A fan-favorite franchise may finally be making a triumphant return. Crysis has awakened from its slumber, as the official Crysis Twitter page tweeted out for the first time in over four years.
Fans of the franchise immediately started speculating as to what the cryptic "RECEIVING DATA" tweet means for the future of Crysis. The last game in the franchise was released in 2013, so any additional wait seems unbearable.
Thankfully, for the sake of the fans, the wait for another tweet was significantly less than four years, as the very next day the Crysis Twitter page tweeted out "Hey Nomad, you're still with us?" Nomad was the protagonist of the original Crysis game, which points heavily to the idea that the project that is in the works is tied to that game.
Quick History Lesson of the Crysis Games
The original Crysis was released in 2007, and the protagonist is the aforementioned Jake "Nomad" Dunn. The game used CryEngine 2 and was a truly technically impressive titles at the time. In Crysis 2, players control James "Alcatraz" Rodriguez. Crysis 2 was released in 2011 and used CryEngine 3, again blowing away players with its visuals. Crysis 3 is the most recent release in the series, launching in 2013. Major Laurence "Prophet" Barnes is the protagonist in this game, and again the title uses CryEngine 3.
Crytek, a company that was in major financial trouble soon after the launch of Crysis 3, developed the three mainline Crysis games that were all available for the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. Crysis Warhead is the only other video game in the series. The title was developed by Crytek Budapest and was a standalone expansion available only for PC.
The Crysis Nomad Tweet
There are a lot of contradictory pieces of information about the whereabouts of Nomad within the Crysis universe. At the very climax of the original Crysis, Nomad and his surviving squadmates received a transmission from Prophet, who they are surprised to hear is alive. So they set off to go find him. From that point on, Nomad is never playable again or seen from in the other mainline Crysis games until a secret moment in Crysis 3.
While Crysis doesn't make the short list of best comic books based on video games, the series does have a comic book that Nomad makes an appearance in. Within that comic, Nomad follows the transmission to find and save Prophet. Multiple times he puts the mission first and comes out severely wounded on the other side, and by the end of it, it seems as if he sacrifices himself by jumping in front of a rocket that would have surely killed Prophet and another character from the series, Psycho. So following that logic, Nomad is dead.
However, once players have collected all of the data pads in Crysis 3, a new file is unlocked and it notes that Nomad is actually alive. He is being hunted down by someone named Lockhart.
So if the detective hat is on when looking at the "Hey Nomad, you're still with us?" tweet, a couple different options become clear, but it totally depends on what angle the official Crysis Twitter page is coming from. When looking at the tweet from the angle of the story of Crysis, it could be that the tweet is asking if Nomad is still alive, and Crysis 4 will follow the story of Nomad being hunted down by Lockhart, similar to how the Masterchief was hunted down by Locke in Halo 5. Or the tweet could be coming from the angle of social media alone, and this could be looking back at Nomad in his original game, asking if fans still remember Nomad, and this new title will harken back to the original Crysis.
Crysis Remake vs. Crysis 4
The original Crysis was released back in 2007, meaning it's been 13 years. The game could certainly use a fresh coat of paint and some next-gen polish on the PS5 and Xbox Series X in just a few months. Remakes recently have gone well beyond just cleaning up the rough edges, however, as a game like the Resident Evil 3 Remake reviewed well, as did the Resident Evil 2 Remake before it. Final Fantasy 7 Remake also just launched to astounding praise, as fans have enjoyed replaying a game from their childhood with all new bells and whistles. Crysis seems like a series that deserves this type of love as well, and it'll be interesting to see what it does with next-gen tech.
Crysis is nowhere near as old as these titles, but it's entirely possible to overhaul or reboot the franchise in a way that keeps the core values of the series intact. Tomb Raider celebrated its best selling game after rebooting, and although that much of an overhaul may not be needed, something similar could be wise. The events of the original Crysis took place in 2020, so if a Crysis remake were to launch this year, it would certainly have a "things coming full circle" type feel.
If Crysis 4 were to be released today, some newer fans may be too overwhelmed to jump into the franchise. If Crytek was in so much financial trouble soon after the launch of Crysis 3, one would assume that the franchise itself wasn't overly successful, at least not enough to keep the company afloat. Sometimes a new starting point is the perfect place for old and new fans to jump in and enjoy the awesome features of a franchise. In the case of the Crysis series, the Nanosuit and one of the coolest bows in gaming.
Crysis 4 is certainly still on the table, however. Crytek's issues as a company cannot be put on Crysis alone by any means, and Crysis has had an awesome story to tell thus far. Starting over from scratch in some ways would be a shame. It's also possible for the next game to break some of the rules in terms of the name of the game. It could be simply named Crysis again, as a fresh start for the franchise but still be the fourth in chronological order for the story of the game. The God of War series was seeing a downfall in popularity once, but with the massive success of the new God of War, it saw both a chronological story continuation and a reboot of the franchise with intelligent gameplay changes.
The idea of Nomad escaping from some bounty hunter with a Nanosuit named Lockhart sounds super intriguing. Characters like Nomad, Alcatraz, and Prophet deserve their stories to not be erased completely the way a total reboot might do. Meanwhile, many people who haven't had a chance to play the first three games might not even fully understand what is going on if Crysis 4 simply jumped in right where Crysis 3 left off. So unless the first three games were made available in some trilogy pack, ala the way Nintendo fans have been asking for with Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Switch, it could be confusing.
Many believe that a remaster for Crysis seems imminent, and could be available soon, even for the PS4 and Xbox One. One of the real possibilities is that this next game will be a remaster, and not a remake/reboot or a fourth game in the franchise, meaning the original Crysis will be re-released but with HD enhancements and nothing else. Some fans will still appreciate this, but it would probably be the option that would excite them the least.
There are polls online at the time of writing that are split directly down the middle among the Crysis faithful, 50/50 between a remake and Crysis 4. But after so many years of waiting, fans are just excited to finally be getting news of a new Crysis game.
A new Crysis game appears to be in development.