Ever since Crysis 3 was released, the core Crytek studio has slowly devolved into a husk of its former self. Now primarily working as an Engine company, while releasing the occasional video game once every few years, Crytek has been mostly quiet about any more games in the Crysis franchise. However, rumors are slowly emerging about a new Crysis game, an open world prequel that will be a return to form for both the franchise and the studio.
Speaking in an interview, Cevat Yerli, the CEO of Crytek had said. “It’s too early to really talk about it, because we don’t know yet. With Crysis 1, 2, and 3, we knew roughly. So even after Crysis 1, we knew what the next one’s could be – the different options of where we could take it. We stayed true to that. The technology and the storyline and whatnot.”
While it has been years since that interview, rumors are now coming out that there has been work going on in fleshing out a story for the game, and it might go back to events prior to the first game. One of the reasons for this is that Crysis was always intended to be a trilogy, and was pretty firmly closed by the end of the third game. The only viable options for opening up the story are either a prequel or a game set between the first and the third game, which does have some space for expanding the story. A prequel with Nomad returning as the protagonist can actually give more context to the Ceph invasion, and would benefit the game overall.
A senior Producer at Crytek had this to say about the future of the game – “I think the Crysis franchise itself has life left in it. Whether it’s in a different game type format or whether it’s expanding upon this, it’s hard to say. That’s going to be up to the designers at the end of the day. Crysis was always intended to be a trilogy, and I think that over that time we’ve built a really cool universe. We haven’t really gone in and said, ‘Hey, let’s put Nanosuits and clown suits and stuff and completely violate and sell our IP.’ We have a lot more life left in that to go back and try some unique stuff. Whether it’s FPS or not I have no idea, but there’s definitely a future in the franchise.”
This also indicates the studio’s desire to do something new with the franchise. While going away from the FPS roots does not make sense for the game, going fully open world definitely does. The studio might experiment with a mobile port and have that as a different genre, and even a free-to-play model. However, a main line game in the series needs to expand on the foundation set by the earlier games. One of the biggest appeal of the original Crysis was how visually stunning it looked, and even today it holds up. With the Cry Engine evolving through the last few years, the next Crysis is bound to be the new benchmark for PC hardware.
As Cevat Yerli himself says, “It’s too early to say [whether the next Crysis will be F2P]. I don’t think F2P’s a mutually exclusive way of looking at things. I mean, the future is definitely free-to-play, but likewise, retail can co-exist with it. Premium games can be free-to-play. When I said free-to-play’s gonna be our future, I meant that and I hold to it. But I didn’t mean it for tomorrow. When I say there will inevitably be only free-to-play games, I mean that there might be ones where you can just download them with an free-to-play business model, or you can go to the store and buy it for $60. So that’s what I meant: there’s gonna be free-to-play available, which brings the entry level down to zero from a price perspective.”
One way or the other, enough time has passed and fans are ready to dive into a new Crysis game. One can only hope that it brings the franchise back to life, and people can once ask the question – But can it run Crysis?
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