To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Crytek has launched a new documentary series looking back on its legendary journey from the early beginning to what it is today. The first episode takes us all the way back to the studio’s small beginnings, before the Nanosuits, and even before Far Cry!
You can check out the first episode here:
A Dream That Started With a Lie (Sort Of)
Crytek was founded by the Yerli brothers, Cevat, Avni, and Faruk, who convinced their father to buy them a high-end PC in the ’90s by saying it was for “studying.” In reality, they used it for everything outside of studying! They played with gaming, coding, and eventually, game development. From hacking together OpenGL demos to sharing screenshots online through ICQ, the brothers slowly built a global network of multiple people that wanted to do the same thing.
Their first breakthrough was thanks to a mysterious little tech demo called X-Isle, that they showcased at trade shows without even booking appointments. It ended up landing Crytek a deal with Nvidia, who used the evolved Dinosaur Island demo to show off the GeForce 3’s capabilities. This was a big step for Crytek!
Far Cry: The First Big Thing
Thanks to that GPU demo, Ubisoft was quickly interested. It did not take long for Crytek to work on what would become Far Cry. At that time, German studios were known mostly for strategy or simulation games. But Crytek chose to go another route, and make something else! Far Cry stood out for its colorful environments, open-ended gameplay, and a pretty good enemy AI that could hear and react to players. And this was a tech that was way ahead of its time.
It also marked the start of CryEngine, and this is what evolved out of the X-Isle codebase.
Crysis and the Benchmark Meme
After Ubisoft took completely over Far Cry, Crytek started on something even bigger. Crysis was built using CryEngine 2, and the goal was to mix cinematic storytelling with open-world freedom and really good tech. And it turned out pretty good.
The Nanosuit that we all know today, with its customizable speed, strength, stealth, and armor modes, was not just a toy. It was a test to see how players could approach fights, and customize their character’s strength.
But Crysis was not just about the cool suit. Crytek put years into its AI systems, environmental physics, and graphics. Real-time shadows, destructible buildings, dynamic foliage, all things we take for granted today were groundbreaking then.
No surprise that “Can it run Crysis?” became the main question for PC gamers for over a decade. Because you knew that if your PC would run Crysis, you were good to go for a while!
A Passionate Team
The team behind Crysis was not that big, but it was passionate. Many were young, self-taught, and figuring things out as they went. It is exactly what made Crytek feel more like a band of friends than a studio! They were all experimenting together, creating new things, and trying to do unique games that had an impact. It was a group constantly trying to outdo themselves in every way possible.
The documentary also goes over Crytek’s later projects like Crysis 2, Crysis 3, and Ryse: Son of Rome. All those games continued to push further, with great cinematic, stories, and even motion capture. They made it as far as collaborating with Hans Zimmer.
This first episode marks the beginning of Crytek’s anniversary celebration, and more episodes are expected to follow. If you are into game dev history, or if you just want to see how a full beginner team of people changed gaming, this is definitely worth a watch.
Plus, it is always cool to see how some things came to be!
Keep an eye on our latest news as well, we will make sure to share the next episodes as they come out!