Black smoke–spitting skyscrapers, charred automobile husks, and the abandoned streets of a once bustling metropolis impressively swallow up the movie theater-size display in Tribeca Grand Hotel’s private screening room in the heart of New York City. The visual feast being served is none other than the first sneak peek at Crysis 2, the ambitious first-person shooter follow-up to developer Crytek’s 2007 horsepower-gobblin’ hit. Crysis—and its 2008 expansion, Crysis: Warhead—famously pushed the limits of even the highest-end PC hardware, ensuring only an elite few could truly enjoy its groundbreaking graphics. Despite that notoriety, though, and Crysis 2’s new multi-platform focus (Crysis was PC-only), Crytek isn’t shying away from breaking new visual boundaries. In fact, the folks that first raised the bar with their postcard-pretty tropical shooter Far Cry are now intent on taking that same bar and sending it skyward like an Olympian-tossed javelin…

New York City not only serves as a pretty city to blow up, it also supports Crytek’s fresh focus on rich storytelling. The developer’s well aware that the first game’s narrative was not exactly its defining feature, so, while still remaining tight-lipped on specifics, they’re building plenty of buzz on how they intend to make the storytelling as memorable as the pulse-spiking exchanges of hot lead. They’ve announced famed sci-fi author Richard Morgan (The Steel Remains) as the title’s lead writer, and have stressed the importance of NYC’s iconic status and emotional relevance in popular culture.

In fact, at the screening, Crytek CEO and President, Cevat Yerli, made the following statement. “If I would pick one city to protect, it would be New York.” And based on the brief glimpse of action they’ve shown, it would appear Mr. Yerli would be taking up arms against some not-of-this-world beasties whose menacing facades make them look as though they might have swum in the same gene pool as Halo’s Hunters and Jackals. In addition to battling alien baddies on Wall Street, players— reprising the role of Crysis’ protagonist Nomad several years after the events of that game—can expect to lock and load against Crynet System’s own private army of souped-up soldiers. So, while weaving an engaging yarn is a top priority for Crytek, it seems FPS fans won’t find themselves wanting for things to fill with deadly projectiles.

Of course, the fact that PCs needed enough juice under their hoods to power the Death Star in order to run Crysis certainly isn’t lost on the developer. “Even two years after the release of Crysis, the sentence, ‘Can it run Crysis?’ is still in gamers’ heads,” says the sequel’s Executive Producer, Nathan Camarillo. And while the detailed specs that you’ll need to run Crysis 2 in all of its glory are still shrouded in secrecy at Crytek HQ, he assures us that this won’t be an issue for the follow-up. “The first game set an incredibly high benchmark, especially in terms of graphics. Thanks to our new technology, CryENGINE 3, and all its new features, we’re convinced that we can do it even better with Crysis 2. It’s a game that will not only be fun to play, but also amazing to look at, and we expect to reach a broader PC market while still being the premiere showcase piece for high-end PC rigs.”

Crytek’s daunting goal of providing an equally eye-melting presentation to all gamers—even Xbox 360 and PS3 owners—is anchored by what they’re calling “catastrophic beauty,” an artistic approach that intends to strip the title’s Big Apple setting down to a post-apocalyptic core, which you see illustrated throughout this story. The flame-engulfed structures and smoke-stained NYC skyline that took center stage during our demo gave us a taste of this design philosophy.

“ ‘Catastrophic Beauty’ refers to the look of Crysis 2,” Camarillo elaborates. “We are trying to capture an epic human drama, set in the frame of the most recognizable city in the world, New York City! We used the power of CryENGINE to deliver beautiful, natural, dappled lighting and an elegant, stylized reality, while trying to avoid the obvious clichés of just portraying doom and gloom. ‘Catastrophic beauty’ stands for stark beauty, offset with an acidic palette that supports the drama of an alien invasion.”

On the surface, this boils down to a beautifully destroyed city that makes Fallout 3’s Capitol Wasteland look like Disneyland’s Main Street. Achieving this artistically pleasing Armageddon relies on a technological “perfect storm” of sorts. “In simplified terms, it is a combination of strong art assets, art direction, time-of-day settings, color grading, volumetric fog, sun rays, particles, SSAO, deferred lighting, complex shaders, depth of field, dynamic shadow maps, and many other visual goodies in our bag of tricks,” explains Camarillo. “We can change many of these values, even in real time, to completely change the mood and feel of a scene. In some cases, for example, a drastic change makes a more choking and suppressive atmosphere that suddenly transforms the battlefield into a gameplay area [that is] more mysterious, but—at the same time—very believable within the game fiction.”

 As game geeks worth our weight in twenty-sided dice, nothing turns us on more than specifics on shaders and lighting, so we pressed further for the not-so-simplified version, which CryENGINE 3 Field Applications Engineer Sean Tracy happily provided.

 “CryENGINE 3 shaders are written once in a high-level language, then compiled automatically to each platform. The shader output is optimized based on the artists’ settings and the 3D environment in which the shader is used. This creates unique, high-performance effects, such as cloaking or wet, muddy, and frozen surfaces, which can be layered together and combined with other shaders such as metal, glass, and a full range of similar visual effects.”

The engine “supports real-time per-pixel lighting, bumpy reflections, refractions, volumetric glow effects, and animated textures to simulate effects including windows, bullet holes, and shiny surfaces,” Tracy adds. “It also takes advantage of the unified shader architecture of current and next-gen hardware. The combination of deferred lighting and this technology lets CryENGINE 3 avoid the traditional shortcomings of solely using uber shaders.”

While all this pretty much guarantees a graphical experience that’ll have you continuously collecting your jaw from the floor, gamers won’t hang in its gritty post-apocalyptic playground for long if the interactivity isn’t engaging. Thankfully, Crysis 2, complemented by its vertical environments, enhanced AI, and high destructibility, also sets the stage for some seriously sore trigger fingers.

Crysis nailed the lush tropical vibe, but its setting didn’t allow for much height variation. Enthusiastic over the possibilities that his skyscraper-filled game presents, Camarillo shares some specifics. “The player can jump between different floors or onto buses or trucks, drop down into craters and fissures in the streets, and leap from one building to the next. The player is much more mobile in a real city playground and can change his position more often. They also have a lot more freedom as they can strategize and attack from above and thus gain an advantage. If you choose a street approach, your enemies may want to get above you and try to control the space that way. So there is a constant positional struggle in place, because even a rooftop could leave you too exposed to things overhead.”

Further upping the immersion ante is an unprecedented level of destruction that should encourage players to pepper everything in their path with explosives and hot lead just to witness the results. “We want this to feel like a dynamically changing gameplay space. Therefore, we have to maximize the use of destructible assets such that the player feels like they are truly changing and shaping the gameplay environment, and their weapons have an effect on the world around them,” says Camarilo. “Namely, this can negate cover for the player, or negate cover for the AI, creating a rich gameplay space that changes the more the battle rages. Every bullet the player fires winds up having value in some way, either by solid hit reactions on our AI, or giving an impact on the world.”

Enemies that Camarillo compares to the first game’s as “smarter, more aware of their environment, and more aware of their allies,” should add to the dynamic on-screen chaos. Recognizing that Crysis’ AI was not the title’s strong suit, he adds “In a dynamic game like ours, the outcomes will never be the same, but you will always be astonished by the
quality of combat you encounter.”

Circling back to our initial talking point on the first game’s demanding specs, we ask Camarillo if PC owners with the most kick-ass rigs can still expect a superior experience over their less hearty hardware-owning brethren. Dodging the question like a Nanosuited super-soldier evading a rocket-propelled grenade, he offers “With CryENGINE 3 and Crysis 2, we’re aiming to set the graphical benchmark on all three platforms. We know that this is a big challenge, but we’re very happy to accept it and look forward to reaching our goals and meeting—or even exceeding—our gamers’ expectations. We think everyone will be pleasantly surprised.”

Busting out our best Jack Bauer–like interrogation tactics, we press him again; and while he continues to guard specifics like a hungry dog protecting a T-bone, he does concede…a little. “Crytek will always push technological boundaries, and given the fact PC gaming hardware is basically not limited at all, PC owners shouldn’t worry about missing out. Our goal is to surpass Crysis, which to this day is still considered a benchmark for PC gaming and we intend to extend that notoriety with Crysis 2.”

Time will tell, but it’s relatively safe to say your shiny new GeForce 400 series cards will get a workout when the game hits this fall. At the moment, Crytek is remaining silent about whether or not the game will support DirectX 11. Regardless, it’s clear that the advanced feature set that is present in CryENGINE 3 should be more than enough to push all the game’s target platforms to their limits. And, it was recently unveiled that the game will also support 3D, giving you yet another reason to add 3D Vision hardware to your gaming rig.