Crysis 2 to have Lower System Requirements and Better Graphics than Crysis

[Tim]

Doesn't Portal count as a new sub-genre made possible by decent physics? It was a hell of a lot more interesting and revolutionary than Crysis or UT3, despite a dated gfx engine.

Fully agree. Graphics are great, but gameplay plays a bigger part.

[Rock&Roll]

I have played most of those "new" games out there over a decade ago, there's no reason to get the same experience over and over again (only with shinier gfx)...

I can't completely disagree. I too have approached this limit at times. Really, what matters more to me now is simply good game-play and the advancement of AI capabilities. That, over a full range of game genres.

One genre's gameplay I think really is enhanced by graphics (when combined with good input capabilities) is racing sims. Anything you can do to make the environment look and feel more realistic helps to translate the sensation of speed and the limitation of the vehicle to the user.

[Aerwidh]

No, no I would never say that anyone's a fool just because he/she disagrees with me, that's on in itself is idiotic.

In that case, I misunderstood you. My bad.

[...]innovations in games always went hand in hand with graphical advancement. From the graphically simple pong, to the "lusher" arcades, to the ability of computers to simulate/design multiple characters at once, hence Strategies, the 3D revolution and -voila- the invention of FPS and action adventure genres and so on and so forth.

Can't say I agree with the "always" part, but it has often coincided, that I can agree on. The problem is, most of these cases of better graphics and better gameplay coming at roughly the same time seem to have been in cases where graphics limited what you could do.
For example, early platformers only scrolled one way, so you couldn't have gameplay that required bringing something back through the course (as it only scrolled forward). Being able to scroll backwards removed that obstacle in designing the game.
2D games, in some cases, made it difficult to freely run around in a 3D landscape, since you were somewhat limited in how you could show movement in the 3rd dimension.
The graphics of today are sufficient to show almost anything in a good enough way. It will not look like real life, but you can show just about anything, meaning it is not restricting gameplay. As graphics are not really an obstacle anymore, better graphics will help almost nothing in innovation. 3D displays might help give a better feeling of depth, but the market is most likely not ready to finance development in this area for another 5-10 years, as the benefits will be too small for most people, relative to the cost.

For example large environments and physics would had been able to spawn a new genre of gaming -no different than what happened with FPS

That is likely a possibility, yes, but it is not really limited by graphics as such. The solution to this is better physics and engines that can keep track of a large environment from a data perspective, not better graphics.
Wanting better graphics (more resolution, more effects, etc) will almost always limit the large environment genre even more, meaning you could probably have such large environments in a game if it hadn't been for the focus on graphics.

If one could initially limit the graphics to something slightly above Wii level, I suspect both Xbox360 and PS3 could have larger landscapes and more CPU time left for physics and the like, not to mention what a middle- to high-end PC could do. This would obviously make a lot of people annoyed, since they would think the graphics are sub-par, but once you have the kind of game and gameplay you want, the graphics can slowly start to improve over time.

- but -alas- nothing like it happened, because in one hand consoles are too weak for -truly- open environments and on the other they offer a risk-aversion (like you put it) sanctuary. Thus indeed there's no reason for anyone to innovate.

It's not so much the console hardware's faults, actually, but rather the industry painting themselves into a corner by focusing so much on GFX and sound that their current consumerbase would, to some degree, go nuts over them trying to prioritize anything else. Their risk-aversion has no long term sanctuary on consoles, though, as they already have trouble making ends meet, due to the market being too small to support their costs. Their target market is slowly, but steadily, shrinking, and their only chances to survive in some form is to become a small "exclusive" niche market with outrageous prices, or by changing the way they operate.

Console makers make it sure that only big companies can create AA title (due to licence fees) while at the same time they give neither the HW capabilities nor the environment to foster innovation.

It's not so much license fees (though that probably hurts, too), as it is an imbalance between developer/publisher costs and the market's ability to support such costs. The kind of graphics and marketing (read hype) that make for a AAA (whatever that really means) blockbuster game is something very few studios can afford, and the market is so small and competitive that such AAA games grab almost all the money the target consumers are willing to spend.
The result: a few big studios/publishers can afford to make the safe "big" games that are that sell enough to be profitable, the rest either fold, are bought up or go away in some other fashion.

Sony and Microsoft can't exactly make beefier hardware either, as they are already not making much (if any) profit with the hardware they sell today. Besides, Nintendo showed how you don't necessarily need more powerful hardware, but a different interface or something else that requires thinking outside of the box. I guess Portal's physics-based gameplay (as much as I haven't gotten a chance to play it myself) would also be a good example of innovative thinking.

MS and Sony also don't have much to say about the environment being good for innovation or not, as they are the ones relying on third parties (what is basically the industry) to make their consoles sell. While they are trying to find some way of igniting interest among gamers with Natal and Arc, those peripherals are entirely dependent upon the third parties for success. They will most likely fail.

It's depressing that the last of the genres was invented back in 1992 and since then we basically get the same gameplay with "shinier graphics" (the abject part of what I meant by GFX advancement).

And -no- I'm not a hardcore gamer because I find no reason to be, I have played most of those "new" games out there over a decade ago, there's no reason to get the same experience over and over again (only with shinier gfx)...

MMOs (with their inherent social factor) would pretty much be the latest genre to become somewhat mainstream, right? But yeah, it's mostly just rehashes over and over again. Saddening, indeed. I guess it's what you get for having suits like Kotick, with no love of gaming, running the companies. Still, I'm hopeful that they will all fall down, once innovative disruption has knocked the chairs out from under them
I the meantime, there are still some companies innovating on Wii, DS and through flash games (amusingly enough). Oh, and there's always DosBOX

One genre's gameplay I think really is enhanced by graphics (when combined with good input capabilities) is racing sims. Anything you can do to make the environment look and feel more realistic helps to translate the sensation of speed and the limitation of the vehicle to the user.

To some extent, yes. The sensation of speed does help racing games, but it still only goes so far. I think some F-Zero game from a number of years back has had the greatest sensation of speed that I've seen so far, which could possibly indicate that we've reached the point of diminishing returns. I don't know how things like EyeFinity (as niche as it currently is) can help by providing peripheral vision, as I haven't been able to try it out, but I can't think of any other way to improve that aspect. I'd love to see someone do it, though

[Stevethegreat]

@Aerwidh:

Apparently we mean different things about the term "Graphics". The sheer shader power of modern CPUs could be used for calculations other than simple effects (see nVidia's CUDA, Open CL and DirectCompute).

Due to the graphical stagnation of our days the sheer power of modern GPUs is being reduced on adding irrelevant (mostly) effects to software created to run on 4 generations old hardware. Therefore you have the 8-10x times faster than any of the consoles' GPUs HD5870 to be languished due to the lack of imagination and incentive of Game developers, on doing mathematically complex but creatively simple calculations (high res, AA, AF).

If the environment of videogames' industry was different (relevant to what existed 15 years ago) there's no telling on what kind of innovations could had been there. For example some would say (like indeed they did) that 2D was the best gaming would do as there was no way (back then) to handle a character in a 3D environment, yet the chance for innovation and the thrill of doing/playing sth new pushed the market to accept a totally alien and new type of gameplay (which "strangely enough" now is the norm).

The same could had happened in 2000s, yet it didn't and the fact that the market got bigger is hardly a good explanation (if anything a big market would foster innovation through the creation of niches).

ATI's cards and the upcoming (Wild) Fermi are nothing but chunks of silicon, powerful enough to change the way culture operates (by turning gaming into sth different, more dynamic and relevant to people -like say what became of movies and music), yet they sit there only to please benchmarkers. *That's* sad...

[TheBlueChanell]

Is this gonna be better optimized for Nvidia cards again?

I think that was more of a driver problem than anything. As drivers matured for both the GTX2** and the HD4*** the performance "advantage" nvidia had seemed to dwindle. Towards the end of the cycles the 4890 was just as fast as or faster than a GTX280/5 in Crysis.

[Rock&Roll]

To some extent, yes. The sensation of speed does help racing games, but it still only goes so far. I think some F-Zero game from a number of years back has had the greatest sensation of speed that I've seen so far, which could possibly indicate that we've reached the point of diminishing returns. I don't know how things like EyeFinity (as niche as it currently is) can help by providing peripheral vision, as I haven't been able to try it out, but I can't think of any other way to improve that aspect. I'd love to see someone do it, though

Such is the problem with racing sims. Usually, when I see newcomers trying out a real-sim race game, they have a hard time slowing in time for turns and holding their lines. The real issue is that these sim games often feel slower than what they really are. We are used to speed beeing exaggerated for the sake of our 2D display limited perception. Adding outside monitors via eyfinity or SofTH does a lot to give the player a more immersed sense of the speeds being simulated.

[Calmatory]

I think that was more of a driver problem than anything. As drivers matured for both the GTX2** and the HD4*** the performance "advantage" nvidia had seemed to dwindle. Towards the end of the cycles the 4890 was just as fast as or faster than a GTX280/5 in Crysis.

That's exactly what the optimization was. Crytek and Nvidia have always been co-operating, hence why Nvidia had an edge there(engine optimized for G80, Nvidia optimized their drivers for Crysis).

[Hockster]

I just want the Crysis 2 to suck less than the original. By sucking I mean not turn completely retarded at the midpoint. Crawling through the jungle was awesome, swimming through an alien ship was stupid beyond belief.

[Tim]

I just want the Crysis 2 to suck less than the original. By sucking I mean not turn completely retarded at the midpoint. Crawling through the jungle was awesome, swimming through an alien ship was stupid beyond belief.

Hmm, a bit like Marmite then. I thought it was awesome.

[jmke]

the alien and monsters in Crysis & Far Cry spoiled it for me too; why not stick with humans?

[Helloworld_98]

the alien and monsters in Crysis & Far Cry spoiled it for me too; why not stick with humans?

because aliens are a complete other level of gameplay,

People don't complain of aliens and monsters in Mass Effect, Fallout, Bioshock, Stalker, Metro 2033, the list goes on, so why should people complain about them in Crysis?

[jellyrole]

I agree, the Aliens MADE Crysis. Without them in the game there wouldn't be a story line. Everything that happened in the first and Warhead was wrapped around Aliens, you can't say it ruined the game when it was the game.

[jmke]

of course I can say that it ruined the game; it's my opinion that monsters and aliens in certain games don't add to the gameplay or immersion factor, I enjoyed those scenes against the enemy AI humans , the maps with aliens were a shore... not fun.

the story could have easily been written to exclude aliens, making it all about a secret weapon, a thermal changing superdevice or whatever; very easy to do, and would not hurt the story one bit.
replace the flying aliens gunships with human gunships and you got that covered too.
Far Cry was fun to play until those mutated AI monsters entered the game.

People don't complain of aliens and monsters in Mass Effect, Fallout, Bioshock, Stalker, Metro 2033, the list goes on, so why should people complain about them in Crysis?

because not everybody shares the same ideas, expects the same things, wants the same thing;
the fact that 2 people in this thread complain about the "alien setting" in Crysis, disproves your first sentence that "people don't complain about it".

IMHO it would be more interesting story and gameplay wise to make it more jamesbondlike supervillian , without the need to add aliens or monsters.
What you are saying is that if the next James Bond would feature ALIENS, it would be OK, because there are aliens and monsters in other moves, so why should people complain about them in JB?

... ya... logic out the door.

[Chruschef]

Crysis runs just fine on my GTX280 @ 1600x1280(windowed) on the equivalent of very high settings. I made my own autoexec.cfg for the game tailored to the GTX280's strengths and weaknesses, but there are tons of effective autoexec.cfg files online. The main problem with CryEngine 2 on the original very high is that it runs every last little idea Crytek had while making the engine, so it's really bloated with crap you don't need of want. Once you've turned those off, and dialed down the draw distance, and other properties of far away foliage, the game runs pretty well. I average 41 FPS with my custom settings, and 23 FPS without them.

@jmke, I agree that the aliens make the game awkward and annoying. The AI for them is just stupid, they just kind of... float around. The last boss is a joke, it just kind of moves around and on Delta difficulty it just shoots like crazy. I think the game would have been better if the aliens weren't completely different from humans in combat style, so that it could maintain the plot line as well as the action. The AI for the humans(NKs) is really quite good, while the idle they clean, piss, eat, patrol, etc. like a normal army.

I really hoped Crysis 2 would get rid of the repititive animations, I'm sick of doing everything the exact same way. If game engineers would make two or three animations for every input. Assassin's Creed pissed me off with it's repititiveness.

[annihilat0r]

Far Cry's aliens sucked and were so out of place; and I agree that after the appearance of aliens Crysis was less fun. However I don't think it had anything to do with aliens - after that point the game's locations became completely linear (like a console game where you are forbidden to fall off cliffs) whereas you had many options to approach your destination before.

[>HyperlogiK<]

because aliens are a complete other level of gameplay,

People don't complain of aliens and monsters in Mass Effect, Fallout, Bioshock, Stalker, Metro 2033, the list goes on, so why should people complain about them in Crysis?

The inclusion of aliens usually makes a game much worse.

The basic problem is that FPS games in general have outgrown the Doom/Serious Sam 'shoot endless hordes of aliens' model and a lot of them have moved towards the feel of a 'gritty action thriller.' You can make gritty sci-fi action thrillers that feature aliens [District 9 is a great example] but it is a lot harder to do than just a military/spy thriller. The big problem is suspension of disbelief, I'll accept generic human grunts, I'll accept aliens, I'll accept a generic conspiracy, but as soon as you add too many implausible factors together the story starts to grate. It's difficult to play for too long when you want every character to die.

Also it is just plain difficult to do aliens that appear/act both genuinely alien and that don't appear/act too ridiculous. Usually games and film fall into the pitfall of including an alien character or characters who are basically just a human character with green skin and futuristic weapons [like Avatar].

Stalker managed to explain it's monsters quite well as did Fallout 3, fitting them into the generally campy 1950s feel of the game. Mass Effect 2 was some generic sci-fi drivel, so of course there were going to be aliens.

But Crysis and Far Cry both started off feeling like badly written thrillers and were somewhat enjoyable. But then halfway through each one of two things seemed to happen, the devs ran out of ideas and thought "lets stick aliens in there because we can't make jungle combat interesting any more."

[jmke]

yes the AI of the monsters and aliens was quite bad, they indeed just floated straight for you, Doom style. compared to the AI of the human opponents...

[RaZz!]

[...]
What you are saying is that if the next James Bond would feature ALIENS, it would be OK, because there are aliens and monsters in other moves, so why should people complain about them in JB?

... ya... logic out the door.

i don't get your comparison with james bond. aliens are not what you'd expect in a james bond movie as the james bond series created a completely different story/plot/environment.
crysis on the other hand is the inofficial sequel to far cry, and crytek already created the plot of far cry around monsters/monster-like creatures. so there's nothing else to expect from it, is it?

it's the same about crysis 2 now. the only thing we know atm is that the game (atleast a part of it) takes place in a city environment. however, since far cry had monsters and crysis had aliens i would be foolish to not expect a story based on smth like that again

[Serpentarius]

if speaking on aliens .....
to me this alien plot does not have any active role besides fighting, the only active role is military taking advantage of their technologies
unlike Half Life 2 aliens ... which focus on planetary dominance, these alien Crysis pretty much docile to me ... it's like the floating around doing nothing without any meaning

maybe Crysis 2 should expand the alien storyline into a bigger role ... like dominating earth etc, with war going around the globe ... it'll be fun that way, maybe incorporate MMO into it

[RaZz!]

[...]
maybe Crysis 2 should expand the alien storyline into a bigger role ... like dominating earth etc, with war going around the globe ... it'll be fun that way, maybe incorporate MMO into it

that's what i am hoping for.

there's a huge blackbox in the story at the end of crysis. at first there was to hope warhead picks up on some of the missing info from crysis, but that wasn't the case.

so i'm quite confused about the city environment they showcase in crysis 2, as this seem to have nothing to do with the "missing" ending in crysis.

[jmke]

i don't get your comparison with james bond. aliens are not what you'd expect in a james bond movie as the james bond series created a completely different story/plot/environment.

Aliens and Monstes is not what I expected in Crysis and Far Cry...

[RaZz!]

Aliens and Monstes is not what I expected in Crysis and Far Cry...

i think you misunderstood me. after playing far cry, you KNEW it has monster in it. hence you could have been prepared for smth like that in crysis as well...

crytek built an image of themselves to create games with monsters/aliens. why? look at the games

it's like you'd expect a batman game to be about.. well.. batman why do you expect that? because batman movies and games always suggested it's about a guy named batman

[jmke]

so you were expecting Aliens in Titanic too because it was made by the same guy as Avatar?
where does it say Crysis story has anything to do with FC1 storyline?

[Aerwidh]

Sorry if it's annoying to have such long posts to read, I tend to get carried away at times

Apparently we mean different things about the term "Graphics". The sheer shader power of modern CPUs could be used for calculations other than simple effects (see nVidia's CUDA, Open CL and DirectCompute).

I guess we do. I should probably start reading your comments several times before I reply, these misunderstandings are getting old
I agree that GPUs could be used for other things, only problem is that it's hard to make mainstream use of them when most people sit on an IGP or really low-end card. One has to make things in an economically viable way, meaning we are not quite there yet for a lot of more generic calculations. Hopefully, with even low-end cards starting to have a bit of power in them (as well as being geared more towards general calculations), we will soon be at the point where GPUs can help with all kinds of things in addition to pure graphics. Got any ideas about what they could be used for?

Due to the graphical stagnation of our days the sheer power of modern GPUs is being reduced on adding irrelevant (mostly) effects to software created to run on 4 generations old hardware. Therefore you have the 8-10x times faster than any of the consoles' GPUs HD5870 to be languished due to the lack of imagination and incentive of Game developers, on doing mathematically complex but creatively simple calculations (high res, AA, AF).

Yes, newer high-end GPUs are often not utilized the way one would like to see them. We're talking a pretty niche market, though, so it's not surprising. Once consoles stop trying to mimic PCs (something I hope will happen within 2-3 years), you may see more users return to PC gaming, allowing for some software to catch up with the hardware. For the time being, however, there is simply not much of a reason for devs to make software that stresses high-end GPUs, as the return on time and resources invested is rather small.

Personally, I'm not really very bothered by the lack of high resolutions and similar, as I think the larger issue lies in most modern games being boring anyway (something more use of graphics cannot cure), but I can still appreciate your position.

If the environment of videogames' industry was different (relevant to what existed 15 years ago) there's no telling on what kind of innovations could had been there. For example some would say (like indeed they did) that 2D was the best gaming would do as there was no way (back then) to handle a character in a 3D environment, yet the chance for innovation and the thrill of doing/playing sth new pushed the market to accept a totally alien and new type of gameplay (which "strangely enough" now is the norm).

The big difference that I see, looking back to the middle of the 90's, is that there weren't as many huge behemoth companies with suits running the show, but more of a gamer-centric environment.
Interplay used to have the motto "By gamers, for gamers", which is a very different attitude than that of today's companies (more like a "by studios, for stockholders" thing).
What you say about "pushed the market to accept a totally alien and new type of gameplay" is interesting, because a very large part of the market did not. Developers were, however, too busy making 3D games (which was more "cool") to reflect on this. The result: a ton of gamers got left behind by companies, and thereby stopped gaming almost entirely.

Many people still prefer 2D gaming to 3D gaming, as the gameplay of something like 2D platformers is extremely difficult to replicate in 3D, whereas racing games have become better in 3D that they were in 2D (as it suits their nature better). If gaming had continued to stick with both 2D and 3D games, you would probably have seen a more healthy, and much larger, gaming population, as well as more gaming companies making different and innovative games. You could possibly have had better looking games, too, since the market could have been large enough to sustain such games.
While 2D gaming was pretty much all there was back then, now there is almost nothing but 3D gaming in the Industry, despite neither one being inherently superior to the other.

The same could had happened in 2000s, yet it didn't and the fact that the market got bigger is hardly a good explanation (if anything a big market would foster innovation through the creation of niches).

A lot of the growth can be explained by approximately the same (or somewhat smaller) percentage of the population playing games, while the population grew (meaning more gamers in total). Seen against the general population, it's still a rather niche market, and in many ways it's just a few types of games being made. This, of course, is not a reason for the lack of innovation, but more a result of it.
The main problem is, I think, that gaming became more industrialized and started being controlled by people who saw it as being no different than making commodities (Activision's Kotick being the best example of this that I've seen). All that now mattered was making money by putting out games over and over again. Since trying new concepts and making different games was difficult and risky, companies started focusing on making very similar games over and over again, and using things like hype to sell them (a much easier thing to do).
As production values like graphics and sound was all that was "improved", we now have the problem of too high expectations in that area, meaning all resources are spent there (in order not to fall behind one's competition) and almost nothing is spent on taking a chance with new ideas, thus nothing new comes into the market. Oh, and there is obviously a ton of resources wasted on hype and advertising, instead of on development.

ATI's cards and the upcoming (Wild) Fermi are nothing but chunks of silicon, powerful enough to change the way culture operates (by turning gaming into sth different, more dynamic and relevant to people -like say what became of movies and music), yet they sit there only to please benchmarkers. *That's* sad...

High-end rarely changes anything nearly as much as low- or mid-end, so don't expect too much of it. Also, we don't need to turn gaming into something different, we just need to get rid of the people (mostly the suits on top of the Industry) who are not trying to make games, but rather different things.
It is indeed a tragedy in a way, but seeing the companies doing all this to gaming getting desperate and trying to stop the cliff that they are racing towards can also be quite amusing (especially as they are getting what they deserve for destroying a lot of gaming).

Such is the problem with racing sims. Usually, when I see newcomers trying out a real-sim race game, they have a hard time slowing in time for turns and holding their lines. The real issue is that these sim games often feel slower than what they really are. We are used to speed beeing exaggerated for the sake of our 2D display limited perception. Adding outside monitors via eyfinity or SofTH does a lot to give the player a more immersed sense of the speeds being simulated.

Probably quite true, yes.

[RaZz!]

so you were expecting Aliens in Titanic too because it was made by the same guy as Avatar?
where does it say Crysis story has anything to do with FC1 storyline?

we're obviously talking at cross-purposes... but whatever.