Crysis Developers Designed Max Settings for 2010 PCs, Not the Hardware Available in 2007

Back when Crysis first hit the shelves, it quickly became notorious for the sheer power it demanded from gaming systems. It became such a hallmark of challenging hardware it spawned a meme, and here’s the kicker—you weren’t even supposed to push it to the max settings when it was released.

You might recall the phrase, “Can it run Crysis?” floating around gaming forums about ten years ago. For many, that’s all you knew about the game: it was incredibly tough on your computer’s capabilities. Fast-forward to today, nearly two decades since its 2007 launch, and that quip has lost its sting. Most modern machines can handle Crysis with ease now. Interestingly enough, this was all part of the plan. The team behind Crysis designed it to be ahead of its time, ensuring it remained challenging as hardware evolved.

In a recent chat with PC Gamer, Cevat Yerli, the director of Crysis and founder of Crytek, dug into the game’s enduring reputation. Yerli explained their foresight: “We designed Crysis to not just be for today but to look incredible even when played years down the line.” They crafted the highest graphic settings with a vision for hardware from as far ahead as 2010. Despite this foresight, many gamers couldn’t help themselves—they pushed those settings to the brink right from the start. “People were cranking up Crysis to the maximum,” he laughed. “But that’s not what Ultra mode was for back then.”

Surprisingly, despite how widespread the joke became, Yerli took it all in stride. “It was a bit of a love-hate situation, but I actually found it amusing,” he confessed. Recently, when Nvidia unveiled a new GPU, they cheekily confirmed, “Yes, and it can run Crysis.” So if you were fiddling around with medium settings back in 2007, maybe it’s time to see if your current setup can finally take on Crysis at full throttle—I bet it can!