Crysis Remastered got a launch date on Friday: Sept. 18, 2020, on PlayStation 4, Windows PC via the Epic Games Store, and Xbox One. The launch follows a delay while Crytek and Saber Interactive punched up the game’s visuals, after leaks of a trailer and screenshots were poorly received.
Crytek and Saber touted “high-quality textures up to 8K resolution, Global Illumination (SVOGI), state-of-the-art depth fields, new light settings, motion blur, ray tracing and much more,” when Crysis Remastered launches.
The ray tracing referenced above will be in versions of the game running on Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro, according to a news release Friday morning. The PC version will support ray tracing on setups using Nvidia’s VKRay Vulkan extension or its line of GeForce RTX graphics cards.
The remaster was originally pegged for a July 23 release, but only a lower-quality Nintendo Switch version launched that day. Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry reported in its technical breakdown that the game was based on the CryEngine 3 remaster for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 that launched in 2011.
The original Crysis launched in 2007 and became famous for visual fidelity that pushed the limits of PC gaming hardware of the day. The lackluster, previous-generation visuals seen in the trailer and screenshot leak fell short of that reputation, which Crytek acknowledged in a message announcing the remaster’s delay.
“This extra time until release will allow us to get Crysis Remastered up to the PC- and console-breaking standard you’ve come to expect from Crysis games,” the company said.
The first Crysis put protagonist Jake “Nomad” Dunn in a super-powered nanosuit and faced him off against North Korean and extraterrestrial foes. Coincidentally, the game’s story takes place in August 2020. It was followed by two sequels, the most recent published in 2013.
