Crysis 2: Crytek's Nathan Camarillo

Written by Nicole Kline  on September 15, 2010

Interview: Newsflash: Crysis 2 will be playable for everyone!

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Crysis 2's intense multiplayer was playable at a pre-PAX media event, and Mike Gutierrez and I were there to test out the Nanosuit. We found the multiplayer to be fast-paced and intense, two things we love in online first person shooter experiences. Afterwards, we got a chance to sit down with Crytek's Executive Producer, Nathan Camarillo, and ask him some questions about this upcoming sci-fi sequel.

Gaming Target: You guys did the thing at Gamescom, and now this - it just seems like there's a big focus on multiplayerЕwhy is that what you're showing right now?

Nathan Camarillo: OK, so at E3 and prior to E3 there was the New York event where we did the Crysis 2 reveal, and that was the big event we did in April in New York, there was a pre-E3 event at EA LA, about one month before E3, and then we had E3, and all of those were single player. So we hadn't shown or talked about multiplayer at all, so Gamescom was just a couple of weeks ago and this was right after it so we hadn't even talked about it until a few weeks ago.



GT: What do you think is going to make this game stand out among all the first person shooters that are out there, like with regards to multiplayer?

Camarillo: The Nanosuit. I mean first and foremost it's the Nanosuit, I mean it's awesome. I want one, we have a statue, a Nanosuit statue in the office at work. It's lifesize, we had it made from the actual 3D game geometry at very, very high res. We had it, you know how they have the printed 3D stereolithographic prints and characters and stuff like that? We had the Nanosuit made out of these, like one piece at a time, all glued together, you know pieced together, so it's lifesize and it's all just made out of all these pieces like a puzzle. So every day I come to work, it's like I give it a hug, and this is why I come to work, I mean that's the main thing that separates us from the other games, because you're not just a guy in a uniform, with body armor, you have this awesome piece of warfare technology that makes you into the ultimate super soldier.



You jump in in the heat of battle, you can throw on Armor, you can throw on Cloak, you can get tactical information about your enemies, you put on Mobile like on the Rooftops level and grab on ledges and hang off, so you'll find the combat is faster than most games, because you know you go, like most games if I'm here and the action is here, then I have to wind through the whole level and go up stairs and climb up ladders and, you know, do all this other stuff to get over here; in ours, you can just make a beeline but you're jumping and climbing over stuff, Parkour, you're like climbing around, I mean if you want to do that you can get there fast you might be exposing yourself to fire because you're not moving from cover to cover to get there, so your combat can be faster and then when you're in combat because we want to protect you, you don't become a bullet sponge but we slow down so you don't cross the stream of bullets, it's just a little bit longer, it gives you enough time to try to react and figure out where your target's at or maybe you can throw on Cloak or throw on Armor and you can be an escape artist, you can get out in the heat of battle or maybe turn the tide on your foes or key men can jump in and help out and you have these moments where it's like Уoh man if I just would've put on armor I could've survived thatФ so it makes it more dynamic but then also that's the credit of pick up and play but team wars, the clan play, not only do you have the Nanosuit but the modules you can equip.

There are other games that have perks and loadouts and stuff but what we do is we take the Nanosuit and we push it even further so we enhance Stealth gameplay, Armor gameplay, you know if you're information gathering you have tactical capabilities so we enhance that gameplay even further by the loadouts you equip and this becomes really important with team based gameplay, you may designate one player to be a scout who gets up on a high perch with Mobility and stays cloaked the whole match and uses the visor to get tactical information to tag enemies for the whole team to spot positions or be a spotter and may have a module equipped like we have one that we're showing off here called Predator and it draws a forensic bullet trail when a guy fires a shot so you can see where people are shooting from. You might see where a sniper is, who you may not see very often, but you're helping the whole balance of your team and if a team is not well-equipped to handle that tactic or strategy, they may not do well.

And you may have your custom loadout slots but you're not taking the same thing in every time, it may depend on the game mode that you're playing. So if you're playing Crash Site you may want a completely different loadout than playing Team Instant Action, you know, from a tactical point of view. So it's going to expand the gameplay even further than most games do and that's all based on the Nanosuit. And then on top of that, it's set in New York, which is cool. There's all this cool chaos and destruction and set pieces and tunnels, and we're very familiar to a lot of people, we sit comfortably in between modern military shooters like Battlefield, Call of Duty, and those other games, but also we have aliens and the Nanosuit so it's science fiction so we sit between Halo and these kinds of games. It's a very broad audience appeal, there're all these conventional weapons but we also have sci-fi weapons.

GT: What made Crytek want to go from the jungle to the urban jungle? And why New York?

Camarillo: The main thing was with Crysis 1 it was a very fun game, very compelling, with the actual moment, story, setting and all that stuff, but it took place on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you know, off the Asian coast. The setting itself told a really cool story. We changed the island over time with the story, it evolved as the story evolved, but you didn't really care about the island, you didn't care if that island existed, if it existed before you got there, if it existed after. There wasn't really a civilian population, there were these little villages but they were only for military outposts, there wasn't really an indigenous population, you didn't feel like you were helping anyone so there was no emotional context for the setting. So we wanted to move it to somewhere people cared about but it wasn't like Уhey let's move it to New York.Ф



The team looked at all of the locations and asked, what city would you put it in? You know we put Paris, London, Tokyo, New York, blah blah blah. Always, at the end, New York had the most to offer I would say with diversity of architecture, environments, big parks like Central Park, small parks in the middle of the city intersection, big urban, big rooftops, and then the visual architecture style changing. That's the cool thing about New York. There have been a lot of movies and games set in it, but it always changes. Every presentation is different. Even looking in the last couple of years, you got two survival horror movies Ц one is Cloverfield, one is I Am Legend. And the presentation of the city was completely different, unlike anything anyone's ever done before. And it's always cool, New York's one of the coolest cities on Earth. That's why New York.

GT: Is there going to be a map editor, I know that's something you guys do, and would that be in the console version?

Camarillo: Um, I can't comment on the map editor, specifically, but in our history we've always done it, and our community, our multiplayer community, our mod community, is always very important to us. We've even recruited people directly out of the mod community, because they know how to use our tools, we're looking for someone in particular and we look at what they've done in the mod community and if it's very applicable to what we're looking for we say УOK yeah, we can train them to do what we need them to do, they already know the tools.Ф

School is important, but you can't learn how to use CryEngine by going to school, as an example. Some curriculums are teaching it, using CryEngine now, but in the past that wasn't the case. So it wasn't like you could just take a guy out of school and put him to work right away, you had to train him to work as well as working in a team environment, working on a big project, and you know, it's a small portion of a very big project but that small portion is very, very important, so it's a pre-training world, you know. We've had some cool stories where, someone has made some very awesome mods or levels on their own, whatever. We bring them in, and they say, Уcan I bring my dad with?Ф Because they're underage. It's awesome these kids are making very, very awesome mods, and we're like УYeah... OK, awesome work, amazing. Can you come back when you're 18 or 20, or let's talk about an apprenticeshipЕ You're just too young, but other than thatЕФ

GT: What really made you want to bring this to home consoles and not just the PC?

Camarillo: Well, first, it's about getting a great game into as many gamers' hands as possible. We all love games, we all make games, we want more people to play our games, because the more people playing it, the better. We want people to experience an awesome Crysis style of game play.

GT: Well, we're very excited because we didn't get to play the first one...

Camarillo: A lot of people didn't, so that's one aspect of it. The other is we said a game like Crysis could never run on consoles, this is something that was said very publicly when Crysis 1 was shipping, but then we've come to the realization that if Уwell, if we don't do it, someone else will...Ф So OK, we'll be the first to do it and we know how to already make a Crysis style game. So then it became a challenge, how do we make that happen, and that started the whole architecture of CryEngine 3. How do we make something as powerful and as beautiful looking as CryEngine 2 that can run on consoles and scale and take the bulk of a PC developer as well? So it was all a challenge.



GT: Was it limiting?

Camarillo: It's not limiting as much as you really have to be economical with your decisions. So your tendency is when you're making something for PC developers, you can over-engineer and over-design because you always have more keys available on the keyboard, or raise the minimum specs or throw more hardware at it. But when you're appealing to a broader market, working with console gamers, a console interface, and everything else, you have to realize УOK, well what is really important about this game and what's really the core?Ф And you expand on those things, and that's not to say... You know, I've read some articles with people who haven't played Crysis 2 yet because no one's played the whole thing except our team, and they're concerned or they speculate that it's streamlined, or there've been compromises, and there haven't... We just took some of the stuff people weren't using or doing, we just took it out. Because it wasn't that important, it wasn't about the core of what the game was, and the core that was important, what Crysis 2 is, we've expanded on it and taken it even further Ц the modules are an example of that. So the Nanosuit was important in Crysis 1, but the modules take it even further, and the modules are available in single player as well as multiplayer.

You have more available in multiplayer because they're rough necks. Like, you don't need an anti-sniper gun in single player because no one's trying to snipe you but AI. But a lot of the modules become relevant in single player as well. So, like in Crysis 1 at any point in time you can duck behind a piece of cover, pull up your customization wheel, put your gun up, put on a grenade launcher, throw on a scope, or take off the scope, you can change the gun then jump right back into combat. Well you can do that with the gun, you can do this with the Nanosuit, all you do is change your modules out. And then change your modules, they reset, and now you get the benefit of the modules in combat. So you can go, Уoh crap, there's too many guys, I really want my clips to last a little bit longer, or maybe there's cloaked enemies here I could detect.Ф You can't do that in multiplayer, it's based on your spawn, but you can change the style of play based on what you want.

GT: What platform are you going to use to play through Crysis 2?

Camarillo: I already have!

[laughs]



GT: When the game ships, what are you going to play it on?

Camarillo: Honestly, I'll probably play on all of them, I love playing multiplayer, I'm as comfortable playing multiplayer on 360 as I am on PC. On PC, I also like keyboard and mouse, so it's a different level of comfortability, but I also appreciate all of the limitations. I'm pretty much the same way with other popular games that are out. I'll play them on PC, I'll play multiplayer, I just play a lot of them. Sometimes it's about playing them on my laptop, or playing them on the computer. But sometimes I want to sit on my couch and just lay on my side as well.