Well considering that Crysis will be a DX 10 engine, it better be looking better

2 thins about sub surface scattering

1.) Anybody who has a laser pointer? Take it, hold it under one of your fingers and you will notice what SSS is all about
2.) There are many ways to describe how SSS works. I can only recommend as before to have a look at ShadersX³ Chapters 2.13 and 2.14
Another method, prove me wrong, would be to use a map for a "second layer" and blend it with the first layer "skin". The second layer should contain nothing more than scattering information. Not much more than a black and white image.
This won't give you true SSS as it is independent from the light source and direction but will give you an Oblivion like feeling e.g. light from a torch is about 40 inches away from a character. Normally the light would produce a "hard spot" on the character and light the vertices or pixels around that. With a lighting map you should be able to calculate a dependency on the lightsource and it's distance, blend skin layer as well as "true" lighting properties and furthermore just do additive blending of the scattering map.

Lets give it a try

Greetings
Sven