I heart Farcry for everything that it tried (and succeeded) at being. One of it’s eventual competitors, Doom 3, was supposed to have an amazing new engine that blew everything else out of the water, but at the end of the day I’d rather look at Farcry’s colorful archipelago landscapes than that dark labyrinthine under city that is Doom 3.

Crytek remained silent about future projects for what seemed like forever. This was surprising, and even painful, considering how successful FarCry had become. I wanted more crack, and I wanted it now (which was then, but I still want it now, still.).

Then, almost half a year ago we saw some amazing footage of their new engine they had been working on. At the time it supported dynamic day/night cycles, bending foliage, facial textures and expressions that blew our minds, a more advanced physics engine, and some more purty island shots. We also heard hints that the new engine was Windows Vista only — and that was a total bummer considering 1: Who knows how good Vista will be and 2: it’s release date seemed so far away. There wasn’t any information regarding what the engine would be used for — Farcry 2 or some other secret project that was rumored.

Well now we have full blown information. I just found some links of various scans of Crysis in a German Magazine. Here they are in order:

1. 2. 3. 4.
5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Some of these shots are absolutely amazing. I love the pic of the North Korean soldiers sniffing-out that makeshift hut. Damn, that looks real.

Now, if you don’t speak German, then those links are only purty pictures. Thankfully NVNews was nice enough to translate that article which unveils some great game information about Crysis. There’s some story spoilers in there, so beware.

Here’s some stuff I thought was cool. Your character has a bio-suit developed by the US Army that you can customize as you progress through the game. It sounds as though that you get some airdrops with “customization points” and you can spend them on customizing your weapons or suit any way you like, so near the end of the game you could have uber power, uber stealth, etc, depending on your choices, like Deus Ex.

There will be a point where you’re forced into an alliance with a one-time enemy. The leader of this faction will remember how you’ve treated his troops in prior missions. If you were mercilessly killing his troops en masse, then he’ll be scornful and will reluctantly aid you throughout the rest of the campaign. But if you’re nice, stealthy, and only knock-out his guys, or kill only a few of them, then he’ll be more willing to aid you as the game moves-on. Custom Narrative == Sweet.

From the translation:

An unknown object (not an asteriod because it didn´t cause enough damage) hits an island in the Pacific, and the North Koreans send their army to investiage the issue, and so does China and the US sends two carrier there as well. The tensions between the NK and US are close to a war, so the US starts a CovertOp and sends in Jake Dunn (our character) and a small team to infiltrate and investigate the situation on the island. He and his team make a HALO jump at night and unlike in “NOLF”, this isn´t a special level but we actually fall several miles thru air and the beautiful volumetric clouds and can steer our ´chute onto the island beneath us. There are no annoying level loadings and every object casts his own shadows which move accordingly as the times passes by just like in real life.

Yes Please. The game is rumored to ship when Vista releases (Q4 2006??), and it might even have a DirectX 9.0 version for those unwilling to upgrade Windows. I’m sure we’ll get more details out of GDC and E3 over the next few months.