Psycho

Michael Sykes
Physical Description
Species	Homo Sapiens
Gender	Male
Height	Roughly Six Feet
Hair Color	Shaven
Eye Color	Forest Green
Political and Military Information
Rank	Sergeant
Affiliation	U.S Special Forces (Current), British SAS (Former)

Sergeant Michael "Psycho" Sykes is a former British SAS operative. He has since joined the U.S. Army Delta Force and is the third-ranking member of Raptor Team, behind Major Laurence "Prophet" Barnes, and Lieutenant Jake "Nomad" Dunn.

Background

Psycho tends to use particularly British profanity and has the SAS insignia tattooed on the back of his head. However, it is only seen on Crysis's last level, the only time at which Sykes takes off his helmet. Before joining the Raptor Team, Psycho was in the SAS for a couple of years and was selected to join the Raptor Team after his actions as an SAS operative.

Crysis

At the start of the game, he comes along with the Raptor Team, makes his jump out of the plane and presumably lands close to Prophet. He is seen in-game during the investigation of a frozen boat along with the rest of the team and helps Nomad until the mission at the harbor is over. After that he's ordered to follow another marine company (Alpha Company).

At the end of the game, he pilots a VTOL carrying Nomad and Helena Rosenthal on a course back to the Lingshan Islands in response to a transmission from Prophet.

Crysis Warhead

Psycho is the protagonist and main character in Crysis Warhead. His journey starts when the cruiser in Hongzoo Harbor is destroyed by US air strikes. He joins the Alpha Company, jumps into a convoy and defends it until it is attacked and destroyed. Afterwards he and the rest of the company enter a VTOL and fly out to the other part of the island. The VTOL is shot down, forcing Alpha Company and Psycho to find a safe checkpoint. Psycho encounters a helicopter with a container after an EMP explosion that knocks him out. Psycho anyway moves out and fights his way through a beach, hotel and helps his friend Sean O'Neill and some marines in his path. Later he attacks another harbor controlled by the KPA, but is captured and tortured by a high-ranking KPA commander, Colonel Lee, who's also wearing a Nanosuit. The submarine they are onboard freezes later inside the Ice Sphere and Psycho pursuits Lee with a hovercraft to take the container. After a long pursuit, Psycho loses Lee. He instead moves on to find Eagle Team and they fight their way against the Aliens to the Pacific Shore Mine. When they reach the mine, Psycho departs from the team and fights his way through the mine. When he finally reaches the exit, he catches a train that is carrying the container. After a short ride on the train, he reaches a bridge of Ang River and tries to call O'Neill to extract the container at the bridge where it is blocked, but O'Neill does not respond and Psycho is interrupted by Colonel Lee and his men. Lee commands his men to drop the engineer, but Psycho is able to grab the engineer. However, the engineer begs Psycho to drop him so he can detonate the bridge and stop Lee, which Psycho follows. But Psycho fails and has to invade the airfield to capture the container. Psycho fights against both KPA, Aliens and a modified Hunter until he secures the airfield and extracts the container along with O'Neill back to the USS Constitution.

Crysis Comic

En route to rescuing Prophet, Psycho's VTOL was shot down by the Ceph and blown up as they were getting out, knocking over everyone and severely injuring Nomad. Prophet came to their rescue and defeated the giant bipedal Ceph. When they got to safety, Prophet explained what the mission's purpose really was.

Psycho feels sympathetic towards Prophet, but is exasperated at the fact that the aliens are "squid" and "calamari". He then takes a shortcut through the alien ship with the rest of the survivors in order to reach Hargreave's private vessel for extraction. Unfortunately they are discovered by the Ceph inside and forced to step through a portal.

When they step back out, they find that they've travelled 18 hours back in time. Psycho has difficulty comprehending this fact, but they continue to the rendezvous point anyways. There, they are betrayed by the boat's crew, who shoot them and disable their suits with a poweful EMP.

Once onboard, the immobilized Psycho is beaten up by their captor, Norman West, who had been tracking Prophet ever since he was beaten up at Panama. When the EMP blast from Admiral Morrison's nuke frees them, they proceed to kill the crew and look for Nomad. When they are shot at with a rocket launcher, however, Nomad appears and takes the hit, sacrificing himself. Psycho stays back to check on Nomad while Prophet leaves to execute West. After mourning Nomad's loss, they decide to take their data to Hargreave, who may be able to help them.

Crysis 2

Though Psycho does not appear in Crysis 2, Prophet reveals in a flashback that all the surviving Nanosuit users have bonded with their suits. Jacob Hargreave claims they've become "post-human warriors", while Prophet calls them "dead men walking".

Personality and skills

While having a strong sense of devotion to everything he does and believes in, Psycho has a more emotional outwardness than Nomad, and is far more social, sometimes cracking a joke or making a comment on something. Psycho will often speak out what he believes is best and, at times, will even go so far as to disobey orders in order to do what he thinks is right, much to the disapproval of his superiors. Psycho is not one to abandon friends and will go out of his way in order to help out, such as his determination to rescue O'Neill who was in hostile territory after surviving a plane crash. Psycho, adhering to the principles set by his superiors, follows his own code of honour (a more prominent example of this being his refusal to kill a KPA soldier who was not armed.)

Psycho also has a very colorful vocabulary, likely due to his British heritage and involvement with the SAS.

Throughout the game, Psycho is shown to skilfully handle most, if not all, weapons and vehicles in the field. He is capable to pilot a VTOL with relative professionalism, and is able to modify any weapon during a battle in the field.

During their mission to rendezvous with Hargreave's boat, he continues to trust Prophet despite the fact that he is working for Jacob Hargreave. Time travel is incomprehensible to him, though he remains fairly light-hearted, even telling Nomad to lighten up and stop being a "twat". However, they are betrayed at the rendezvous point by the boat's crew, who opened fire on them without warning and disabled their suits with a powerful EMP.

Quotes

• They won't even know what hit 'em. -- Psycho, Contact, when Prophet stated that their mission was a covert operation.
• Take care of yourself, Nomad. The beers are on me when this is over. -- Psycho, Assault, to Nomad, when the twosome part ways for different missions.
• Oi, Nomad! Get a load of this ugly bastard! -- Psycho, Reckoning, to Nomad when Nomad noticed the disabled alien scout.
• I reckon nuking the entire island is about as final as it gets?! -- Psycho, Reckoning, to Prophet trying to stop him from returning to the Lingshan Island.
• Hold tight, O'Neill, I'm coming for you. -- Psycho, Shore leave, to Emerson and O'Neill, despite told to leave O'Neill for Air Command.
• He was unarmed. There are some rules that I do follow. -- Psycho, Shore leave, in reply to O'Neill who questioned his motives of letting an unarmed KPA soldier live.
• I'm British, you muppet! -- Psycho, Shore Leave and All the Fury, to a KPA Soldier and later Colonel Lee, when they cursed him for the American incursion.
• Prophet? Do you read me, Prophet? Damn it, Prophet! Where the... Where the bloody hell are you?! -- Psycho, Frozen Paradise, in reply to a radio transmission where Prophet appeared to be in danger of hypothermia.
• Damn! Looks like someone beat me to it! -- Psycho, From Hell's Heart, when finding the switching box he was supposed to operate was sabotaged.
• You're Search and Rescue, mate. What do you expect? -- Psycho, From Hell's Heart, in reply to O'Neill when the latter mutters about running out of ammo for his VTOL.
• O'Neill! Where the f*** have you been?! -- Psycho, All the Fury, cursing O'Neill for not showing up at the bridge earlier.
• So long, mate. -- Psycho, responding to Jester's death.

Gallery

Michael's British Special Air Services tattoo placed on the back of his head.

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Micheal has tendencies to argue with his superiors, although they often found his arguments as a sign of disrespect. In this case, he engages Prophet in yet another one of their arguments.

Trivia

• Sykes is likely named after the Fairbairn Sykes fighting knife, the legendary knife of British World War II commandos.
• In a deleted training mission, Psycho is the weapon specialists for Nomad and is said to show Nomad how to use the tag bullets, a scrapped attachment for the SCAR that tags an enemy and shows him on the radar. It can still be found in the game files, though.