new stalker article
Translated from Russian
It's hard to believe, but STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl looks like it is ready to be released. We understand the skeptical look on you faces that some of you have right now. But this, my friends, is the pure, clean truth. We (your favorite editor and Anton Logvinov), with our own eyes, and our own hands, saw the game, and it really looks like a finished product. This is not a multi-player test, not a physics demonstration, not a demonstration of the abilities of the engine and other technical wonders - this was a real, living pulsing beta-version of that same STALKER, that some long waiting veterans have dubbed ZhDALKER (zhdat' means "to wait" in Russian, so they took out the STA and added the part that means "to wait" ) , and it seems lost hope to see it in this lifetime. But the amazing happens. Finally the long-awaited project that was portrayed by the media as this miracle-project in eternal production has finally began to take form and is promising to be something to definitely expect in the first quarter of the new year. GSC Game World have once again caught the attention and love of countless fans, and Anton Bolshakov has recently made a statement promising to give away his car if Stalker does not come out.
The project is rid of all hints and influences of Tarkovskiy, the Strugatskiys and their literary base. From the books are left only the Zone and Stalkers. Stalker is also made to remind people of the tragedy at Chernobyl on April 25 1986. THQ and GSC gave all foreign reporters and media a grand presentation of the catastrophe by taking them on a tour of Pripyat and other Chernobyl Landmarks. It was very interesting and eye-opening. One of the reporters even found a shoe covered in extremely radioactive waste, and from what we heard, they almost cut off their own limbs in fear. Our magazine even had the opportunity to talk to a real-life Stalker who has been taking people on tours (including GSC) of this place for 20 years. He told us stories of how bus-loads of people waited four hours for authorization to leave the checkpoint, and how the front buses left, but those in the real stayed, because from the time the waiting started, the amount of corpses in them grew and grew until the whole bus was full of nothing but corpses. And how mobilized chemical infantry units sent there in almost nothing save a few gas-masks were air-dropped onto the roof and collapsed only a minute after touching the roof with their feet. STALKER, in all honesty, induces a hollowed feel of horror, which makes the project You Are Empty seem like an innocent romp in comparison.
Speculations suggested that GSC's long silence was due to the fact that there ambitions were not reached and that the game was turned into a corridor-like shooter as a result...like You Are Empty. That no free-roaming zone existed, that life-simulation was gone - THQ forced the Ukrainians to get rid of those ideas and continue with their project. We hereby confirm that the open world is still in, and that there are 7 (!) endings, five of which Anton Bolshakov calls "False" endings. The two real ones open unaccessible new features, and almost a third of the game. (replay value alert!)
Details of the Storyline the GSC team refuse with a smile, not wanting to spoil the experience for us. The game play of course is sully realized...and reminds us of The Eder Scrolls 4: Oblivion (without some of the needless and annoying RPG crap) You of course have the RPG-ish cube inventory, artifacts that affect your performance, and an endless array of costumes that you need to constantly change or upgrade. The inventory even has weight effects and restrictions. A Stalker that is loaded up with heavy stuff cannot sprint as long as when he has a normal amount of items, he needs to stop periodically to catch his breath, and as a rule, always discovers a monster every time he turns around. This is a very rare and unique experience for an action-game - making sure you don't carry too much in your back-pack and closely analyzing the armor you are wearing. The game, from all the things said, is really a game of colossal proportions. When talking about the game's length, the GSC team said impossible numbers - from 60 to 80 hours. These numbers are explained by that same life simulation system.
This promises us a real, constantly changing, and living environment.This means no two events are alike. The different areas constantly strive for balance. Each area is tightly packed with characters and animals that await your actions and arrival, to give you different missions. Depending on what your choice is, if you fail or accomplish the mission, or do not do it at all, this affects the environment. Of course, through our actions, we bring imbalance by killing people and animals and setting off chain-reactions. To demonstrate this system, Anton Bolshakov sets up an interactive map (yes, there is such a thing), kills all characters in it, increases time speed, and demonstrates to us what happens next. The area begins to gradually fill up with migrating characters and animals. Aggressive monsters and characters battle and set up for hours of endless gameplay. That means by killing a zombie of Bloodsucker, you do not activate a script that spawns a new enemy.You create a free space that can be filled up by let's say, a wolf following someone's smell from another area. After finishing the first third of the game, the weapons and artifacts serve the new randomly generated missions. Let's say a Trader asks you to rid his old base of operations of mutants, and he will only ask you to do that if his old base really DOES become full of mutants before he asks you.
The game's magnitude is breath-taking. The endless kilometers, thanks to the A-life system, are all full of life - real living creatures. The game easily models certain situations that next minute might not even be happening. For example, a furry thing, maybe a wolf or a huge cat (I saw it and I conclude that it is a luller) drags a dead Stalker into some bushes to eat, and Anton Points at the screen smiling as if to say "See?! No Script! No Script! They all live on their own will!"
Some getting used to is needed, because things do not magically appear in your inventory. You must find a corpse, carefully observe it, and then open its back-pack and take what's in there. From past shooters, it's hard for us to realize such realism exists. STALKER is not meant for a full-on sprint through the zone woth an AK-47 with an over-loaded back-pack. The game really teaches us to observe the surroundings...and...actually...think. We need to move from cover-to-cover and plan strategies and determine if someplace is safe before sprinting there. The action is really good with the weapons, the grenades, different types of ammo, jamming. The feeling of walking through a dark hallway with a flashlight is unlike anything in any other game. Each level is like a different theme, when underground, being assaulted by zombies, you get the vibe of being in "Night of the Living Dead" of course without the signature Romero fakeness and failed humor. The game really makes you increase your speed, then carefully drop it. The pace varies.
Most of you are of course really concerned with the visual aspect of the game, that the engine is old and past its time already. Okay, let's come right out and say it: STALKER looks VERY juicy, for lack of a better word. The graphics don't paralyze the heart as screenshots did a few years ago. But in the picture constantly some kind of movement happens: Stalkers run, someone gets into a confrontation with a monster, get caught in anomalies, the grass moves from the winds. The engine shows its age in open areas, but it confined spaces, the technology immediately begins to play with shading and fashionable special effects like air movement.
In all this year-long waiting, intrigue, of course is the result. GSC - are almost the only devs of Post Soviet times that these long times worked endlessly on such a huge project with almost no compromise. Surprisingly, with all these years, not amount of optimism has been decreased - for release, exactly what was promised is coming. Right now, it's hard to accurately describe how whole the product will be - for this STALKER needs to live for a few more days. But from the beta-version, showed "from hands" looks completely capable of functioning on its own. There are still so many things we have not seen, trading, NPC to NPC relations, many anomalies and weather effects and other details.You really want to hope that from this text and other magazine features that GSC will make the March release. If not - remember Bolshakov's car. After all, he promised.
