Everyone and anyone who reads this post will most likely be familiar with many of the issues and concerns that have been brought up about Crysis 2 by each of the different groups of people who are tracking the game, so I won't bother reiterating them here. Rather, I merely want to point a few things out that I feel are being overlooked.

First, I'll refer to my title and the issue of New York or, moreover, the issue of Crysis 2 taking a much different approach to the series than its predecessor. First things first, I first played Far Cry about 6 months after it was released and thought it was great (although I did not like the protagonist at all) and have been following Crytek since. As a company who spends years on their games (and how many other companies put this dedication into games now a days?), would you want to be working on a development team who never gets to work on developing anything besides a jungle? With Far Cry, the developers were able to bring large worlds to life in action games and push graphics of the time to the test. Then with Crysis they birthed the nanosuit, expanded their environments beyond the size of almost any other shooters, real-time weapon customization, a complex physics engine, and created a visual experience unlike any game had provided before - essentially what they did was refine and modernize everything that Far Cry was and then created a new story and ultimately a new game. As a developer, why would you want to make the third CryEngine game just another refinement of the engine (Which has been undergoing refinements since it was first created around 2002). Crysis 2 is not just a continuation of the Crysis series: it is the continuation of the CryEngine, and it's time to prove to the world that it is capable of a lot more than dense jungles and beautiful volumetric lighting.

The other other major issue/concern I see is regarding the choices of Crytek with regards to which features stayed in the series and which didn't, especially in regards to multiplayer. I will admit that I will miss the awesomeness of powerstruggle as it was one of the cooler gamemodes in any FPS that I've played. but powerstruggle made sense for Crysis as the underlying world behind that game was very much representative of the fact that America likes to have their hands in everything and Korea (north) is led by crazy bastards whose first concern is power and prestige, not their country. It followed that a gamemode centered around a nuclear race was appropriate. Crysis 2 is about New York being Assaulted by aliens and becoming a military state controlled by CELL (or so it seems) and a soldier's struggle to discover why he has inherited a superweapon (nanosuit 2.0) and how he can use it to, for lack of a simpler statment, un-**** everything. I know this is a game but where does powerstruggle fit in with this story? I have a feeling that the "Assault" gamemode will be a good replacement, with nano soldiers and CELL fighting for objectives. It won't be a perfect replacement, maybe not even a good one, but at least it works with the essence of the game.

Anyway, my train ride is coming to an end so this post is too . Share your thoughts on what you feel is a good or bad choice or why you feel Crytek made the choices they did and perhaps some of the people struggling to understand why Crysis 2 isn't the direct continuation of Crysis will be able to draw some insight and appreciate this game for what it will be, and not prematurely hate it for what it is not.

Well-said.

Yes men, Far Cry is the best game in my opinion. The levels are huge and have a very diferent number of ways. Crysis maintains that aspect but give less options.
And Jack Carver is a good caracter for the game, is similar to Bruce Willis with this touch of humor and her red shirt with flowers, this does more easier the nervous situation against the mutants beacuse they kill you very fast and put you so nervous...
Is very complicated and more instinctive than Crysis because you are an ordinary man.
Another aspect to emphasize is the dialogue between the mercenaries, each situation had its different dialogues.
Crysis 2, but we have not seen yet, probably not offer te same freedom.

I LOVE FAR CRY.

I agree, Crytek is simply experimenting with a new setting and new gameplay enhancements so as to not become stagnant, and from the changes they've made I think this series is blossoming into something special and unique. This uniqueness would not have been achieved if we had gone back to the island as we originally thought we were.

I actually like almost all the changes that has been made. CryTek took risk, did what no one expected, wich is something we see far to seldom these days. Most games just stick with what they got and never moves forward(I′m looking at you, CoD), and so they eventually die.
Crysis 2 will be a great game, and I′ sure I′ll enjoy it

I definitely agree; I'm going to embrace the changes Crytek has made and hope for the best. Can't wait to play the demo tomorrow and get a taste for what will fill in my downtime for (hopefully)'the next few years.

Yep. Totally agree with you.

They moved to an city enviroment (New York) to justify the smaller maps they need for the consoles.

While you do make some good points, those aren't entirely the reasons why Crytek made their decisions, but you have a very mature and understanding attitude to the changes that have been made which I respect. I think this is going to be another great game by CT, and I eagerly await the demo tomorrow

While you do make some good points, those aren't entirely the reasons why Crytek made their decisions, but you have a very mature and understanding attitude to the changes that have been made which I respect. I think this is going to be another great game by CT, and I eagerly await the demo tomorrow

Oh, I know that the reasons I stated above aren't the primary reasons for Crysis 2 being developed the way it was. As I mentioned, I merely wanted to address some of the underlying reasons that people seemed to be overlooking. Of course, consoles require smaller environments but it seems that (from the videos anyway) Crytek has engineered CryEngine 3 such that large environments exist despite console limitations, however, they are just not as free-roaming as the environments from the original. All in all, I think New York is an interesting concept and of this game plays half as well as it looks, I am pumped!