Interview: Crytek Talks Crysis Remastered and PS5 Ray Tracing

Crytek has always been at the forefront of pushing gaming technology to its very limit, no matter whether that's all the way back in 2007 with the classic Crysis or today with the remaster of the very same game. Crysis Remastered is the first PlayStation 4 title to support ray tracing, a feature that is talking a big game on the next-gen PlayStation 5, so we wanted to learn so much more. To do so, we caught up with the team that just put out this re-release of the PC classic.

Push Square: To kick things off, could you give Push Square readers a quick overview of the new technology Crysis Remastered brings with it? What should they look out for whilst playing the remaster?

Crytek: We have brought in all modern technologies you can find in the latest CRYENGINE and above like Software and Hardware Ray Tracing which are not available in our latest official CRYENGINE Release. Here you have a full list of improvements.

Ray Tracing, high quality textures — up to 8k, screen space reflections, screen space shadows, global illumination, temporal anti-aliasing, variable penumbra, SSDO, depth of field, vegetation bending, new light settings, motion blur, HDR support, parallax occlusion mapping, bloom, dynamic resolution, improved art assets.

As the first CRYENGINE game to support ray tracing on PS4 Pro, how difficult was it to get the feature up and running on a current-gen console?

Everything started with Neon Noir last year March within Single Street. To go from a street to an open world environment game was the hardest challenge with that technology. We needed to optimize our software Ray Tracing solution a lot and also add many new features to the Ray Tracing technology to showcase that technology in the open world environment of Crysis Remastered.

How important will ray tracing be going forwards? Do you think it will be one of the PS5's most important features?

I think Ray Tracing will be very important for the future and it will be the most important feature of the PS5 besides faster loading times.

Crysis Remastered was delayed as it was about to receive a gameplay reveal. What did the extra time allow you to implement into the remaster?

We have polished and optimized our features and used the time to increase the art visuals in the game.

How has the coronavirus pandemic, and working from home, affected development of Crysis Remastered? Was getting ray tracing up and running properly without a studio a much tougher task?

We did not have many problems during the pandemic. Luckily in these days you can communicate and develop very well from home. The only downside was to review parts of the game together. Bad internet connections could cause stream problems.

Is the remaster being used as a way to test interest in the Crysis franchise? If successful, could we expect to see new entries in the future?

We are focusing on the release today and the upcoming patches we have planned for Crysis Remastered. Let’s see what we are doing in the future.

Why doesn't Crysis Remastered include the Warhead expansion?

We definitely see the interest of the community and fans for a Crysis Warhead Remaster. We have focused on the original Crysis 1 only. Crysis Warhead is a different full game project.

Back in 2007, could your personal PC run Crysis?

Back in 2007 I was already part of Crysis as a QA Tester and tested the game with high-end cards from 2007. But as you know, there were no cards back in the days which could handle Crysis in 1080p with full settings. In my personal PC I had even a lower card and was able to play the game only with Low/Medium settings.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. We would like to thank the team at Crytek for answering our questions and Cris Wall for making this interview possible. Crysis Remastered is out now on PS4, but have you been playing it? Let us know in the comments below.