The tactical assessment view opens up another layer to the game, as Cervat explains. “The scan you get back makes three or four recommendations. You can mark the recommendations and they usually show you a way of taking advantage of a path you might not have chosen.” I tried this out on my fourth attempt at the first action bubble I played. On previous runthroughs, I’d gone for close-range firefights, but with a sweep of the tactical assessment view, I clocked a sniper rifle away from the action. Engaging cloak, I whizzed past a set of dimwitted aliens and hopped up to the ledge it was on. Shouldering it and hunkering down behind cover, I swept the field one last time to get a bead on my targets before pop-pop-popping three headshots off to kill them all without dirtying my nice new nanosuit.

This action bubble was one of the largest I played, yet thanks to the highrise architecture it felt tighter and closer to a standard FPS than Crysis’s expansive setting. I asked Cervat if the games were comparable in level size. “In metres, they’re going to be smaller, but they’re about the same because we’re pushing the height. Crysis was a sandbox, but it was a 2D game: you’re just walking left, right, forward, back, and sometimes you jump. Crysis 2 is a voluminous experience.”

The switch brings its own challenges for the development team. “That requires awesome AI to take advantage of the volume, that traverses the buildings and jumps between different levels. It took 18 months to get an AI we’re happy with that can follow you in 3D, and isn’t scripted.”

Like the singleplayer level structure, multiplayer feels like Halo. Each player, as well as the standard suit armour/speed/ cloak suit skills, gets to choose two perks and two weapons, varying builds from sprinting shotgun bastard to invisible sniper bastard and all bastards in between. Despite the fact I was playing three-month old code, guns already felt right – the armour suit mode offered enough protection to make it noticeably worth using, even against heavy weaponry.