» Sun Nov 07, 2010 9:46 am After giving some thought I have tried to answer the questions, tie up the loopholes, and come up with my own ideas for what could happen in Crysis 3. If anybody has any questions just post them, and I'll try to answer them. Of course feel free to answer other people's questions as well. The same goes with plot loopholes and theories for closing them. Lastly, I'd love to hear ideas for what you guys think will happen in Crysis 3.
I've tried keeping the tone as neutral as possible, however it was hard to keep the sceptism out of my voice when I added some of the more... Interesting theories.
It probably goes without saying but...
**SPOILERS**
So, without further ado...
Questions
- What does the suit gain from its "Symbiosis" with the wearer?
Crytek simply misused the term symbiosis. Symbiosis is the relation between two different species of organisms that are interdependent; each gains benefits from the other. I think the irreversible (almost parasitic bond) is a result of the suits programming i.e. to keep the wearer alive and fighting fit. It does this by growing into the body of the user as it makes repairs to the host's body (this is shown in the Wall Street cradle cut scene).
- How did Prophet get infected by the virus despite wearing the Nanosuit?
It is explained in a flashback that Prophet entered the spire under NYC whilst it was still underground. This is how he came into contact with the virus (we see in the campaign how it penetrates Alcatraz's suit). We also see how the suit cannot contain the virus indefinitely - in one cut scene we see the virus breaking out of the nano-shell the suit had encased it in. I assume that the virus was beyond this stage in Prophet's infection, and the suit was losing control.
- What did Prophet mean when he said he was "losing control" to the Ceph?
We see in several cut scenes how the virus engulfs the host's cells in its tentacles, and somehow converts the captured cell's DNA to that of the virus. In this sense it is not a conventional virus; viruses typically enter the cell of the host, "marshalling" host cells ribosomes, enzymes, and much of the cellular machinery to reproduce. It appears the Ceph virus can do this externally to the captured cell's nucleus. When Prophet said he was losing control, he probably meant the Nanosuit was no longer able to contain the virus (see above question).
- What the hell’s a Nanocatalyst? It certainly doesn’t speed up the infection…
Crytek have misused a plethora of scientific terms in the game (symbiosis being an example). A catalyst is something which speeds up chemical reaction (or in popular use any general process). If the "Nanocatalyst was indeed a catalyst, it would have sped up the infection (not good). What it actually did was slow down the infection by containing it in a sort of Nanoshell.
- What happened when the virus turned white?
When the suit turned the red virus's nucleus white, what happened was that it used the information from the injection (given by Jacob Hargreave, thanks for pointing that out
) to convert the RNA of the virus so that it was beneficial to the host (i.e. took over all the other virus cells, while leaving normal ones intact).- What did Hargreave and C.E.L.L. want?
To start with C.E.L.L. wanted Alcatraz because they believed he was Prophet, and Hargreave wanted Prophet because of the Nanosuit 2's link with the Ceph. However eventually Alcatraz kills enough C.E.L.L. that all they want is revenge, regardless of Hargreave or Stricktland's orders. Hargreave wanted Alcatraz so that he could wear the Nanosuit 2 himself and "finish what he started" with the technology Alcatraz/Prophet had encountered from his Ceph encounters.
- What did actually happened with Prophet?
Theory 1
I believe this may have been answered elsewhere, but my best bet actually combines a couple of other's ideas. Firstly, Alcatraz cannot talk, because his lungs have been ruptured. When Prophet was wearing the Nanosuit, the suit retained the data from Prophet even after the symbiotic link was broken. It absorbed his personality - the Nanosuit takes on Prophet's wireframe as an alias in two cut scenes during the campaign, and speaks with his voice. So at the end of the campaign? The conclusion I draw is that Prophet's "consciousness" is doing the talking for Alcatraz. Whether it is actually Prophet or the Nanosuit using his voice and personality is up for debate though.
Theory 2
In the last part of the story Alcatraz died and the Nanosuit decided the best approach was to integrate prophet's DNA into Alcatraz's DNA. Alcatraz was near death and he relies on the suit to keep him alive. If the suit shuts down, Alcatraz dies. The suit also monitors vital signs of the user and maintains homeostasis. When Alcatraz was close to death in the final chapter, the suit calculated the best chance for his survival is to integrate Prophet's DNA so that he will be kept alive. So essentially Prophet has now taken over Alcatraz's body.
Theory3
The suit assimilated Alcatraz and Prophet's consciousness into a singular one (whether it displays this in the ending cinematic is awaiting confirmation), probably to increase the suit wearer's chances of survival in the upcoming conflicts against the Ceph (Prophet had more run-ins with the Ceph then any other character, while Alcatraz had the actual body).
- In one of the flashbacks we saw Aztec from the first Crysis. And Prophet said "You lied to us!" to Hargreave. What?
First of all, the lie. Personally I think Prophet is referring to the fact Jacob knew the suits were symbiotic, but had told Prophet and co. he did not know. This is reinforced by the fact Jacob avoids answering the question, instead of denying it he says "Does it matter? We're all dead men walking." However it could also be referring to any number of lies about the suit, but without any solid information on the Jacob-Prophet relationship any guesses as to what the lie was would be just that - a guess.
Second, I assume you are referring to the image of Aztec being vaporised? I think this either just part of flashback, or possibly another show of the symbiosis.
- Did the Nanosuit turn Alcatraz into Prophet at the end of the campaign?
What evidence is there to suggest Alcatraz was dead at the end of the campaign? Also, if he was, I highly doubt the Nanosuit has the ability to revive a dead human, especially considering the kind of damage that would have been done to Alcatraz's body if he had indeed died. Also, if the Nanosuit could heal the body based on Prophets DNA, why would it not choose to do so with Alcatraz? You saw how protective the suit was of Alcatraz when Jacob tried to remove it. I think that by this point the suit was already linked with Prophet's consciousness, which both explains Prophets voice at the end, the wireframe of Prophet's face at several points, and its resistance to being removed from Alcatraz.
- Will we see loads of Nanosuit wielding human badasses in Crysis 3?
Probably not. To begin with anyway. A Nanosuit 2 costs at least billion of dollars each ("Keep my billion-dollar...out of the firing line for a while" - Jacob Hargreave). So while the cost of producing them will have gone down by Crysis 3, it would still cost roughly 10% of the US Defence budget (which is the largest in world AFAIK) to equip 50 of them. One must also remember that the world is under attack from a massive Ceph invasion force, so production capabilities will be limited.
What will more likely by the case is that there will still be many ordinary marines serving as the grunts, while Nanosuit 1 soldiers will be the equivalent of the Ceph Grunts, and Nanosuit 2 soldiers being the equivalent of a Ceph Elite or possibly even a Ceph Devastator (assuming Crytek's writers can come up with an excuse for having human enemies again). However you must also take in to account that the player will probably have a Nanosuit 3 by this time, so that there is an explanation for the increased survivability (giving this a bit more thought, human Nanosuit 3's will likely be the Ceph Devastator equivalent).
By the end of the game though, we might well be facing Nanosuited humans as standard. Looking at the end of Crysis 2, almost all the enemies were either very advanced C.E.L.L. troops (with K-Volts and other badass weapons) or Ceph, which could well be the equivalent of Nanosuit 1 soldiers in Crysis 3 (see quite a way below).
What's the deal with Alcatraz, and why can't he talk?
Theory 1
You're actually the suit throughout the game. It uses a combination of Alcatraz's half dead zombie body and Prophet's consciousness. Prophet is not talking to Alcatraz when he shoots himself and says "remember me", he's talking to the suit. And who pushes the defibrillator button? Alcatraz can't, so you are the suit.
Theory 2 - I feel special mention must go to 0009000001d1a468 for this post, if only because I can't be bothered to edit it into 3rd person... Maybe I will get round to it at some point to condense it. For now though... Read on.
In the beginning, he's all but totally slaughtered by that Ceph ship that emerges from the water after his sub gets trashed. He regains consciousness (barely) to see Prophet in Nanosuit 2 shooting down that ship with a heavy machine gun. Then, he passes out. Then, he wakes up wearing the suit, able to move like normal again. Prophet's suicide suddenly bursts into his mind, then he can see Prophet's real, dead body on the ground near him.
At this point, Alcatraz has to be confused as all Hell. Why can he suddenly move like he's 100% alive, again? Wasn't he just blown to bits by a space ship? Who's the dead guy? Why is his suit telling him to punch the lock off of the door out of the room? During the rest of the game, Alcatraz has to find out that he's only alive because he's wearing the suit, that he's morally obligated to follow orders to save the human race, and that he's the ONLY person on the planet who can accept that responsibility. And, it's not because he's a great guy; it's because he's wearing an expensive suit that is biologically merging with his body and mind. Basically, Alcatraz the man is garbage; only Alcatraz the post-human warrior is worth anything. This game seems to use Alcatraz's helplessness to answer the trans humanist question "Where does the man end and the machine begin?" that usually comes up during discussions of human augmentation using technology. The sad part of the story, and the part that let me feel for Alcatraz, is that the man is garbage, while the machine is everything. Therefore, Alcatraz must live out the machine's purpose, rather than his own (probably why they named him "Alcatraz," since the man/machine is his own prison). Further, Alcatraz's humanity is completely replaced by a carbon copy of Prophet's humanity at the end of the story. That is a completely anti-romantic (and dark) way of representing trans humanism in a story, and I love it.
Anyway, I think the writer did a good job of capturing Alcatraz's confusion by confining the storytelling to the story's environment. That is, the story isn't told to us, which makes this game very different than other games. The story is all around us, and we have to discover it. For instance, you can learn a lot about the story by looking for environmental clues (like the piles of flesh-eaten bodies in crates in the room right outside the room where Alcatraz first wakes up). Also, early in the game, you approach a big, metallic gate that blocks the road between you and something called an "evacuation area." Just behind that gate, you can see flames and smoke billowing over the top. That says "doom" without explicitly stating it. A third example is a radio broadcast you stumble upon while on a roof early in the game. The jockey talks about the alien invasion as if he's breaking the news to everyone. He can't believe he's reporting it, and he pre-emptively defends himself by admitting that he's not on hallucinogens. At this time, you can look around you and see smoking buildings, rotting corpses, and other kinds of destruction. This implies that, although the Ceph are complete badasses and stuff looks totally rotten from your perspective, the Ceph and their virus haven't begun devastating much outside of Manhattan yet.
Loopholes
A quick note about the loopholes: As I have been going through all the inconsistencies that others have mentioned or have occurred to me, I've been forming a sort of over-arching theory that ties up most of loopholes quite neatly. I've marked such theories with an asterisk, tell me what you think of it, even add your own ideas to it.
- Why would the Ceph society become dormant in the first place?
*Theory 1 There was some impending cataclysmic event that would have wiped the Ceph from the face of the Earth had they not hidden underground. It feels a bit presumptuous to say outright this was the reason, although it may well end up being the reason should Crytek decide to explain it in Crysis 3.
*Theory 2[/1]
Hargreave mentions that the Ceph evolved in the ocean, if their biology is anything similar to terrestrial life forms, this could be the reason they remained dormant for such a long time - to evolve (since evolution takes) millions of years. After the process of evolution was complete the Ceph realized the planet has a new dominant species (Mankind) and naturally take a hostile stance against them, this too is corroborated by Hargreave when he gives the speech about the aliens waking up and opening the fridge and not liking what they found.
- Why did the Ceph at Lingshan Island send a signal to M33?
[i]*Theory 1
The Ceph originally evolved on Earth, and the impending cataclysmic event (see above) meant that a small section of their society was sent to M33 to reawaken the larger proportion of society left on Earth at a later date.
Theory 2
The Ceph originally came from M33, and the Ceph at Lingshan island was a crashed space ship whose original purpose was to reawaken the dormant Ceph on earth. The Earth Ceph were sent into stasis because of the cataclysmic event.
- What happened to all the Ceph Scouts we saw flying out of the dome at the end of Crysis and Crysis Warhead?
After the destruction of both the Ceph Warrior and the Ceph Hunter the Scouts were defeated by the "incoming fleet from Japan". Even if it wasn't a defeat, they would have sustained too many casualties to continue from this point on with a full reclamation of Earth. We saw that the small unprepared American fleet dealt a lot of damage to those scouts and only the Hunter and the Warrior were able to even partially destroy the USS Constitution (although what would have happened had Nomad not been there is questionable). When the larger, far more prepared Japanese fleet arrived, the Ceph (without the Hunter), would have been unable to continue fighting, and would have had to retreat.
In the Crysis 2 campaign, the general public is completely unaware that the Ceph exist, so it is plausible the Ceph either retreated to redesign their war machines, or were contained by a military force effectively besieging Lingshan Island, or both. Obviously if this is true, it is unexplained how the Ceph managed to coordinate the redesign of their war machines. There are two explanations:
- 1) The Ceph had some network that linked their hubs, either via underground hubs or wireless communication. They would have then collaborated worldwide to update their war machines during dormancy (although this would mean they were starting to wake up right when the Ceph were disturbed by the KPA).
- 2) Each Ceph hub was left to design its war machines independently during the long period of dormancy, they were not connected or had no means of communication during dormancy.
- *3) See above theory regarding the distress signal sent to M33, and the dormant Ceph societies (below). This explains the vastly differing designs of the Ceph between Crysis and Crysis 2.
- Why would the Ceph at Lingshan Island send assloads of Scouts in all directions if there were dormant societies all over the globe?
*Theory 1
The Ceph at Lingshan island was in fact a crashed ship that was on its way from M33 to tell the Earth Ceph to wake up. It sent assloads of scouts in all directions to try and take back the Earth as it (incorrectly) assumed the new dominant species (humans) had discovered the Ceph before and annihilated them.
Theory 2
If the Ceph hubs had no means of communication then they would have had no way of knowing what each other hub was doing, so they would have been on some internal clock that woke them up at roughly the right time (hence the delay between the wake-up times of the hubs all over the globe).
Theory 3
They were going off to scour the globe and wake up/reactivate their dormant brethren, who were also hibernating deep underground. However this does not explain how the Ceph at NYC woke up, as the Ceph at Lingshan never got any further than that (NYC was the first time the public hears about the alien invasion). Perhaps there was also an internal clock or a wireless signal as a backup, or Prophet woke them up when he entered NYC's hub.
- Where are Nomad and Psycho?
*Kicking symbiotic dust is the most likely explanation. It is said in Crysis 2 that the Nanosuit 1 was in fact symbiotic too (contrary to what somebody posted earlier). Not being able to remove the suit, and being in service to the military both because of their contract and the fact the military isn't going to let a billion dollar piece of tech walk away, they'll likely be following orders...
The other possibility is that they were killed by the Nanosuit's "symbiosis", though why this would be the case is still undecided...
- How come Gould and Hargreave needed an alien tissue sample? Surely they have had ample opportunities to get one, especially considering the sample acquired by the USA at the end of Warhead?
It is unlikely Gould ever got access to Warhead's sample, as he did not work for the government. Even if he had, there are two more explanations. Firstly, the sample was old and frozen, he may have needed a fresh sample. Secondly, even if he did have access to a tissue sample, the Nanosuit appears to have needed an actual sample to assimilate with. Even if it did not, it would be near impossible for Gould to transmit the genetic code of a Ceph to the suit - the human genome is contained in some 40 or so phonebook-sized documents.
This also explains why Hargreave needed a direct sample for the Nanosuit.
Crysis 3
TantricOrange
Jacob Hargreave's partner, Rasch, will reverse engineer the process Alcatraz's Nanosuit creates when he enters a Ceph spire, creating a biological weapon that can be used against the Ceph. Obviously this won’t happen right at the beginning - we will see the protagonist (be it Alcatraz, Nomad, Psycho, or somebody else entirely) at a different location in the world fighting the Ceph. The weapon may be handheld, or a kind of Blue Rinse bomb (ala Artemis Fowl). The Ceph invasion from Earth will be driven back, possibly defeated.
However everybody forgot about the signal the Ceph on Lingshan island sent to that distant star, and more Ceph are on their way already. The biobomb doesn't work on them for some probably unexplained reason, which gives Crytek an excuse to create more zero-g environments as the protagonist has to go into space and blow the bejesus out of the Ceph mother ship.
Crytek and parent company Hargreave-Rasch will also develop the Nanosuit 3 (annihilation comes as standard, despite the fact you sprint less fast and can't jump as high, nor stay cloaked for as long as the previous two Nanosuits if the trend is to be continued), which will be given to the protagonist, who will go AWOL, giving Crytek an excuse to create human baddies.
I will update the post if people have more questions, loopholes, or Crysis 3 ideas they want to share.
Have fun people, and hopefully flame-retardant Nanosuit will not be necessary
I posted a picture later on without checking the resolution, now the whole first page appears to be broken... 
