S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

Gorgon

Gorgon

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The main presentation of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl at this year's E3 is going to be held in the South Hall booth 1024. The official E3 website lists another booth for THQ - 304B. As we were told(oblivionlost.deloo.de), this is just a room for other businesses. In addition to that there are discussions with partners (e.g. nVidia) going on to showcase the game at their booths, however it is not confirmed yet.
http://www.e3expo.com/exhibiting_info/exhibit_sales_info/list/

The games-site GamesAgent.net was present at the event in Cologne/Germany. While the preview should follow in the course of the next days, an interesting interview with THQ and Oleg Yavorsky (Senior PR Manager of GSC Game World) was released in advance which is a good read.
Except general information about the gameplay the reader gets to know that CTF and Deatmatch are certainly planned as mp-modes.

Besides the implementation of original modes, as it is already known, is intended. Even an own league and a beta-test (before the release of the game) with chosen clans are planned. But as one is used to trade language there are no direct answers, since in the following sentence it is said that "one" will be able to participate in a beta-test.
Additionally the reader finds out that the graphics are fully, and 75% of the gameplay are completed.
More interesting news can be found by following the link below.
http://www.gamesagent.net/?site=detailarticle&s=2&ID=150

Latest ScreenShot:
http://gamesradar.msn.co.uk/media/gamesradar/stalker74_3.jpg
http://oblivionlost.deloo.de/community/screenshots/q6a03041.jpg
http://oblivionlost.deloo.de/community/screenshots/q6a03042.jpg
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker/screens.html?page=367

Latest Video (Stalker Press Intro): Filesize: 116.0MB
http://www.gamershell.com/download_5500.shtml

Have Fun :E
 
how to make a stalker game in five easy steps

1) make bright sky

2) make everything else too dark

3) copy other games creatures and rip off work from conceptart.org

4) edit all audio files to sound like they have no bass atall

5) change name a lot and annoy the fan sites who reg the domains each time

result
Stalker: insert name here
release date: TBA
 
After viewing many of Stalker's trailers at gametrailers.com and reading information about the game, I can say that I'm impressed with it's graphics, sheer size, and it's concept but it seemed to lack the gameplay that would draw the player into the game. Only the battles that would possibly take place against the different clans of Stalkers seems intresting to me, from a gameplay point of view.
 
yup. It basically seems like a demonstration of many graphical techniques, but I really liked the demo that showcased it lighting and shadowing effects in an abandoned factory.
 
Fenric said:
how to make a stalker game in five easy steps

1) make bright sky

2) make everything else too dark

3) copy other games creatures and rip off work from conceptart.org

4) edit all audio files to sound like they have no bass atall

5) change name a lot and annoy the fan sites who reg the domains each time

result
Stalker: insert name here
release date: TBA
Click to expand...


1) I don't think it's too bright

2) I don't think it's too dark

3)nothing on the front page of conceptart looks like stalker's creatures plus AFAIK you work in the media so you should know about post modernism

4)I don't see how you can know this, plus the bass on the alpha made my walls shake but those sounds were from HL and CS, so that's trivial at best.

5)thats not funny and I wouldn't call any of this constructive or fair critacism
 
In my opinion Stalker's monsters are highly unimaginative and look just plain stupid
 
The idea is great... and i hope they can make a great game withg a great atmosphere.

They still have coop, dont they? Me and my friend is planning to play the whole game in coop.
 
Last I heard they didn't have Coop anymore... at least not over the internet or striat away.

Haveing said that you could play the alpha networked whith the AI.
 
I think it will be awesome. You guys need to read this preview. It really impresses me. This game will seriously own because of how unscripted it is. It will be completely different each time you play it. HL2 is going to need to have a more linear level design. Stalker has a huge world where everything is alive and trying to do its own job as a human being, a stalker, or a mutant. I have read that you can sit up on a high tower and just watch the animals with your binoculars. The animals will perform tasks that are necessary for their survival, such as eat and sleep.
 
STALKER aka Hobo Wars, the stalkers sound like tramps trying to protect their shit, sleeping where they can, the safer the better, and eating off the land.

Still sounds cool though!
 
Murray_H said:
STALKER aka Hobo Wars, the stalkers sound like tramps trying to protect their shit, sleeping where they can, the safer the better, and eating off the land.
Click to expand...

lol. Hobo wars... :LOL:
 
I think it was a big disappointment to me when I heard the characters in the video talking in a John Wayne american english type of way, hell it'd be so much cooler if they just talked Russian, or some made up eastern european language.
 
ahhrghh, look out! its Quozy Modo. I wonder if that would really happen to people.. is it just nuclear fallout thats caused that?
 
The game is based loosley on the movie Stalker by russian director Andrei Tarkovsky.
 
I always thought it was based on a TV series...

Anyway, I'll give it a look if it gets good reviews... sounds a little like Fallout, to be honest...

Hmmm... G0rgon seems to love it, Fenric seems to hate it...
 
"The game is based loosley on the movie Stalker by russian director Andrei Tarkovsky."

No, the game is not based "loosely on the movie Stalker. That's wrong.
 
I thought it was a book or a short story. In any case, it looks pretty sweet.

According to an article by a french news site that played an early version of the game, Stalker has really good AI, physics and graphics. The animals behave realistically, and the environment is large and interactive.

The enemies might look pretty dull, but a lot of them have odd psychic powers that I've never heard of in a game before, and even the standard zombies are capable of picking up guns and using them in a limited manner.

From what I've seen in photos, the levels look very close to the actual place.
And the vehicles are the best I've seen in a game yet.
Plus, the inventory management system sounds interesting.

I'm getting this after I buy HL2.
 
you missing the point of stalker... it looks great sure... but its how it plays that going to be revolutionary! The developers have constructed a world with a wonderfully dynamic environment and this isnt an FPS where you simply go from point a to b shooting things. This game is an FPS RPG hybrid where you're simply dropped into the environment and left to your own devices.

Here's the current issue of PC Zones Stalker preview:-

STALKER: SHADOW OF CHERNOBYL

PC

THQ



7 Apr 04 We are creatures of habit. Despite the fact that washing machines have dials with 12 settings on, we religiously use the one that says 'non-fast colours (destruction of clothes doubtful)', whether we're removing the smells from pants, curtains or chainmail. We buy the same brands and products, week in, week out. We eat the same safe curries when we go for an Indian. We watch so much bad TV that Jasper Carrott still has a career. Change is bad, and if something is broken, then there's no point in fixing it as people are stupid and they'll buy it anyway.
The same is true of the first-person shooter. For years they've been churning them out from the same cut-and-paste stamping machine - man with gun walks through corridor. Man with gun shoots things. Man with gun walks through new corridor harbouring further shooting inclinations. The times they are a-changing, though, what with games like Far Cry providing us with relatively free-form assaults; yet even Jack Carver's muscle-bound antics progress in a straight line from action bubble to action bubble, interior to exterior, beach to mountain, kill to kill.


GEIGER COUNTER
It takes balls to fundamentally change things, but that is exactly the intention of STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl. Essentially the game where Morrowind and Soldier Of Fortune collide, it's a game that aims to give you unrestrained exploration and adventure in a self-contained radioactive wasteland. As the game's lead designer Alexey Silyanov explained to us: "The whole world lives out its life; an absolutely artificial world controlled by artificial intelligence. It learns, it advances. It's absolutely a real world. We're trying to make a place where the player lives; where the player is given an individual experience."

In 2006, STALKER lore suggests that another nuclear tragedy strikes Chernobyl, although nobody knows quite why or how. The government, horrified that strange creatures seem to be roaming the hills around the already toxic and empty Ukrainian towns and villages, proclaims the territory a forbidden zone. Army helicopters patrol the skies while scavengers known as stalkers duke it out in the radioactive wastes, trying to find and trade artefacts imbued with strange powers. You play as one of these gun-toting stalkers - but whether you play as a helpful character who joins up with the various stalker gangs and cults, or one who hates company and shoots on sight is up to you.


IT'S AN AI WORLD
GSC Game World's intention is to create a world governed purely by AI and not necessarily the player's whims. NPCs and monsters won't be standing around waiting for you to turn up, they'll be roaming around the 30-square kilometres of forbidden zone available to them - foraging for food, hunting, fighting, exchanging messages, trading and communicating with each other. That's not all, though: their guiding AI is also set to react to environmental triggers. "All of the monsters and NPCs have their habits, likes and dislikes," explains chief STALKER spokesperson Oleg Yavorsky. "On top of this, hunger and threat will determine how aggressive a creature is. If the weather is foggy, then the creatures and stalkers will have trouble seeing, since all of them have virtual sight and hearing."

Put simply, this means that death can come from any angle as monsters can be anywhere. In one scenario of a build I played in GSC Game World's lair, I tracked down the same stalker three times to steal an artefact he was carrying. I played the same level three times and on the third occasion I got to his hideout only to find that the dynamic nature of the game meant he'd already been killed and gnawed-on by a pack of helpful and hungry irradiated dogs.

So it's a role-player then? "Well it's quite like Morrowind," says Silyanov. "It also bears similarities to Fallout in that it's a post-nuclear world where you can go everywhere you want and do anything you want. "However, what makes it different is that you don't advance your character - there are no stats or skills. But every time you play, you should still advance more: you start to understand what you should wear and buy, being able to afford more armour, better guns and so on." It's also worth noting that the traditional RPG inventory system, cruelly ditched by Deus Ex: Invisible War, is back with a vengeance here.

What's more, there are eight possible endings and 70-80 hours of playing time (30-40 if you're not in the mood for dawdling). Plus, if you don't want to follow the key missions, it's possible that one of your rival stalkers will complete the most linear path through the game before you're even halfway through.


I GET KNOCKED DOWN...
However, STALKER is about survival as much as it is about shooting or playing through an exercise in role-play-lite. You and your fellow stalkers have to find the resources to keep you alive - and what's more, you have to find a safe place to curl up and slumber so that you don't wake up with wild animals nibbling your privates. If you run out of food and get hungry, you'll feel faint; and if you're low on supplies, you'll have to shoot down a bird or a mutant rat and feast on that, even if you have to quell any radioactive after-effects with a bottle of vodka.

No forbidden wasteland, meanwhile, can be without its fair share of radiation pockets and mysterious anomalies; gravity fields that can squash you or rip you apart, fogs that dissolve the skin off your body and rusty hair that grows on exposed metallic surfaces and chars any flesh that strays too close. Life in the hazardous wastes isn't exactly a picnic, and if it was then you'd need more than a tartan rug and a thermos of weak lemon drink to fend off death. The tools of the stalker trade include double-barrelled shotguns, an updated version of the Dragunov sniper rifle, heavy machine guns and the always-useful revolving grenade launcher.
While the lion's share of the beasties and villains that you'll be perforating are still hidden behind a wisp of radioactive fog, my hands-on in Kiev with the early build saw me battling packs of wild hounds (each at varying stages of mutation), giant rats (because I suppose even quasi-RPGs need giant rats), horrible brown zombie creatures with mouths like bloody octopuses and a variety of grizzly rival NPC stalkers.


NUCLEAR FALL-OUT
It need hardly be mentioned in these days of next-gen shooter hype that STALKER looks drop-dead gorgeous, or that it has a fully comprehensive physics engine - take it as read. It's the proposed open-ended gameplay and elements like the dynamic day/night cycle that actively changes around you (unlike Far Cry's, admittedly beautiful, inter-level time shifts) that are really exciting. Combine this with the fogs, mists, rain and wind that'll actually interact with the AI (affecting things like the migration of pack animals and stalker sleeping patterns) and you've got a hugely interesting proposal.

At the moment, however, we're yet to be entirely convinced by STALKER. There's no doubt that if GSC Game World manages to pull off its FPS coup d'état, we'll have a stunning game on our hands - but it's going to be a Herculean task. The company's firm stance against scripting and the proposed anytime/anywhere/anything aspect of combat will be in direct odds to the finely tuned fire-fights we'll be seeing from Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, and it's hard to see how it could be as immediately satisfying.

That said, it's perhaps an unfair comparison seeing as STALKER is a different type of game - a blueprint for a true revolution in the FPS genre. Plus, we'll have to wait and see just how non-linear the final product will be. One thing's for sure, though: STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl has massive potential.
 
Ummmm... that's a cool preview and all... but... errr... I'm not sure that we're allowed to post stuff from a magazine on these forums... non-exclusive pictures only, isn't it?
 
Fenric said:
4) edit all audio files to sound like they have no bass atall
Click to expand...

That annoyed me almost most of all. It sounds like they took the gun sounds sraight out of Goldeneye. Albeit Goldeneye was one of the greatest games ever. But that was like 8 years ago and on N64. Sound in games now should not be compairable to that..........

And the player animations suck too. They'd better work on those a bunch.

Other than those 2 things....even if they didn't do anything to fix them....I think it's still going to be a fun to play game. I think there need to be more FPS RPG's....... Every game should be in FPS format!!!!!!!!! Even the puzzle games......
 
From what I've been following, STALKER looks like GSC has spent too much time making the game non-linear and not-enough making it fun. RPG's are great because of their huge variety of (interesting)characters, environments and subplots; not for their inventory and wandering around (at least that's how I feel). To impress me I want to see more than one guy walking around by himself fighting faceless humans/monsters once in a while (even if those faceless humans/monsters have advanced AI).
 
Wow...that sight was awsome!!!!

Really does make you want to play Stalker even more!
 
wow, that was quite erie. I can't imagine walking through a ghost town and finding everything like it was 17 years ago
 
That site that Asus linked to is creepy as hell. Well worth a read.

Interestingly, I recognized many of the photos there from Stalker screenshots of the same architechture. Looks like the Stalker team researched the ghost town as a part of their game world.
 
Great, sounds like this game is going to be a pointless FPS mixed with the most annoying elements of an RPG game.

Vunderfoll.
 
PvtRyan said:
I think it was a big disappointment to me when I heard the characters in the video talking in a John Wayne american english type of way, hell it'd be so much cooler if they just talked Russian, or some made up eastern european language.
Click to expand...

The main character is voiced by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
 
Fenric said:
how to make a stalker game in five easy steps

1) make bright sky

2) make everything else too dark

3) copy other games creatures and rip off work from conceptart.org

4) edit all audio files to sound like they have no bass atall

5) change name a lot and annoy the fan sites who reg the domains each time

result
Stalker: insert name here
release date: TBA
Click to expand...


have something personel against this game do we?
 
s.t.a.l.k.e.r. will most likely be the BEST game ever :cheers: ...
well if it delivers what they say it will.
 
:O I agree, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is one fascinating game. It's pure REALISM!!! The gameplay, story, and map scheme is just so cool.
 
Despite some of it's flaws, this game has really caught my interest second only to HL2. It's just so cool to have such complete freedom in the game world, being a tiny part of that huge zone. The setting is also fascinating. Chernobyl is a place where the world has already ended and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. team has done an excellent job of capturing the feel of it. Sure the Ahnold main character voice is annoying (Russian voices would be way better) and I don't like the mutants as much as HL2's aliens (although still vastly better than Far Cry's sickenly generic Trigens or Doom3's comical attempts at horror) but I'm definately looking forward to this one.
 
Doom 3's demons and monsters put Stalkers to shame, in design and from an artistic point of view
 
Artistic? id's games have possibly the WORST artistic direction ever imo. I don't know, I just find mounting rocket lauchers on a skeleton exceedingly tasteless. A game about 'robo-demons on Mars'. Can you understand why it is so difficult for me to take such a concept seriously? The creatures in Stalker have believability and a general look of coherency, while the ones in Doom3 look to me like a shallow attempt to combine everything the artist thinks is cool, resulting in a trainwreck of psuedo-creativity.
 
in watching some of the videos of the game, id have to agree with some of the people who arent all that amazed by it. my first gripe were the sounds. they sounded so 'cheesy' and unrealistic imo. and the monstors look really generic as well, just doesnt seem like there is enough detail there.

other than this i have nothing to judge this game by so take my opinions with a grain of salt. I will most likely be buying this game and looking forward to what is has to offer. (good physics, gameplay, decent graphics.)
 
The sounds in the trailers are definately unfinished, some are even from CS.
 
ElFuhrer said:
Artistic? id's games have possibly the WORST artistic direction ever imo. I don't know, I just find mounting rocket lauchers on a skeleton exceedingly tasteless. A game about 'robo-demons on Mars'. Can you understand why it is so difficult for me to take such a concept seriously? The creatures in Stalker have believability and a general look of coherency, while the ones in Doom3 look to me like a shallow attempt to combine everything the artist thinks is cool, resulting in a trainwreck of psuedo-creativity.
Click to expand...

Think about Halflife´s story then? An experiment goes wrong. WOW, HOW ORIGINAL :)

Everyone here loves hl, so think about it.

I think Doom 3 will scare the **** out of people... cant wait :)
 
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