Games without narrative from get-go will become “obsolete”, says Yerli

By Johnny Cullen

Games that don’t build in a narrative process from the beginning of its development will become “obsolete,” Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli has told VG247.

“For me, I think, after this game and other games doing similar things, games where narration or writing or novels are not part of it from the outset, those games are going to be obsolete, I believe. I’m quite convinced about that,” Yerli told us at the formal reveal of Crysis 2 last week in New York.

He pointed at Far Cry, developed by Crytek itself for PC in 2004, as an example of where things could go wrong with plot.

“With Far Cry, we just slapped the story on later after we’d done the game,” he said.

“We just finished the game and said, ‘What’s the journey? Well, let’s see; what do you do here?’ We put it in afterwards. In Crysis, we wrote the story, but we had, like, 25 cast and whatnot. The screen-time alone is not enough to build any character whatsoever.”

Yerli further added: “In Crysis 2 we decided to do it from the outset, that it would be part of everything we do. Hence, Nanosuit, New York: the location has an arc, the Nanosuit has an arc. It’s not just that I read a book and everything has an arc; it’s to make sure the player is driven by the arc. I want to know what the deal is with Nanosuit 2. I want to know what the deal is with New York.

“And I want to know why the heck the aliens are here and where they come from. I want to know why the humans are shooting at me. These are all questions that are going to be asked and answered as you go through the journey, but that’s going to pull you through the game without you thinking it’s more fun to shoot the aliens or the humans than experiencing the story.”

Crysis 2 releases this holiday season for PS3, 360 and PC.

Get the full interview with Cevat Yerli here. Part one is here.