually shift in the end? I can't think it would be all that many. " Yup, as said, over a million quite a while a go, some people say 1.5 million plus now. So fairly good really!

  • dudefella #18 4 years ago

    I'd rather see what the hell Prophet was up to during the story. But yeah, any excuse to shoot more Koreans in awesome jungle settings. I hope the sequel/second expansion pack comes quickly though, that game had no ending whatsoever.

  • sargemat #19 4 years ago

    sweet!

  • ilmaestro #20 4 years ago

    I'm only a small way into the first game, but it's a touch disappointing to hear that this will just be a retelling, I would have liked to see some new environments.

  • ChthonicEcho #21 4 years ago

    So Crysis Warhead is just going to retell the horrible story in a more exciting way? Interesting, interesting...

  • NonniR #22 4 years ago

    Ugh, why do I even bother getting my hopes up for video game companies ? Retells the story fucking sucks. I want to move on WITH the story and WITH the main char from the first game not see the whole thing _again_from the eyes of another team member. Jesus!

  • Pulsar_t #23 4 years ago

    So Crysis Warhead is just going to retell the horrible story in a more exciting way? Interesting, interesting...

    Haha! Me I'll be waiting for Episode 3 and Clear Sky instead.

  • sneetch #24 4 years ago

    @Freelancepolice
    "Bit cynical you lot

    I hope it'll be like opposing force was in halflife, same story from a different angle "

    Yep, Blue Shift and Opposing Force were very good (although they were a good deal shorter, unless I became "L337" at some stage between HL and those).

  • Katsumoto #25 4 years ago

    I'd much rather them retell the story from a new perspective than carry on with teh current one. The ending of the first one implied any sequel would be shit. Aliens, innit.

  • Ryuken #26 4 years ago

    "....but without horrible dark tunnels of doom."

    That was easily the best part of Opposing Force. :)

  • Buran #27 4 years ago

    Some of the criticism about the abrupt ending and storytelling in Crysis are highly debatable: if you want a really good story then is beter to look at "The Chronicles Of RiddicK:Escape From Butcher's Bay" or "Undying" than HL2 references. Also, Halo 2 ends in a similar way and is scored sighly better than Halo 3.

    The Crysis campaigns offers superb graphics and ways to show our creativity in the firefights; I like both the open enviroments of the first six levels and the closed corridors of the last five a la Quake 4 or F.E.A.R. IMO, a lot of whining about Crysis is caused only because the high hardware reqs if you want to play at high/very high settings. But for me Crysis was not only funny to play, but also one of the few (with World In Conflict, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and CoH) justifications to purchase a 8800 card.

    So I like this news alot. In less than 1 year two launchships and probably in 2009 Crysis 2, good for me.

  • hiddenranbir #28 4 years ago

    As nice as this is and as much as I love Crysis (Before aliens)

    I'm just really waiting for mods. Jurassic Park, Predator. Come on people!

  • Genome #29 4 years ago

    But Psycho was a twat. If I have to play as him, I'll be looking for a way to turn the gun around towards me in five minutes flat.

  • Nithron #30 4 years ago

    Genome, dude, Psycho is basically Jason Statham in a nanosuit(the Zero Punctuation guy said so, it must be true) - What's not to like?
    Edited by 1 at 06/06/08 @ 00:14

  • ChrisOTR #31 4 years ago

    I'll bet that "Fresh multiplayer content" = the new multiplayer modes that were going to be in the now-not-happening 1.3 patch for Crysis.

    It's fair enough to leave out new stuff in patches, but they should still release a 1.3 bugfix patch as Crysis 1.21 is still quite buggy.
    Edited by 2 at 06/06/08 @ 03:10

  • ChthonicEcho #32 4 years ago

    Some of the criticism about the [...] storytelling in Crysis are highly debatable: [...] if you want a really good story then is beter to look at "The Chronicles Of RiddicK:Escape From Butcher's Bay" or "Undying" than HL2 references.

    Debatable, indeed. Escape From Butcher's Bay had a bit of a weak story that was compensated by strong storytelling, I find. I haven't played Undying, so I can't say anything about it. Half-Life 2, though, has a great story, but weak storytelling.

    Crysis, on the other hand, has a woefully horrid story that is poorly presented as well. If there ever were Top 10 Worst Game Stories, Crysis would most likely fit in the Top 5.
    Edited by 1 at 06/06/08 @ 08:00

  • Haloboy #33 4 years ago

    Jesus some of you can really piss and moan eh? Crysis was anything but a standard shooter to me, mainly because I loved the combat, the mind blowing tech, the fun as hell nanosuit and the way you could endlessly toy with the AI. It didn't have the best story ever but it was still far better than most recent fps attempts. If you now have the rig to do the game real justice, I suggest you give it a whirl. And while you are at it, learn to use the fantastic editor and churn out a few maps or something.

    Interesting how it's PC only considering they vouched to no longer deal out PC only titles, it's not as if Crysis even needs a 1.3 patch that desperately as it's pretty rock solid under 1.2 on my own machine.

    So all in all just as long as the alien sections in Warhead are kept to a minimum and they drop the lame vehicle sections I'm going to bloody love this!

    Edited by 1 at 06/06/08 @ 07:59

  • QPRHOOPS81 #34 4 years ago

    "I still think it's really weird how most sources had it selling bout 100,000 units or something and then two months later or so EA announces it's sold over a million. That just seems very strange to me. That would be a massive shift in fortunes. "

    Only a guess but noticed Crysis was included in alot of graphics card bundles. Loads of people have bought 8800 GT/S due to being a bargain and lots of those came with Crysis. Maybe that helped with the big jump.

  • ThePissartist #35 4 years ago

    I wonder whether Crytek are digging themselves a grave by stubbornly ignoring consoles. Instead consentrating on bringing out an expansion to a game that never sold any copies in the first place...

  • Ravenger #36 4 years ago

    I'm really looking forward to this. I thoroughly enjoyed Crysis, especially the first few levels, and it played very well on new home-built PC. More of the same is great!

    I think Crytek's biggest mistake was holding back some of the graphic effects for DX10 and Vista, especially when the community found that with config tweaks you could get 99% of the supposedly exclusive DX10 effects on DX9.