By Jim Rossignol on February 24th, 2011 at 11:35 am.
Via beautiful Blues, we get another Crysis 2 trailer. Yes, this is turning into Far Cry 2, where the number of trailers reaches a crazy saturation point before launch. Anyway, this one is about Jacob Hargreave, the man with the nanosuit obsession. It’s detailing some of the story, which was written by Richard Morgan and Peter Watts. Watts, incidentally, it is a genuinely excellent SF author, and is worth looking up.
24/02/2011 at 11:44 rei says:
It took me a frighteningly long time to make out what was happening in the top picture.
24/02/2011 at 12:53 Squirrelfanatic says:
Me too. I stared at the picture for about seven seconds before I even got the angle “right” in my mind.
24/02/2011 at 14:25 Koozer says:
Oh they’re his ELBOWS, I thought they were his head and a knee for ages.
24/02/2011 at 11:45 Ilinx says:
“Watts, incidentally, it is a genuinely excellent SF author”. Hope that wasn’t a subtle jab at Mr Morgan’s work! Altered Carbon is well worth a read.
24/02/2011 at 12:44 westyfield says:
+1 to the Altered Carbon recommendation.
I wonder if the “death is an inconvenience now” line was a nod to AC, I seem to remember one of the characters saying the exact same thing.
24/02/2011 at 13:48 Dan Forever says:
Altered Carbon was fantastic, and everyone I have recommended it to has said the same (at least 3/4 people)
24/02/2011 at 14:06 Afro says:
Yes, and Richard Morgan isent?! Altered Carbon is some of the cooles scifi I´ve read in the last 10 years!
24/02/2011 at 14:16 Harlander says:
Maybe it was brought up because Mr. Watts’ ouvre isn’t as well-known? This is the first I’d heard of him, for certain.
24/02/2011 at 14:58 woodsey says:
Agreed, I think it was more because his name hasn’t been mentioned alongside the game before (or at least not that much), and less at trying to take a dig at Morgan.
24/02/2011 at 15:07 Ravenholme says:
@Westyfield “Pull on these gloves of altered carbon and burn your fingers once again.”
And yes, +1 to the Altered Carbon recommendations. Truly excellent cyberpunk it was.
Everyone I recommend it to seems to love it, so…
24/02/2011 at 16:29 ColOfNature says:
Altered Carbon was good, but the series went downhill from there. And the less said about Market Forces, the better. Black Man was excellent though.
24/02/2011 at 18:44 Eightball says:
I really enjoyed Altered Carbon but I thought the next two in the series weren’t bad (though not as good as AC). Perhaps I have a higher tolerance for the Martian deus ex machina-ing, but I also like reading the Quellist stuff. :P
Market Forces was bad, and I didn’t like Thirteen (what Black Man was published as in the States).
24/02/2011 at 20:42 Love Albatross says:
Morgan is a great writer and Altered Carbon is excellent.
However, anyone who has never read Watt’s Blindsight needs to remedy that situation immediately. It’s a brilliant piece of SF writing, one of the best first-contact stories ever.
24/02/2011 at 21:19 noom says:
Normally I’d take a load of recommendations like this as a good enough reason to pick a book up on amazon, but as I mentioned on another thread, my only experience of Richard Morgan has been his departure from sci-fi with the Steel Remains, which I honestly found pretty poor. Was that just a one-off miss for him, or do I have awful taste? :3
24/02/2011 at 23:10 Gary W says:
No, I think he’s an all-round mediocre writer. If you want decent fantasy, try Gene Wolfe, Calvino or Peake instead.
25/02/2011 at 08:19 Ilinx says:
@Love Albatross – Well with a recommendation like that, I shall definitely pick that one up.
@noom – give Altered Carbon a read. You won’t regret it.
24/02/2011 at 11:50 Teddy Leach says:
Prophet’s developed Tourette’s.
24/02/2011 at 12:00 Baka says:
Agree, I love BC2′s trashtalk, but this feels a bit forced.
Say what you will about the story of the first one, the conversations didn’t try so hard.
Also, uncanny man in suit is uncanny.
24/02/2011 at 15:32 DrazharLn says:
It sounded fine to me.
24/02/2011 at 11:55 CMaster says:
So are we going to get Nomad’s Story and Psyco’s Rant too?
24/02/2011 at 13:40 12kill4 says:
Normad’s Story has gone walk about…
24/02/2011 at 11:57 MrThingy says:
There’s too much mother-humping pottymouth in this naughty trailer.
24/02/2011 at 11:57 KillahMate says:
It’s sad how people seem to disregard the story almost instinctively. Judging by some comments on other websites everyone seems to assume that since it’s a blockbuster, AAA game the story will automatically suck, and isn’t worth even paying attention to. So no one even attempts to engage with the fiction. Really sad how low our expectations have fallen.
It’s come to my attention because in this case I have some hope. Like the man said, Richard Morgan and Peter Watts worked on this, so I seriously have my fingers crossed there’s something actually there. I’m always a sucker for a good yarn.
Incidentally, for anyone who hasn’t already read it, Watts’ Blindsight is available online. An excellent piece of work – sort of what it would be like if Lovecraft wrote Hard SF.
24/02/2011 at 12:10 subedii says:
There’s a really good video interview with Richard Morgan about writing for this game, it was the first thing I saw that gave me hope for the storyline. He really seems to understand how the storyline is actually meant to be a cohesive part of the game, working in concert with it as opposed to simply being tacked on at the end.
Well worth watching if you haven’t seen it already.
http://www.g4tv.com/videos/45272/Crysis-2-Lead-Writer-Interview-/?quality=hd
24/02/2011 at 12:45 KillahMate says:
Ooh, haven’t seen that! Great stuff!
24/02/2011 at 12:50 ivsound says:
Didn’t know Richard Morgan was working on this, absolutely amazing. One of my favourite writers.
Thanks subedii for that interview.
25/02/2011 at 01:27 DrazharLn says:
Thanks for the Blindsight link, I’ve just finished reading it and thought it most excellent. I won’t say anything more though for fear of sploilerising.
25/02/2011 at 14:18 KenTWOu says:
@subedii Already saw this interview, great stuff, but at that time I didn’t know that Peter Watts is also Crysis 2 writer. Now I understand why Richard Morgan compliment Peter Watts at the end of the interview : )
24/02/2011 at 12:00 CrazyBaldhead says:
That was shite.
24/02/2011 at 16:28 suibhne says:
I actually thought it was much better than I expected. Of course, my expectations were based on the near-total lack of character and narrative from the first game.
24/02/2011 at 12:06 Robin says:
Do we know what kind of DRM is it going to be infected with?
24/02/2011 at 12:18 yurusei says:
Obviously, it’s infected by DRM developed by the Seth.
24/02/2011 at 12:10 Phoshi says:
Wait, why is the guy trying to kill the aliens the bad guy?
24/02/2011 at 12:32 Xercies says:
Have you never seen ET or Close Encounters of the third kind, aliens are very misunderstood.
24/02/2011 at 12:45 Oak says:
He just wants to make them pay for shooting up his ride.
24/02/2011 at 12:52 KillahMate says:
Maybe because there are nuances to this ten hour storyline that don’t come across in a two and a half minute trailer?
(I know! Complex storytelling? How dare they!)
24/02/2011 at 12:58 Squirrelfanatic says:
@KillahMate: I do understand your point, but this is very likely not to be the game with the overly complex story arc.
24/02/2011 at 13:12 KillahMate says:
@Squirrelfanatic No, I agree it probably won’t be too complex, but “bad guy isn’t actually the bad guy”/”he’s a bad guy but he’s all we’ve got”/etc. is, like, Story&Plot Chapter 1 Paragraph 3. Just because he is their enemy doesn’t necessarily make him our friend. Also characters with complex motivations make for a more interesting story. It’s not Joyce, you know.
24/02/2011 at 12:57 Vague-rant says:
For reasons I can’t explain I find myself really looking forward to Crysis 2. This trailer did not help me.
24/02/2011 at 12:58 bigtoeohno says:
This is one game where my excitement fades the closer it gets to release. The multiplayer doesn’t look all that appealing from what I’ve seen of the xbox demo. The singleplayer will be strong so maybe just a rental. I do hope to eat my words. Also the facial animations in that trailer are a little average I mean for a game that is graphics.
24/02/2011 at 13:04 Bhazor says:
@ 1:26
Goddamnit.
I hate “suit motherfuckers”!
Also.
Alacatrazzzz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwyJk_TfvqQ
24/02/2011 at 13:43 12kill4 says:
Hate the subliminal flash of the US Flag at the end there.. urrgh. Why cant protagonists ever be from other countries!
24/02/2011 at 14:15 Teddy Leach says:
Because USA is dominate.
24/02/2011 at 23:28 Dougal McFrugal says:
psycho was a brit
24/02/2011 at 14:02 int says:
I don’t know if we can trust Peter Watts. He is after all in the… Millennium group!
24/02/2011 at 14:25 coldvvvave says:
Who’d name their kid Alcatraz?
24/02/2011 at 14:26 DarkFenix says:
Ah ha. I didn’t get much further than the opening cut scenes in the leaked version, but now the one with Prophet makes sense. Interesting twist to the story, but then I’ve never been bothered by cliche very much so I would say that.
24/02/2011 at 14:59 woodsey says:
Glad to see they’re not just ignoring the original game’s events, which is how it seemed for a while – it’s story and characters weren’t exactly inspiring, but it would have just been jarring to ignore the continuity.
24/02/2011 at 19:29 LazyGit says:
You really think that this is following on from Crysis?
Who the hell is Hargreaves? I really don’t remember anyone mentioning this guy in the first game. The aliens look nothing like the aliens in the first game either and appear to have completely different technology.
Old man proselytising on a vid screen, fighting aliens in a city, special suits: it all just seems to be riffing on Half-Life. A pity because Crysis was an immense game with a good story that could have had a proper relevant sequel. This new story seems to be a contrivance of a contrivance.
24/02/2011 at 22:54 subedii says:
I have to disagree there, Crysis story just wasn’t very good. Archaeologists find buried aliens, everyone wants buried aliens, buried aliens wake up and start attacking everyone. At some point the island freezes over.
I mean it had a nice series of events happening but they were really just excuses for the set pieces and the action.
For that matter, it’s interesting you say this is trying to copy Half-Life 2, in reality this actually puts me in mind of the transition between HL1 and 2. HL1 also had a pretty barebones plot, then HL2 hits and all of a sudden you wake up in the future, oppressive alien / human government everywhere, all new characters that say they “met” you (when they were largely just character archetypes in the first game, if that).
It’s a disjunct because they’re trying to create an actual storyline where one didn’t really exist before. It’s an issue of trying to improve something and basically explaining it away as “just because”. Why does Gordon wake up in the future with no knowledge of what happened and trying to figure out everything for himself? “Just because!”, but that’s what was necessary to make the plot, setting and enemies work (and work they did).
Likewise in Crysis 2. Aside from the storyline, the enemies have changed. From a storyline perspective, it’s explained as the aliens adapting themselves to work more effectively in this environment. From a gameplay perspective, the actual reason that the aliens look different now is because everyone always says the humans are fun to fight in Crytek’s games, the aliens aren’t. So instead of these weird… things that weren’t fun to fight, they’re now bipedal and a subset of the human style AI. Making them more fun whilst still keeping them different.
25/02/2011 at 05:34 GoodPatton says:
Macho Man Randy Savage came to late BROTHERRRR!!!!