At the beginning the game, the player already has access to all of the suit's abilities, and keeps them throughout the game. They never "level up" or develop--they are tools to facilitate gameplay style, not character growth. Only one can be activated at any given time, meaning players must weigh their options in each situation. Other enhancements include strength, which gives players the ability to jump great distances and even punch through structurally unsound walls to ambush enemies indoors, and the chameleon-like active camouflage, which actually physically adjusts the color of various parts of the player's armor to match the surrounding surfaces. Crytek hopes people will be creative with their sequential combinations of the various abilities. "For instance, if I run really far with speed then jump over a hill, I can turn on armor so I can land [without taking damage]," he described. There are also a variety of weapon upgrades, such as silencers and scopes, as well as different types of ammunition.

Adding to the player's options are the wider range of vehicles--jeeps, tanks, helicopters, several types of boats, and so on--which are more organically integrated into the environments this time around rather than periodically appearing as gifts for the player. "They're throughout the game," said Mamais. "Enemies use them all the time so they're always available, but sometimes you might have to steal one--they don't hand it to you, they're part of the world. You can use them as much or as little as you want."

As noted previously, one frequent frustration that many players expressed about Far Cry was its intense difficulty. I recounted an anecdote from E3 2006, during which I was speaking to a Far Cry developer who admitted that he himself was unable to finish his studio's own game due to its level of challenge. "That wasn't me," laughed Mamais, and spoke on why that occurred and how the company plans to rectify that in Crysis. "What we found in Far Cry is that at times we encouraged the user to take a stealth approach, which made the action tough, but they will try to play it like other linear FPSes. Of course it's going to be different. In other games, it's different because you do it one time then you know Bozo 1 is coming through here and Bozo 2 is coming through there," he explained. "Here, we have a difficulty setting that's much easier, so we are addressing that. We're also putting quick save in. Those two things will make it easier for people who want that. But we were aiming for a certain type of experience, basically, that we wanted a fully immersive twist on an FPS. So that's what Far Cry was. We're a relatively young company--I've been in the business for fifteen years--but most of the company was younger and learning." Chuckling, he added, "So we made a few mistakes, but they've been rectified now."