In July, a trailer for Crysis Remastered was leaked to the public. The reaction to that trailer, however, was not positive at all. Fans and critics slammed the game for its graphics. They argued that the graphics looked the exact same as they did 10 years ago. Fans were thoroughly disappointed with the lack of effort being put into the new game.
Crysis Remastered’s New Trailer
However, only yesterday, a new trailer was released by Crytek – the game’s development company. It show-cased massive improvements to the game’s graphics. Moreover, the trailer also clarified that Crysis is to be released across multiple platforms. Furthermore, the trailer also mentioned that Crysis Remastered is coming out next month.
Launch Details
The game is set to launch on the Xbox One, PS4, and Epic Games Store. Additionally, September 18th has also been confirmed as the release date. Moreover, Crysis Remastered is going to be priced substantially lower than other games on such platforms. The current price for the game stands at $30.
The launch was initially predicted for an earlier date. However, following the backlash from the leaked trailer, Crytek stated that the launch would be delayed. Moreover, Crytek stepped forward and took responsibility for the game’s graphics in their delay announcement. Furthermore, they even promised to use this added time to improve the game’s visuals.
Crysis Redeemed
The trailer released by Crytek yesterday is a creative one. It shows a side-by-side comparison of the Crysis games ten years apart. First, a scene from Crysis (2007) is shown and then a scene of Crysis Remastered is shown washing over it. It allows the fans to see the amount of work that has been put into improving the game.
Source: MotGame
The game’s visuals look tremendous, at the moment. The water appears more natural and interacts nicely with the sunlight. The morose vibe of the game has been put aside for a more colorful and detailed look. Therefore, it is safe to say the aesthetics have been marginally improved.
Such improvements were achieved through a couple of visual techniques. The lighting effects seemed more accurate. One could tell, especially with how the water looked, that ray-tracing was used substantially. Moreover, all the textures and surfaces looked much more refined.
"For the first time a Crytek game will feature ray tracing on Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro powered by CRYENGINE’s proprietary software based ray tracing solution." https://t.co/0gZvy8jUJi
— Digital Foundry (@digitalfoundry) August 21, 2020
The most impressive thing about all of it though is the fact that the game will have fully ray-traced reflections on current-gen PS4 Pro and Xbox One X consoles. Usually, you need dedicated hardware like NVIDIA’s RT cores to handle ray-tracing. So, the fact that Crysis will manage to ray-trace reflections on older consoles is pretty sweet. In addition to that, while software ray-tracing is a thing, it is super taxing and hinders performance a lot. So, to see it implemented here is a surprise.
A Benchmark
Crysis was first launched in 2007. It came out on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. At the time, the game was applauded for its visuals. Moreover, if one wanted to how powerful their PC was was, all they had to do was try and run Crysis. The game demanded strong hardware to run smoothly and that benchmark still stands today.
Crysis Remastered on the Switch
What’s more shocking, however, is that the game’s remastered version first came out on the Nintendo Switch. It’s impressive how Crytek made the game compatible with weaker hardware. However, the visuals weren’t really a masterpiece and resolution occasionally dropped to 540P or lower. Moreover, the game was not as detail-oriented as one would expect from Crysis Remastered.
In Conclusion
Crytek has made a commendable effort in improving the remastered version after the backlash. However, I wouldn’t really be all for it, just yet. These changes were only made because fans pointed out the faults as soon as they say the leaked trailer. Once the game is released, who knows what other problems, might come by.
I’d much rather wait and actually play the game before getting my hopes too high. No doubt Crysis is an icon amongst the gaming community but whether or not Crytek has done justice to the game remains to be seen.