One of the most exciting aspects of Crysis is the technological enhancements it will introduce. Being the first true DX10 game will be an important achievement but it will also mean that the game will be scrutinized to a much greater extent than other titles.
Well, to get things straight, enjoying the full Crysis experience will not be cheap. First you will have to buy the actual game but then you will, almost certainly, need to upgrade your rig. A DX10 graphics card is a pre-requisite and those are not widely available yet and are bound to set you back a good 300-400 dollars. If you are not breaking a sweat already then consider the final expense, a copy of Windows Vista as, controversially, Microsoft has decided that its new OS will be the only one to support DirectX 10.
If you decide to upgrade your setup as necessary, you will be getting the best technology in gaming that the industry has to offer. Much like Crytek’s previous offering, Far Cry, Crysis will be the game to introduce you to a new era in gaming.
The best expression to describe the technology behind Crysis is cutting-edge, as the game will feature the latest developments in graphics, lighting, animation and physics. Using deformable vegetation, individual leaves on a plant will bend when a player pushes past them or when the wind is blowing, your surroundings will blur (motion blur) when you turn quickly, while all objects in the game will have distinct physical properties which will change as environmental conditions change. The importance of all this technology is not only decorative but Crytek has plans of incorporating it into gameplay; the bending leaves for example could alert the player to the presence of an enemy taking cover in the foliage, while the developer hopes that the interactivity of the world will also allow room for players to discover their own uses of the environment.
The leaves tell tales…
Advanced lighting will also be utilized by Crysis, high dynamic range lighting will, of course, be used while the developer is also working on a way to have lighting and colors interact in order to create more realistic lighting effects. Finally depth of field will also be used so that when a player focuses on a nearby object, those in the distance will appear blurred. Additionally Crytek is working on a method of altering the way colors are perceived according to the intensity of a situation, so in action packed moments colors will appear grittier in an attempt to mimic the effects of adrenaline on perception.
Putting the graphics to one side, you will also need a decent CPU to run the game while 64-bit and multi-threading support in Crysis are a given. All this technology may fire-up the imagination but it, in no way, offers a guarantee that Crysis will be a good game so let’s examine what you can expect from the…
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