Player Effort | 4 Reasons Why Crysis 3′s Campaign Is Only 5 Hours Long

CD-Action Mag indicated that the Crysis 3 campaign is only 5 hours long – with side missions.

This is a low blow to many Crytek fans since Crytek usually make their campaign modes longer than the average shooter. This is a very worrying trend with many First Person Shooter games that have been released over the past few years. Even Halo 4 suffered the same issue and was criticized for it’s short length.

cry3

Crysis 3 promises to be a visually stunning game but at what cost?

I don’t know why Crytek opted for a smaller sized campaign this time around but I do have some ideas.

1It’s safe to say that rising development costs for video games, especially the ones backed with ground breaking technology are much more expensive to make. It’s possibility that this had an effect on the development of Crysis 3. It’s much more feasible to make a shorter graphical intensive game than a longer one. There is a reason GTA 5 has a rumored budget of $137.5 million dollars. Bigger games require more money, and EA probably felt that Crysis 3 wasn’t worth it – they are the publishers after all. After all Crysis games barely break even so it might be best not to inflate the budget.

2Scale back the game but make it a much more polished experience. The team focuses on fewer environments, weapons, characters, and set pieces and you name it. Essentially, they work with fewer things but give it much more attention. This I believe can help the overall game if it plays towards its strengths.

3Crytek has also mentioned numerous times that they want to break away from story based games and want to work with the Free-To-Play model. It simply interests them more and they believe it’s the future of the industry or at least one of the many directions the industry is headed. However before they can carry out with this plan they have to finish their current obligations with their publishing partners. Crysis 3 is the last game they are doing for EA so it might be a case of getting it out the door quickly. They are waiting anxiously to transition to Free-To-Play.

4Lastly, gaming culture and development is transiting away from long campaigns, primarily for pure shooting games. To me this isn’t that great of a problem mainly due to the fact that a lot of shooters now get very repetitive towards the end unless they are open world (FarCry series, Borderland series). A lot of people, not the hardcore gaming crowd, don’t have the time to finish long games so it benefits them as well. It’s a case of looking at target markets.

warface

Crytek has already begun their Free-To-Play transition with WarFace

To conclude, these are the reasons I believe Crytek went for shorter campaign in their conclusion of the Crysis trilogy. For more updates about Crysis 3, keep it lock and loaded at Player Effort.

Sources: PC Gamer, MyCrysis, GameSpot, EuroGamer

http://www.facebook.com/zach.robichaud Zach Robichaud

great article. I completely agree with that fact that most people don’t have time to invest in their campaigns and having something that only takes 5-10 hours to complete dependent on difficulty is a better thing for the industry as a whole.
- http://www.facebook.com/mahavir.singh.587268 Mahavir Singh
  
  If people dont have time to put in a campaign, then why do they buy the game???
Nick

The campaign in Crysis 2 was amazing. The further you got the better it was and it took me about 10-12 hours. This is disappointing.
dd dd

If anything gets repetitive towards the end, its open world games like Far Cry 3. 5 hour campaign is a disaster, especially for people like me that dont play multiplayer
dd dd

Free-to-Play model will just be a step backwards for Crytek
oo7PorscheMGS

Depends on quality. 5 hours is different than “5-10″ by the way, whoever wrote that. I would consider buying the game if it were 10 hours. 5 hours though is not good enough unless the online is amazing as well.. which from the beta I can tell it will be FUN but I don’t see any mode so unique or new here…… stop making every FPS like every other one, it’s boring and not creative as well. Where are the CREATIVE designers? Look at how unique COUNTERSTRIKE or the oldschool PS2 SOCOM games are, and THEN make your online games………… Not every game has to have the same respawn modes. Respawn gets boring and chaotic, give us something new. So yea, as you can tell I’m not too excited about any online shooter lately, they all copy each other. So for a 5 hour game… I’ll buy it when it’s $10 at the end of the year / next year. No rush, plenty of good games… and I know The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto, and Bioshock won’t be 5 hours And I still have plenty of AAA games to play / finish. Put TIME into your games, and maybe gamers will put money into your company It’s not all about graphics boys, think big for once……
Quincy

Feel free to rage at me, but I think that games are getting a little to good looking, and they should spend some more time on the quality/Mechanics. A game like Dark Souls has good graphics, but not overloaded to the point where you need a super computer to play it.
STLShazbot

I refuse to play new games…. I am not paying 60$ for games that last only 4-5 hours for single player and all that is left is online that ends up sucking 2 months in by the way people play now. So. No. Until these games start going back to almost 15-20 hours of single player I am not buying any game.,
http://www.facebook.com/cxgamer Chamith Nawodya

crytek trying save electricity or something?shame on crytek
Patrick Sewell

Um, after reason number 4, I am convinced this list is all a joke, and as a 60$ game there’s no way the campaign is only 5 hours long, lalala
Stoshy

Halo 4 was criticized for being short? Really? Ha! I found it to be a game that took forever to complete. It was never on point. I waited until the end for something interesting to happen. It was just one big cat and mouse chase, a game of tag between Master Chief and the Didact for unexplained reasons (Microsoft says purchase the books and Xbox LIVE for it to be explained).

It’s a shame that Crysis 3 will have a short campaign. Crysis 2 did a great job at sharing its story. All Crysis games I found to be boring. The original’s gameplay was atrocious. The sandbox element was a mess and there was no reason to explore or have fun. Objectives weren’t designed for a sandbox game. It might as well have been linear. Warhead added a mix of linear and sandbox. It tightened things up. It wasn’t interesting, but it wasn’t all over the place like Crysis. It’s actually my favorite. Crysis 2′s linear and simplified gameplay got me interested in the story to where I bought the originals to play. I was looking forward to Crysis 3′s mix of linear and sandbox. I wanted to compare it Warhead’s. There wasn’t much to expect from Crysis 2′s simplified multiplayer and there sure isn’t from Crysis 3′s. Screw multiplayer. Crysis’s big strong points have always been graphics and story. They should focus on that instead of what bullhockeypoopey they’re doing now.

Also, are you kidding me? Far Cry 3 was boring as heck! It was pure point and shoot. You might as well play Dead Island. The only thing not repetitive about it was collecting “various” flowers (yawn) and that enemies wouldn’t respawn in captured territories. At least Borderlands had replay value with customization, exploration, interesting characters, and weapons galore!

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4 Reasons Why Crysis 3′s Campaign Is Only 5 Hours Long