Next-Gen Isn't About Resolution On Xbox One, Says Crytek

Why is Ryse: Son of Rome running at only 900p and 30 frames per second on the Xbox One? It doesn't matter. You don't need to know or sweat the details. According to Crytek, next-gen gaming starts this month but all those games they touted at E3 with those high resolutions and buttery smooth frame rates isn't what next-gen is about... say what?

One of the leaders in graphical excellence and technically superior achievements in visual fidelity, Crytek, has come out and said just opposite of everything that actually made them famous. Remember in 2007 (and many years thereafter) where everyone ran out to upgrade their PC components just to say that they could run Crytek's graphically astounding Crysis? Hey, remember so many years before that when Crytek pushed the absolute boundaries on home console graphics with Far Cry: Instincts on the original Xbox? Yeah, well, all those achievements apparently mean nothing now.

Crytek has completely changed their tune following “Resolutiongate”, with NowGamer.com picking up the comments from X-ONE, where design director PJ Estevez stated that...

"This is the part I really hope to communicate to gamers; if we choose 900p, it’s for a very specific reason, because we know what that actually gets us and how much better we can make Ryse artistically by doing that,""Don’t sweat the details right now. Just play the game, enjoy it and it’s going to look beautiful on your flatscreen. It’s going to be one of the most amazing looking things out there for a while. I think others developers as their things come out, you’re going to see the same thing."The next gen isn’t about resolution, you know? At least for us, it’s about performance, it’s about getting more out of story-telling, it’s about having games that have no low-res textures in them. That’s more about the memory you have. In this age of social media I think everyone’s fixated on things that don’t matter as much as the kind of passion people are putting into the games that we’re making."

What? Am I reading this right? Is that correct?

So, one of the companies that helped keep PC gaming mainstream during the seventh gen when everyone was saying “PC gaming was dead” and set a benchmark in technical excellence for graphical achievements in a first-person shooter, is now completely reneging on that and saying “Huehuehue, graphics dun matter geyz!”

It's one of the most asinine displays of market pandering that I've ever seen.

I agree that graphics don't make a game perfect, but now we're suppose to dismiss them because it's become Microsoft's new misdirected talking point? We already have previews from GameInformer and ShackNews openly stating that Ryse is gorgeous but boring; a engineering masterpiece of visual fidelity at the expense of gameplay soul. I would surmise that if the game is praised for graphics and criticized for its gameplay, we would aptly say that the game aims to provide graphics over gameplay, no?

I feel like Ryse will be to the Xbox One what Lair was to the PS3: visually rich but mechanically void of depth.

As for Estevez's comments... well, I would take them as a means of damage control. Ryse was always promoted as a visual masterpiece sort of game when it was on display at E3 proclaiming twice as many polygons and a targeted 1080p resolution, but after the game was massively downgraded the promotional campaign has shifted from “Ohhh, look at the pretty graphics!” to “Ohhh, graphics don't matter!”

Real classy marketing right there.

Ryse: Son of Rome will release in all its native 900p, 30fps glory on the Xbox One come November 22nd.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.