The joke about «Crysis on maximum graphics settings» has become so common among gamers that the game has served as a benchmark for PC systems. In a recent interview, game director Cevat Yerli explained why this happened.
In a conversation with PC Gamer, he admitted that Crysis was designed with graphics settings that were oriented towards future systems. According to him, their team expected characteristics relevant for 2010, and not 2007. All for the sake of the game not becoming outdated years later, despite the new hardware:
I want[ed] to make sure Crysis does not age, that [it] is future proofed, meaning that if I played it three years from now, it should look better than today. A lot of people tried to maximize Crysis immediately. And I’m like, «Oh, that’s not why we built the Ultra mode, or Very High».
By the way, in 2020, Digital Foundry experts found out that Crysis on a powerful 2007 system at a resolution of 1168x665 produces no more than 30 FPS per second. So Crytek clearly made a mistake, trying to make a game for all time.
Note that Crysis 4 has been in development since 2022, about which there is still no information.