Crytek producer Michael Elliot Read recently stated that the Crysis franchise “definitely [has] a future” after Crysis 3 is released next month. While nothing has been confirmed, the producer mentioned that the studio is open to the idea of the next title in the series being something other than a first-person-shooter.
Read made the comment to Dusty Cartridge after he was asked if the developer intended to take a break from Crysis after Crysis 3‘s launch. His exact response reads:
“You know, I think at this point I don’t want to give anything away. But I think the Crysis franchise itself has life left in it. Whether it’s in a different game type format, whether it’s expanding upon this, it’s hard to say. That’s going to be up to the designers at the end of the day.”
“But I think we’ve built… Crysis was always intended to be a trilogy and I think that over that time we’ve built a really cool universe. We haven’t really gone in and said “Hey let’s put Nano suits and clown suits and stuff and completely violate and sell our IP.” We’ve done a fairly good job at maintaining that, so I think in terms of the universe, we have a lot more life left in that to go back and try some unique stuff.”
“Whether it’s FPS or not I have no idea, but there’s definitely a future in the franchise.”
While the Crysis series has always been positively received by reviewers, it has not been a break out success for Crytek and has actually struggled to break even with development costs. With that in mind, I’m not surprised to hear that the company is open to the idea of trying something different with the IP.
Exactly what the post-Crysis 3 game turns out to be is anyone’s guess but I would be surprised if it was anything as simple as moving the series to the third-person-shooter genre. That would be extremely similar to what the series is now and do little to shake things up. My guess is that if we do end up seeing a non-FPS Crysis it will be some sort of real-time-strategy title, and free-to-play if Cevat Yerli has anything to say about it.