Rewatching the iconic Crysis 2 'Ultra Upgrade' graphics trailer today in 2024, a bombastic tech showcase that changed how we talk about PC gaming forever

GamesFPSCrysis 2Rewatching the iconic Crysis 2 ‘Ultra Upgrade’ graphics trailer today in 2024, a bombastic tech showcase that changed how we talk about PC gaming foreverWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Crytek)

Crysis 2 hero character in Nanosuit

Today, in 2024, you don’t have to look far for a new PC game to be found advertised almost entirely on the graphical benefits it delivers to PC gamers alone. From Cyberpunk 2077, a game repeatedly marketed on PC almost solely on its graphical prowess, through to AAA ports of big-budget console games, such as the recently released Horizon: Forbidden West Complete Edition, it’s now unsurprising to see these games framed out of the gate in terms of what visual upgrades they offer when compared to their lesser console counterparts.

But it wasn’t always thus. Yes, sure, since the early days of mainstream PC gaming in the 1990s it was common accepted knowledge within the PC gaming community that, of course, a primary reason we played games on PC was that you got the best experience. Why would you play a slow, limited console version of Doom when you could experience the lightning-fast real thing, with all the graphical bells and whistles turned to maximum? Exactly, you wouldn’t.

But what didn’t happen, at least in my recollection, were PC games being overtly advertised on the granular graphical advantages they delivered, promotions that seemed to quietly but confidently whisper in your ear, ‘we secretly know thatthisis why you’re going to buy this game, PC gamer, not for the gameplay, not for the narrative, not for the creativity on show, but for pixel-pushing eye candy’. That, as I argue here though, changed forever in 2011 with the ‘Crysis 2 DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade’ trailer. You can watch it below.

First off, as a PC gamer, watching that trailer today in 2024 still gets my mouth watering. It’s over two and a half minutes of almost non-stop graphical goodness, with so many desirable graphics features (for the time especially, but still true even now for many) injected into your eyes that it remains truly remarkable. Here’s a list of the graphical upgrades Crysis 2 is advertised with in this trailer:

Tessellation and Displacement Mapping, Parallax Occlusion Mapping, High Quality HDR Post Processing, Improved Tone Mapping, Real-Time Local Reflections, Custom Shape Based Bokeh DOF, Improved Water Rendering, Interactive Water, Realistic Shadows with Variable Penumbra, Contact Shadows, High Quality HDR Motion Blur, Particle Motion Blur and Shadows. And breathe. Wow, just wow!

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The cumulative effect of viewing all this pixel candy at the time was truly jaw-dropping, a sense that this was a PC game from the distant future, one that with all these exclusive graphical enhancements turned on (something that of course required a strong rig at the time) would transport PC gamers into a higher-fidelity virtual gaming world.

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Of greater importance to the industry, though, I argue that this trailer would go down in gaming history as a game-changer for how it influenced how PC games were promoted. For the first time ever (certainly, to my experience, and at such a high, AAA level) here we had a newly launched blockbuster game getting its own dedicated graphics trailer for public release. And, what’s more, this graphics trailer didn’t just say things like ‘higher resolution’ or ‘faster frame rate’, but completely openly bandied around technical graphics jargon for over two and half minutes that, even within the PC gaming community at the time, not very many PC gamers were familiar with, let alone comfortable in accurately describing. But while they may not understand what these things were or how they worked, this trailershowedthem the benefits, and boy did they look like stuff you wanted.

You only have to look at how Cyberpunk 2077, the technical testbed darling of the PC gaming world over the past few years, has advertised itself to PC gamers since its release, repeatedly, on its advanced graphical options and capabilities, educating gamers rapidly on the benefits of real-time ray tracing, DLSS, path tracing, DLAA, screen space reflections, subsurface scattering among other graphics options, to see the unbroken lineage. Shame that Cyberpunk 2077, at least until its game-changing 2.0 patch, wasn’t that good an actual game. But that’s beside the point.

Interestingly, Crysis as a series has, I think, been sidelined in importance in the modern day from the history of PC gaming, most likely remembered via good but not great review scores predominantly, while the fact it was a momentum-generating poster child for PC gaming development and hardware adoption for years largely forgotten. However, its impact on PC gaming, with a trilogy of technically jaw-dropping and boundary-pushing releases as well as, arguably even more importantly, an openness in talking about a key reason why we all play games on PC, that desire to attain the very highest audio-visual quality we can, cannot be understated and endures to this day.

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