The Redemption, Crytek’s cancelled project described as The Last of Us meets Crysis 2 has been detailed finally. Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek said to Polygon that he shelved the project personally, even though it had been successfully signed to EA.
The game is expecting to deliver a meaningful emotional connection, and was inspired by an experience Yerli had of being unable to find his niece. The game has a third-person shooter and players protecting a ten year old girl named Jelena. She could be ordered to hide, but would not be safe from dogs, for example, leaving the player with little choice but to fight to protect her.
The game features a button dedicated to looking at Jelena, zooming in on her face to check if she was okay; players could also call out her name to find her. But the testers found the game uninteresting and Jelena is annoying, which makes them feel like shooting her.
Yerli said, “At that point we knew – or I knew – this [was a] project we could not pull off yet. We don’t have the technology and the capabilities here. Not just the company, but the industry as a whole.”
And, Yerli is expecting the project to be back one day in some form.
After the first cancellation, Redemption was not in light. They’re well worth a look now that BioShock Infinite and The Last of Us has convinced us all that AI companions aren’t so bad after all.