Max Payne
Banned
- AKA
- Leon S. Kennedy,Terry Bogard, The Dark Knight, Dacon, John Marston, Teal'c
GC: What is the setting and basic plot behind Crysis 3? Weren't the alien Ceph defeated at the end of the last game?
RH: The game plays out several years after the end of Crysis 2. Cell has built incredibly huge Nanodomes over several capitals around the world to protect the Earth’s population from Ceph remains – as well as cleaning up the environment and rebuilding the cities. Or at least that’s what they say they are doing…
You play as Prophet who is getting seriously fed up with being kicked around and he wants to do what is right. He’s taking matters into his own hands and he has a strong goal – one I cannot talk about now. But as part of succeeding with this, he will take on Cell as well as the Ceph and avenge the past. In doing this he partners up with a usual suspect of the Crysis franchise – Psycho aka Sergeant Michael Sykes, who we all remember from Crysis 1 and Crysis Warhead.
GC: After the success of Crysis 2 how did you set about reassessing the franchise and what did you feel were the most and least successful aspects of the last game? And how in turn has this informed Crysis 3?
RH: With Crysis 3 we wanted to combine the best aspects of Crysis 1 and 2 and add on top of that. You can certainly say that it builds on the foundation of the series - we have a lot of the wide gameplay from the original Crysis and a lot of the verticality of Crysis 2 and that we combine in a really stellar and beautifully unique setting – the New York City Liberty Dome that introduces the Seven Wonders and creates a real urban rainforest complete with jungles, swamps, grasslands, canyons and more.
GC: The console port of Crysis 1 was also received very positively, with many gamers appearing to prefer its more open-ended approach. Has this feedback influenced the design of Crysis 3?
RH: Well, yes and no. We always listen to our fanbase and even before we shipped Crysis 1 for console, we wanted to address some of the feedback from Crysis 2 – and included in that was the more horizontal gameplay as you know it from the first Crysis. In other words – we were already thinking about this prior to shipping Crysis 1 for console. This being said, I can assure you that Crysis 3 will benefit from an exciting sandbox environment that reverts to the origin of the Crysis franchise.
GC: Crysis 2 became something of a poster boy for 'New York fatigue' last year, where seemingly every second game was set in the city. Is that something you acknowledge and how has it affected the setting and art design in Crysis 3? It seems to be influenced by the Life After People/The World Without Us aesthetic favoured by games like Enslaved and The Last Of Us. Is there not a danger that this also will quickly become overused and what attempts have you made to ensure Crysis has a strong visual identity beyond just the nanosuit?
RH: We’re not so worried about that. New York City is a landmark city and that’s the reason many games and movies play out there. To be honest it’s one of the richest and most diverse locations in the U.S.
We’re pretty confident that our execution and interpretation of New York City as a rainforest will not only be very different from how others do it – it will also look above and beyond most other attempts to do a 'post-apocalyptic' New York City setting. Our Seven Wonders concept that executes on seven particular rainforest themes will create a diversity and richness not seen thus far in a game – or even in a movie.
Don’t forget that our setting is not just a city left to its own demise – it’s a city that has been artificially grown into a rainforest by help of the Nanodomes.
GC: Will Crysis 3 use CryEngine 3 and if so does that make it the first time a new numbered entry in the series has not also debuted a new engine? How much of the original game's appeal was the technology and how much do you feel you have been moved beyond that with Crysis 2 and 3?
RH: For Crysis 3 we’ll be using the newest edition of the CryEngine 3. We’ve developed a lot of new stuff since the version of the engine we used for Crysis 2 though. From individually-rendered blades of grass to scalable detail on huge, towering skyscrapers wrapped in unique real-time illumination – Being Crytek of course we’re iterating on tech constantly and with Crysis 3 it’s no different. But it’s no secret that today you’ll not blow people away with tech the same way as when we released Crysis 1. Iterations on visual today are a lot more subtle and not the quantum leaps that the original Crysis took back then.
Crysis 3 has matured the franchise a lot – we have a much denser story with rich and interconnected characters. We’re basically trying to tell a simpler story in a bigger way in other words.
GC: The high tech bow and arrows seems to be a prominent part of the game, so what's the story behind that? Is it now the primary weapon and what advantages does it have over firearms?
RH: There is no primary weapon but the bow is a cool new addition and it goes well with the whole concept of going back to the roots which is a theme that resonates across the game. There are plenty more cool new weapons in the game – and this time, you will even be able to use alien weaponry. That’s pretty fantastic.
GC: What other new weapons and equipment will feature in the game? And what sort of enemy forces will you be fighting against? Will it still be a mix of human and aliens?
RH: There are several new traditional weapons but more interestingly is the fact that you’ll be able to fire Ceph weapons. This really adds a cool new flair to the look and feel of the game. Also as mentioned earlier there is a bow featured which you can equip with several types of arrows – both stealthy and loud as hell.
In terms of enemies you’ll be fighting both humans and aliens – with several brand new Ceph archetypes having been added to the mix as well as the oldies having undergone severe adjustments to fit them into the context of the urban rainforest.
GC: How will the artificial intelligence of opponents be improved in the game and do you feel this is an element still overlooked in action games, simply because it can't be used as a selling point in screenshots/videos? Presumably it is all the more important in an open or semi-open world game?
RH: Well good AI is hard to make – I think that’s more likely to be the reason that it sometimes fails to deliver in certain games.
For Crysis 3 AI has been improved and will dynamically adapt to change in player behaviour. As you say, in a semi-open world game, you need good and dynamic AI and for Crysis 3 both the visual behaviour and technical behaviour of the enemies have been improved greatly.
Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/games/897108-crysis-3-preview-and-interview-urban-jungle#ixzz1szTKfChY
Quick Crysis catch-up: alien invaders called the Ceph found their way to earth and reduced New York to rubble. The best chance to kick them out again is Prophet, an elite soldier with a highly advanced nanosuit that lets him cloak, makes him super-strong, super-quick or super-bullet absorbent. He’s been a major character in 1 and 2 and returns as the player character Crysis 3 to a New York that’s had a giant dome plonked over by shady old C.E.L.L. corporation, who want to learn from the Ceph.
Prophet stalks through the undergrowth like a natural predator, using a compound bow which doesn’t disable your cloak when you fire it like all weapons did in previous games, and can be used to fire several types of warhead – Prophet’s sticking with a simple deadly rod of steel (steady) for now, but it won’t be long until the explosive ammo makes an appearance.
Moving silently between bulrushes, curious frogs and the crumbled remains of a once bustling metropolis, the veteran of previous Cryses takes out a couple of alien enemies that Crysis 2 veterans will know well, for better or worse.The pink-headed squids in mech suits return, and are welcomed back by some revamped ‘power melee’ attacks that Prophet unleashes when he gets near – the best moment being an uppercut that appears to go up and through the Ceph enemy’s quivering head.
Hold on… Prophet? We don’t want to drop the dreaded spoilers, but anyone who completed Crysis 2 will be very surprised to see that name appear again. Luckily, director of creative development Rasmus Hoejengaard cleared it up when we quizzed him about it. And again, you know, spoilers:
“He did shoot himself, right? But the concept of life and death in this futuristic setting is a little different from reality. There are varying levels of existence, and we’re exploring that a lot but we’re wrapping it up so that there’s a definite answer in the game. We’re not just pretending it didn’t happen.”
The same can’t be said of the Ceph AI. They do seem to be pretending Prophet isn’t there – maybe it’s his deft cloaking and stealth-killing, perhaps they simply refuse to accept his existence on some sort of metaphysical grounds, or maybe they’re the same less than razor-sharp enemies from the last outing who didn’t react to your noises when cloaked, and were far too easy to sneak past and outsmart.
I’m going with option C, but that isn’t to say they don’t still look fun to kill, especially with the new melee attacks. Evidently Proph gets a bit carried away in all that fun, because soon his cover’s blown and there’s a drove of Ceph closing in. Time to ditch the whole stealthy approach, load some explosive warheads into that sexy-looking compound bow, and don the war grimace (optional).
As the combat steps up in intensity, so does the graphical dribble-factor. Projectiles look especially impressive, and the scenery’s more prone to collapse and ruin than a game of Jenga on a tectonic fault line. Prophet equips another new weapon called the typhoon, which can apparently fire over 500 rounds per second. Per second. It sounds like a plague of pissed off locusts, and tears through the pack with apparent ease.
Ammo seems to be a bit thin on the ground though, and it’s not long before a bit of maximum strength-aided jumping is needed to get to higher ground (crumbling apartments) and find a new weapon. A Ceph plasma canon is procured just in time to meet some aerial remotes – hateful, hovering drones that strip your cloak ability when they get in range.
The plasma canon swats them away like a lorry swatting a fly, dousing the scenery in luminous blue energy. Some more new kids on the block turn up – walking flamethrowers called scorchers who have a fearsome range, and can apparently set even water itself aflame.
Where are all the human enemies? I haven’t seen any yet, but they’ll play a bigger part than ever, says Rasmus: “All the time you’ve been kind of fighting on two fronts: Ceph, and C.E.L.L. Industries. The biggest difference here is that C.E.L.L. is coming dangerously close to unravelling all the secrets of the Ceph and what that provides them is an ability to understand power distribution and weapons technology.”
“They want world domination, and their motivations aren’t pure, so it’s kind of an invasion on two fronts now. It resonates a bit with contemporary issues right now: humans destroying humans is scarier than things that are not human.” Crytek’s taken some flak for their non-human enemies in the past, and this time it looks like it won’t be a case of ‘all’s well until the mutant baboons appear’ so much as a blending of enemy types from the off.
Hacking, new to the series, offers another way to interact with the environment. Right now, Prophet’s using that new skill to hack into a sentry gun and turn it on the Ceph. It appears to be a matter of holding down a button rather than any kind of puzzle mini-game, and as the game progresses your hacking powers will increase, letting you exploit ever more powerful equipment.
Series-long fans will doubtless be most interested in the scope for open world, sandbox play in Crysis 3. They might be in luck: the ‘seven wonders’ concept that Crytek is making noises about, as well as sounding incredibly close to the plot of the Simpsons movie (the whole city’s been placed under a giant dome to contain the invasion) sounds like it offers scope for non-linear gameplay: “It’s not like seven missions, or seven levels, or anything like that. When we started out, we figured out which unique visual traits exist within rainforests that could potentially support our storytelling.” They’ll include “vast Savannas” and “frothing rivers” and Crytek aims to create a blend of linear and sandbox play that’ll appeal to most players by varying the locations in this way.
Crysis 3 has strutted out like a supermodel when EA lifted the curtain on it, and in visual terms alone it’s very hard not to feel excited for it. Like a supermodel, we wonder if it’ll really have something to say, or whether it’ll rely on that beauty and the previous games’ mechanics to get by.
Early impressions of the cover-shunning AI dampen our enthusiasm just a bit, but if Prophet’s given enough sandbox missions and situations that demand smart use of his powers, this third instalment can be Crytek’s finest hour.
http://www.officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk/2012/04/24/crysis-3-ps3-preview-looks-that-kill/2/
EDIT: whoops hit submit thread button too early, ah well will continue working on the op regardless
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