Crysis 3

Prophet Goes On A Vision Quest

by Matt Bertz on Oct 02, 2012 at 10:32 AM

Prophet’s life would make for one hell of an I Survived episode. A first responder on the scene of an alien invasion, the Delta Force squad leader helped repel the initial Ceph attack on an island off the coast of Korea, survived the nuclear strike meant to wipe it out, went rogue when he found out his squad were test subjects against the aliens, and eventually committed suicide. End of story? Not quite. His spirit lived on in the circuitry of the nanosuit, and he eventually overtook the new suit wearer, Alcatraz, after he saved Manhattan from the alien threat.

The Game of Shadows

The nanosuit cloaking device is one of the most empowering technologies in modern games, giving players the ability to toy with enemies like the Predator. Some criticized Crysis 2 for allowing players to use this power too liberally, essentially running through levels with little to no confrontation. Crytek is aware of this issue and has plans to address it in Crysis 3.

“We definitely read that feedback as well and I think it’s valid,” says producer Mike Read. “I’m perfectly happy for players if they want to just cloak and skip encounters as long as it has a challenge and a risk vs. reward side to it. From our side we’ve done a few changes aimed at putting the player under a little more pressure in those encounters.”

For example, if the AI suspects you are hiding in a corner, it can throw an EMP to flush you out. The sandbox environments also contain hazards like traps, mines, and turrets that put more pressure on players who prefer to avoid armed combat.

After serving 20 years in prison for stealing a nanosuit, Prophet starts Crysis 3 seeing visions of the end of the world at the hands of a Ceph battle force. Rather than waiting around to die a second time, he journeys into the heart of the Liberty Dome covering New York City to look for answers. Along the way he runs into an old friend in Psycho, the protagonist from the Crysis Warhead expansion.

“Between Crysis 1 and 2 there really weren’t deep meaningful interactions between the characters, so we really want to focus on that between the core group of characters we have like Prophet, Psycho, and the few others that we’ll be revealing in detail as time moves on,” says producer Mike Read. “You’re going to see a lot of push and pull between the two of these guys as the story progresses.”

Though the nanosuit isn’t undergoing any drastic revisions outside of decoupling the sprint energy from the nanosuit energy, that doesn’t mean Prophet won’t have new tricks up his sleeve when confronting enemy threats. Crysis 3 boasts a new nanosuit upgrade system that gives players the flexibility to create three unique loadouts to confront different scenarios they may encounter.

“Basically, you could create a close combat kind of loadout where maybe you can punch a little bit harder, a more long-range loadout, or maybe something that’s more apt to stealth,” Read says. “It adds a ton of more options as opposed to the fixed methods that you had in Crysis 2 where you picked up nano catalysts.”

Crytek isn’t sharing how players receive these suit upgrades yet, but Read says it will be a simplified process with a wealth of different options. Don’t expect to unlock everything on one playthrough; you will have to make tough decisions on which of the upgrade tracts you want to pursue.