By now you’ve probably seen the tech demonstration and trailer for Crysis 2. If you haven’t, go here. So, being a bit of a self-professed Crysis expert, here is my take on what I have seen so far.

Firstly, I have some initial concerns about Crysis 2 being able to actually run on current generation consoles. Having played and seen how hard the original Crysis ran even on fairly decent PC hardware, it was obvious that it was never going to run on a console, not unless it was re-released for the next gens in a few years. So how have they suddenly made it’s successor run on current consoles?

Some of what made Crysis such a hardware whore was the fact that it not only included a lot of new never seen before technology, but also that it was built with a ‘no short cuts’ style of programming. Crysis did things the proper way and didn’t cut corners or lessen the effects just so it would run better. This is what made it the best looking game of all time. Even by current standards nothing has managed to better it despite it being close to 3 years old.

However, and I choose my words carefully here, using a lot of new tech never gave Crytek the chance to fully optimise the code for these techs. Now, I don’t mean to say that it was poor programming, but when you do something and release it to the public for the first time it’s generally accepted that it won’t run at it’s full potential nor run as well as it could until it’s gone through a few redevelopment/optimization cycles. It usually takes a lot of time to get the best performance out of any given tech while retaining the same level of quality if not improving it. Given how much work was already put into the original Crysis, you can forgive them for not spending more time on it again.

Now this is where I think they’ve made their gains with the Crytek 3 engine. Crytek may very well have gone back to their Crytek 2 engine and simply worked it over and made it much more efficient and optimised. If what I know about the 360 is corrent, the ATi graphics GPU is certainly capable of running the original Crysis, if a little slow, which therefore leaves the CPU as the main culprit for it’s failure. And this I believe mainly centers around the physics engine in Crysis and the terrain structure.

Physics is always a hard one as it’s incredibly taxing on the CPU. Obviously Nvidia got around this somewhat by using PhysX and allowing the GPU to do the physics calculations. However, Crysis doesn’t use PhysX, instead relying on it’s own inhouse developed engine. I can see a lot of optimisations were probably made here. Possibly, they may have designed a new physics engine and cut down on the accuracy and amount of work it could do. Technically a step backwards and very un-Crytek like, but probably something you wouldn’t notice.

And then there is the terrain structure. Crysis handles terrain very efficiently, using a scaling system based on right angle triangles. The tech was actually developed a long time ago and used in a game called Tribes 2, which a few old schoolers will probably know of. For the rest, the system is simple. While the terrain is technically made of very small triangles that map each and every bump and curve of the land, when viewed or rendered from further away the scaling of the technology cuts in and effectively joins triangles together to form larger triangles. This reduces the total triangle count and helps performance, while allowing for huge open areas with very good detail on terrain where you can see it. However, you’re still dealing with open landscapes and still a high triangle count (which would be impossibly huge without the scaling setup). It was partially why Crysis ran so much better when in low draw distance scenes as there just weren’t any distant triangles to begin with.

Crysis 2 is centered in a city landscape. Hence the draw distance is often much shorter or restricted. The terrain is also usually much flatter and even by contrast to hills and valleys, so the triangles used to build the terrain may have increased in size, thus reducing their numbers and making geometry calculations easier. It’s quite possible, because of the  buildings and general rubble in the way, that some of the terrain is just exactly flat and made up of just two triangles. Far cry from a thousand.

Then there are the shaders. I’m not sure on this, but I get the feeling the shaders of the original Crysis were built to be able to run in two modes; one for all out graphics quality, and one for lesser output with moderate quality. The difference is noticeable if you have a look at trees and especially rocks switching between low and high settings (or ultra high if you got dx10 or used a script with dx9). Rocks took on a bit of a plastic look about them with lesser settings. This was also the case with Crysis: Warhead with was supposed to be more optimised. Rocks always looked more fake in it than in the original.

It’s the law of diminishing returns when you’re pushing the limits. When you keep pushing things to their very max, you get to a stage where you are putting in much more effect and work to receive much less advances. The marginal reduction in output quality of the shaders may have saved more performance that what it was worth having there in the first place. This could be the case with Crysis 2 as well, using slightly lesser or simplified shader algorithms in order to markedly increase performance.

There is one last thing I can see happening with Crysis 2. Given that there was a noticeable difference in image quality between normal and high settings in the original Crysis, Crytek may have built Crysis 2 to be able to run to it’s full potential on hardcore PC systems that can handle it, ie using the very best shaders for example. Then they may have also built the lower settings for consoles so they can run it as well, not only lower end PC systems.

Of course this will give way to a heap of side by side photos comparing the same scene from the different consoles to the PC, but that only matters if, A) You have a console AND a good PC system and are wondering which platform it is worth getting Crysis 2 for, and/or B) You have a massive E-penis and want to lord it over others about image quality.

Fan boys zip your pants back up now.

Regardless of everything else, if Crysis 2 delivers killer graphics and solid performance, but also manages to pull off the game play aspect, it will set benchmarks for years to come. The original Farcry didn’t do anything special in terms of game play, being aligned more with ‘Doom in the jungle’ that an original shooter. Crysis did have some nice game play but far too often felt plain and a bit boring, although made good attempts to break it up with moments of brilliance and some nice mission setups.

If Crysis 2 hits the game play note like I hope it does, there will be no argument for developers putting together sub-standard games anymore claiming it takes too long to develop both engine/graphics and game play. It may very well end the run of borish generic shooters which seem to pervade the console market at the moment. Granted it is a market driven thing more so than design, but we’re hoping Crytek kick this in the face, in strength mode no less.

Not sure where I got this picture, but I can see shiny rocks :@