New CryEngine tech trailer rekindles memories of Crysis
Prophet speaks.
Ah, Crysis. It's been so long since you melted PCs. Surely, with the next-generation of consoles nearly upon us, it's time to do so once again?
It seems unlikely. The last Crysis game, 2013's Crysis 3, failed to meet publisher and IP owner EA's expectations, and developer Crytek has hardly had a good time of it in recent years. But then we have this: a CryEngine tech demo that's certainly set the cat among the pidgeons.
The tech video starts out as you'd expect. We see realtime volumetric fog from Hunt Showdown, Crytek's recently-released multiplayer-focused game. There's fully dynamic lighting in all its glory. Even vegetation touch bending gets its chance to shine.
Then, we go through a series of portals that doff their hat to previous Crytek games. One portal leads us to an area that looks a bit like Ryse. And then, at the 2.15 mark, a portal to what looks very much like Crysis.
Yep, that's a lush jungle island, all right.
There's more to the video that suggests Crysis was at least in Crytek's mind when it put the thing together. At the beginning of the video, as the user opens a CryEngine project browser, we see the word Prophet in the location of the file. (Prophet is one of the central characters in the Crysis series).
When we go through the portal to what looks like a Crysis setting, the music changes and it sounds a lot like Crysis' soundtrack. At the 2.57 mark we hear what sounds a lot like Crytek's nanosuit uncloaking. And the voice that says the word CryEngine at the end sure does sound like it belongs to Prophet.
Crysis fans are already speculating about what all this means. Could a remaster of Crysis be in the works. built in the new CryEngine? Do we even need a remaster, given Crysis is still melting PCs a decade after release? Or perhaps a brand new game in the Crysis series is in development? Again, this all feels unlikely at this stage, given the circumstances around Crytek and EA.
"It's a pure CryEngine tech demo," was all Crytek's head of communications, Jens Schäfer would offer when I asked about it.
One day, perhaps.