Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli at the Gun Store in Las Vegas during the January 2007 Consumer Electronics Show

Longtime readers of Level Up may remember that during the January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we hit the Gun Store with several Electronic Arts and Crytek employees; among them, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli, to squeeze off a few rounds on the shooting range. But it wasn't all shotgun blasts and loud whoops; we also got some quality time with Yerli himself, in the Microsoft booth, to discuss his company's first-person shooter for Windows, Crysis.

Crytek made its bones with the massively scaled, go-anywhere, lush island setting of Far Cry, which was published by Ubisoft. Amidst rumblings of a tense relationship between the two, Crytek and Ubisoft parted ways, allowing EA to swoop and pick up ze Germans' stunningly gorgeous forthcoming first-person shooter, Crysis. (At this rate, True Cryme is all but inevitable.) We've been salivating over Crysis ever since we saw it last summer, and we can only hope that EA's recent media tour means that the game's ship date isn't far away. Back in January, however, we discussed how Crytek is balancing Crysis around the reconfigurable super-powered suit that your character wears; the influence of classic platformers on the game's level design; and why Yerli believes that Crysis will become a favorite of the pro gaming scene. Read on.

Looking at Crysis here, what kind of system is it running on: Vista, DX10, what?

It's a high-end gamer rig--with essentially the only difference being it runs on a G80, GeForce 8800, and running on Vista right now. So full DX10 specifications. And the demo that we're seeing here, from the gameplay content, essentially is that we're showing our core gameplay: the suit play, where you can change the speed, strength and armor, which allows you a wider range of opportunities to outsmart any AI challenge in a more variety. For example, speed allows quicker sprinting and longer jumps. With strength you can jump higher and also pick up enemies. We can see here on the energy bar, it's being consumed all the time, and that's sort of your suit power, suit energy. And when you change between speed-strength-armor, you have to be careful that your energy bar is still available, so you can actually gain the benefit of it. And in armor mode, you essentially become a walking tank, so it's like you can absorb more damage and you heal faster because it's putting in a healing mode.

In terms of the suit, what determines your ability to switch among the three abilities? Is it energy?

You have an energy bar, as a bar which you--which consumes while it charges. And anytime, for example, you can just use it and if it depletes the energy bar, then the suit does malfunction for a couple of seconds so that the suit charges again. So it's actually just an energy bar and you can change it at any moment and any given situation. And that's the nice thing about it; it's not like an RPG where you have a one-way street to increase your strength or speed or armor. In this case it's more like a crossroad. I can change my abilities whenever I want, for any given situation, to adapt to survive the challenge.

With the player having that kind of flexibility, how do you design the levels and the encounters to challenge them?

A player has an advantage inherently. Because of the suit, he can do more than an average soldier. But he's always disadvantaged by the number of people. He's alone, and the enemies are greater. However, while the play is balanced one against one, one against three or four becomes a little bit more difficult. One against the whole camp is even more difficult, as you can imagine. So the player's job is to make sure he from time to time repositions and reassesses the situation and then gets back, changes the configuration and gets in again. So he needs to constantly be tactical in his gameplay decisions, instead of just hiding and shooting and running and shooting. It's more about, "Okay, there's two guys there. Look back, think, and engage my sprint; sprint there, jump on the roof, take him out. Next one. Who's my next two targets?" So if you do this successfully, the chance to survive is then given. So level design with the amount of enemies, positioning of the enemies and the way the we present them is the way we balance the gameplay.

Now, is the person playing here a Crytek employee?

Yes. He's a senior designer at Crytek.

In the early focus groups, how do you find that people play the game when they're new to it? He was sort of playing it very action movie-style. It was clear to me that he knew what he was doing and switching the suit powers back and forth, that kind of thing? How do people who've never played it before play the game? What have you observed in their play patterns?

The first thing that we observed is that people were not jumping in our designs, initially. They were not using speed, not using strength much. But it was our mistake, because we didn't make it tangible enough; we didn't make it a strong enough difference. So we said, "Guys, we need to make it more bad-ass," essentially. [Laughs.] So we started doing it more bad ass. And then also we need to put in some environments like fences and buildings where you know there is a platform, but you know you can't get there unless you use your suit. You can jump up, but it's almost unreachable. But if you use all the strength you can reach it.

Right.

So it's like the old platforming, where, "Can I get there?" You try it. "No, I can't get there." But in that case it's simulating, "Okay. I cannot get there by normal, but I can get there for sure with strength." So that way the player understands, once he sees a bigger difference, "Oh, I have much more benefit here. Then he starts doing it more and more. Same with the sprint, using speed. The first time he uses it, he maybe runs against a wall. The second time he uses it, he understands the distance when using speed--when speed is at 100 percent energy--how far he can sprint. The next time, he says, "Okay, there's a tree there and I'm here. it's about 50 meters. I know I can get there with one sprint." So he sees an enemy there, and zip--he's where he wants to be. So we train him to understand the various gameplay scenarios, what the benefits are. And then he uses the benefits more and more himself.

Did you look at any 2-D platformers, or even 3-D platformers like Super Mario 64 or Ratchet & Clank, in terms of thinking about how to handle the verticality in Crysis?

Yes, to some degree. But more important is the design--which we used in Far Cry to some degree, but here we use it stronger--which is about standardizing the gameplay language in our subtle way; about pre-determined lengths, speeds and heights. In terms of the heights all being sort of the same, but you never really perceive the level as a game, because everything looks real. But from a design level, everything looks the same, because we use templates or boxes and shapes and set distances in order to design the level.

Once the designer completes the level, we say to the art department "Now make this look more interesting." But you can--for example, this height block, you can actually edit for the art to make it a little bit lower. That's fine, to make it look more interesting. But for the gameplay language, it's about the same height, because otherwise the player will never understand. So it doesn't have to be exactly ten meters; it can be 8.55 or 9.55, but not more than 10 meters. So as long as it's this natural variation, you always get these photorealistic graphics, but with a good gameplay language. So it's about standardizing the gameplay.

The suit allows for sort of player style and variation. Do you find that as people learn more about the game and understand the game, that they end up playing variations of what I'm seeing here? I notice your senior designer moving, getting into a situation, stopping, taking guys out, then moving on--these little moments where he stops and assesses and thinks. That's different from other action shooters, where it's a lot of running through the level, a lot of run and gun.

I think it's impossible. It's actually, in fact, impossible to run through a game. You cannot run through it. If you run through a level, the enemies will chase you down. The fact is, they've also been designed to occasionally allow you a breather. But you will never notice that. [Laughs.] It's like, "Okay, the player's resting; let's give him some time. [Pause.] Okay, let's attack him again," sort of. But it's not like a regular interval, it's hidden in the systems and even the way we manage the player health and everything to make it fair. They're completely new approaches, but we cannot tell what we're doing, because otherwise the player will say, "Hey, you're cheating." But we're not cheating, we're just making sure the player gets a good experience. That's all.

How much of this stuff is carried over into multiplayer?

That's the beauty of it. The suit play, the core feature is completely present, unlike in many shooters where they have a full feature set in single-player, and it just doesn't translate strongly to multiplayer. This is completely integrated in multiplayer. And multiplayer I would say is even more fun.

At the Games Convention [in Leipzig, Germany], for example, we were showing multiplayer for the first time, I was playing the first time myself extensively with the suit. I had played versions before, testing, but I hadn't done many combo moves. I was swimming under the water with speed mode. I dialed up my strength; saw the guy through the refraction on the railing, looking out on the water. He couldn't see me because of the subsurface scattering of the water. [Laughs.] So what I did is--I saw him in the refraction, he couldn't see me from the angle, but I could see him. I dialed up my strength and my speed and dolphin-jumped up, because you can't fire from the water. I dolphin-jumped up and head shot--boom! And the guy was like, "What the f--- was that?" He just saw a guy jumping out of the water, and bang--head shot.

Another time, I saw two people running towards each other. One was dialing up strength, and he jumped over, while the other one jumped just with speed. So it looked like this. [Gestures with his hands to show two opponents jumping towards one another, with one soaring above the other.] And the other guy turned around--with the strength, because he was jumping more vertical--turned around, and shot him with the machine gun. It was like "The Matrix," live. That happens in multiplayer much, much more, because it's about humans really using the tactics.

It seems like you're innovating in a lot of different directions. The graphics are amazing, the gameplay is amazing, the AI is amazing. How do you do that? A number of companies make great games, but they tend to focus on just one thing.

We're completely defocused, that's the reason why. We don't focus. [Laughs.] No, we focus, of course, but we have a variety of all kinds of people in our company. The projects' ambitions already seem impossible at the beginning, when we start. But we never say, "Okay, let's cut the game down right now." We say, "Scope, yes." But the feature set, we say, "No." We don't cut them down yet. We go wide, and we try to keep our focus always on the core idea. The core idea is all about adapting to survive. Like how would you adapt to survive a situation? How we can increase as a developer, in the means of action, the way the player can express his intelligence to outsmart the challenge, at all times? What are the means? The suit. The weapons. The bullets. Then the environment, with the preset sizes and shapes. So all these are means to allow the player to express his ability and intelligence inside the game. When I say express, it's not more keys, but through the keys, more abilities. In a sense, it's more that before Crysis, games were run, shoot; run, shoot. Now it's, "I can do these 50 things. What can I do with my intelligence to outsmart the AI?"

Pushing all the directions in AI and physics and sound--we do it because we want to give more options. For example, during the final game, when you shoot a tree, it will create splinters. You can pick them up and throw them at the AI, or also you can pick them up and throw them just to distract the AI. So you can always create your own weapon with your knife or a punch or with a silencer. You need to distract the AI, but you have nothing else to throw around? Cut down the tree, pick it up and throw it, and see how they react. All of that is pushing technology, pushing in design, pushing in art, to make this gameplay. So it looks defocused, but it's actually focused. [Laughs.]

Great. Are we out of time?

One thing I wanted to mention for multiplayer. The suit play--suit gameplay itself is so strong that even deathmatch itself becomes a new experience. In every other game deathmatch is about the same; in Crysis deathmatch is not the same. It's completely fun; it's probably the most fun multiplayer game right now we have in our office. When we play deathmatch in short size like this camp, it's a blast. People are not stopping playing. It's crazy.

So the last of the questions. The first one is about the AI of the enemies. Can you talk a bit about that and how that works in terms of the gameplay concepts you've been talking about?

Yeah. The AI has evolved since Far Cry. Now we have a system called Smart Objects. Smart Objects is essentially they either have these shapes such as fences or vehicles or rooftops or windows and things like that, door frames, and they negotiate them smarter. And the AI system, so when they navigate, they don't just see just a hole, "This is door. I can lean on it and be tactical about it, or I can jump through the window or I can jump over fences. The whole vehicle combat will increase a lot. They are much more smarter in the vehicles now. The helicopter is way smarter. There's a pilot inside literally as an AI agent, who, when he sees a rocket coming, he essentially pulls it left or right. When you shoot the back rotor, the helicopter starts spinning around. He tries to stabilize it, you can see that in the game, it's great. The vehicles have component damage, so when you shoot on the right wing, it off-balances, and you can see how the guy is trying to establish again. All of that gives the perception of a guy fighting with me. While it always about code, ultimately. [Laughs.] It's just code fighting with you.

When you say Smart Objects, does that mean that there's actually some sort of--is intelligence in the objects, the objects communicate with the AI? Let them know to do certain things, they have options?

Yeah. We started this trend in Far Cry as well. In Far Cry the terrain had the intelligence--not the AI--and the bushes, the trees. They said, "Hey, you can hide here," or "Hey, you can hide here but we can shoot through here," or "Hey, you can hide here, but you can rustle--if it goes through, it makes sounds. Watch out." So it was intelligence, conditions of intelligence inside the environment. With Crysis, we're pushing that much higher now.

Actually it was funny. I was talking to some of the Sims developers about their systems, and they have almost the same system, about communicating intelligence to the environment. And I found it very cool because we're employing this all the time in a shooter and they doing it on the Sims. But the basic idea is the same. The concept is put intelligence in an agent, but also into the world. So the world can broadcast to the agent what it can do. In gameplay terms, the rock says, "Hey, you can hide here," and the AI says "Okay, I'm going to come and hide." So that's a big difference, the way--AI's efficiency is better essentially.

The last question is, with the range of options that you're talking about with the suit, the weapons, the terrain, creating your own, the rules aren't as simple as in other games. Do you feel that the player almost becomes an athlete in a way, as in games like soccer or basketball, where there's a lot more split-second decision-making?

Yeah. The cool thing is, you can do just aim if you want, run and aim and hide again. But the cool thing is the suit, for example, allows you to develop a skill. So by the time you finish the game, and you jump into the multiplayer experience, you will have those skills. And mostly, I bet already right now, in three years from now, there'll be pro gamers who can whip your ass off because you have no chance with the suit against him. He will be just doing combinations and jumps and whatever, in a way I can't even imagine. Because it's a skill-based system, there are timers implemented--we implemented it, soft times where it's not linear. It's like there's an artificial curve of energy consumption, so that the skilled user can recognize that and use it to an advantage of combinations.

So we're just developing a couple things into the energy bar, where the skilled guy can say, "Hey, look. At 20 percent, consumption goes faster than at 40 percent. So if I do speed run till 40 percent and then go to strength and jump at 20 percent, I can close for maybe one-half second more." Like this, right? So the guy can go freaky with it, a pro gamer. You know, in our studio there's one guy who's been playing the suit all the time-he's unfortunately not here--but when he plays it's--when I play and he plays it's like a world of difference.
And the good thing is, in the game, to finish the the single-player experience, you just need the basic experience. But you get proficient by the end. And if by the end if you don't know the suit, I would say "How the hell did you survive the game?"

Have you reached out to any of the pro gaming community or anything like that, to let them know that--

We've got actually in our company one of the best Counter-Strike players in the world. We got one pro gamer, and a couple of QA testers on the EA side have some contacts there. So we have some integration to the pro gamers. And, to be honest, one of the requirements of Crysis from the beginning was to make sure that the absolute core experience of a shooter, which is I shoot and the bullet goes and hits--that absolute thing is the fastest and most optimized we can do, because that defines the absolute skills of a pro gamer.

Because he will trigger faster than you in the end, and that difference we need to make able, the pro gamer versus me, he can shoot me just because he's faster. That must happen. In Far Cry, that didn't happen unfortunately, our network code was not good enough. For Crysis, we started new from there, and at the core of the bullet experience, it's improved, it's skill based, the suit play is skill based, the weapons are skill based, so everything--the pro gamers will just go crazy with it. I know that.

Cevat, thank you very much for the time. I really appreciate it.

My pleasure, N'Gai.