Inside Crysis: Be Strong, Be Fast

Peter Watts, author of Crysis: Legion takes us behind the scenes of the novel and game to expose the science behind the N2, a super-powerful, hyper-technical battle suit. Part 1 of 4. Also, check out this free 50-page excerpt of Crysis: Legion.

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The Crysis Legionaire’s Online Backstage Nanosuit Grand Tour, Part One: Be Strong, Be Fast

A couple of years back I get this overseas phone call: dude named Robert Berger, from Crytek. He likes my stuff. He especially likes the way I ground my fiction in real-world science (I backload my novels with technical appendices, chock full of references from the scientific literature; some folks think I do it for educational purposes but I’m really just trying to cover my ass against nitpickers). Robert wonders if I can give him a hand on the technical specs for an advanced battlefield prosthesis called the Nanosuit 2.0.

Sure I can. I’ve been reading up on the latest robotics news while researching my latest novel; there doesn’t seem to be anything about this Nanosuit that can’t be justified by pushing the real-world state-of-the-art ahead a few years.

So I write up the text for a glossy advertising brochure. Crytek likes what I’ve done, for the most part. (Well, they cut some of my jokes: I described the suit’s AI as a Semi-Autonomous Neuro-Tactical Augment, or SANTA, which led to some nice advertising copy: With SANTA on the battlefield, it’s like every day is Christmas! Plus I had this little chip voice that said Ho…Ho…Ho… during boot-up. All cut from the final draft, sadly).

One thing leads to another, and a year later I find myself writing a novel based on Richard Morgan’s game script. I call it Legion, for reasons that anyone who makes it to page 15 will understand (and there’s no reason you shouldn’t; Del Rey has posted the first 50 pages online). And the thing about novels is, they can go places games can’t. They can explore backstory, delve into character, look into little corners of the plot in ways that would absolutely kill the pacing of an FPS.

They can also geek out a bit more on the story behind the tech, pop the hood and poke around in the engine. That’s why we’re here now: to look at the nuts and bolts of how those awesome superpowers might actually work (and perhaps to show some of the costs you pay, when you wire yourself too intimately into tomorrow’s technology). And since I’m the dude who both wrote the technical brochure and the novel, I get to be your tour guide over the next two weeks.

First stop: Be Strong, Be Fast

At first glance, the N2 might strike you as the love child of Iron Man crossed with a T-800. In terms of real-world technology, though, the nanosuit is actually far more prescient than Tony Stark’s high-tech armor (even if it isn’t powered by an arc reactor); stronger than the pistons and hydraulics that power your average Terminator. It turns out that artificial muscle is the way to go: dielectric elastomers, ferroelectric polymers, materials that contract when you run a current through them and relax when you cut the juice. Soft power. In terms of strength per kilogram, they beat the crap out of combustion engines, hydraulics, and electric servomotors.

The most promising of these muscle analogs are built from carbon nanotubes; those babies can store elastic energies ten times as great as elastomers, 250 times as great as human muscle. Both your biceps could be replaced by a wire of the stuff only 8mm thick.

Think about that. An 8mm cord of artifical muscle with the lifting power of two human arms. Now look at all those corded bundles wrapped around the Nanosuit; the ability to kick a car across the boulevard doesn’t seem quite so implausible, does it?

Carbon nanotubes: they’re a weight-lifter’s wet dream.

By way of illustration, here’s the scene where Alcratraz — newly clad in these high-tech threads, and not entirely sure what he’s got himself into — finds himself learning on the job. Don’t let his giddy and profane enthusiasm fool you; this is still very early in the game, and it won’t be long before he learns — like Prophet before him — that the N2 wears you as much as you wear it. What you see here is only one side of a very double-edged sword…

Excerpt from Crysis: Legion by Peter Watts
On Sale 3/22/2011 from Del Rey Books

So this is how it is. No cutesy musical sign language, no guys with bumpy foreheads saying Resistance Is Futile or Kneel Before Zod, no sexy alien hive queens keeping our hero busy with butt sex while her minions turn our children into veal cutlets. No small talk at all, unless you count the sound it makes when it sees me: kind of a stuttering hollow croak, like a cheap voice synthesizer trying to gargle.

And then ET brings it, motherfucker.

In that first second I’m surprised by how human it looks. Sure, the legs have too many joints and the arms don’t have any—more like segmented tentacles with hands, like Doc Ock from Spiderman—but there’s two of each, right where they’re supposed to be. Kind of a helmet on top with two compound clusters of orange lights where you’d expect eyes. It’s all metal, though, so I’m thinking either robot or armor.

And then it fires, point-blank, and I’m flat on my back and I should be dead but I’m not. In the next second it’s on me like a fucking panther and I can see the meat inside all that metal: grayish, translucent, like a jellyfish. Dim brownish-orange blobs deep inside that have to be organs, four thick fleshy tentacles flailing out the back. And one part of me’s thinking what the hell kind of armor leaves your guts exposed, but another part’s thinking those guts are the last thing you’re ever gonna see, asshole—because I’m already down, man, without firing a shot, it caught me flat-footed and flipped me like a bug on its back. And it should be game over right there, but then it just—

Hesitates. Bobs its head, or whatever you call that wedged-shaped thing with the lights. We almost get the sense it’s sniffing the air, trying to get a fix on some strange new smell. And that little hesitation, that one or two seconds’ grace—that’s enough for a comeback. We grab that fucker by the horns, we jam—

I, of course. I mean I.

I grab that fucker by the horns, I jam my pistol into the gray goo and start firing. The thing pulls away, makes this whistling sound—cold, winter-wind sound—and I’m back up just like that, the alien brings its weapon up again but I block, I jab, I don’t even think about it. The suit’s got its own reflexes, force multipliers, motion multipliers. Turns a flinch into a right hook. It barely waits for me to move before responding, I could almost swear it’s moving me. I lift that alien motherfucker over my head and pitch it off the roof like I was throwing a hackeysack.

So much for the bogeyman, bitch. So much for the monster under the bed. So much for the thing in the closet.

I don’t know what Prophet was going on about. This suit is fucking awesome.

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Here’s some video showcasing the strength…

…and speed of the N2.

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Peter Watts is the author of Crysis: Legion, official novelization of the highly anticipated Crysis 2 from developer Crytek. Peter will be back on Thursday, March 24 to give you more behind-the-scenes insight into the N2.