By John Walker on December 22nd, 2008 at 2:05 pm.
The first time I saw Metro 2033 was during Games Convention 2006 when 4A Games‘ “pre-alpha” footage was released. A bit of quiet for two years, and now some, um, pre-alpha footage has been released. However, if you go back and forth between the two almost shot-for-shot-the-same trailers, you can see quite how much progress has been made with their 4A Engline.
Using the same broken English (“The world with the no place for the mankind,”) narration, and mostly the very same sequence of events, it’s a bit of a spot the difference game. But the differences are quite striking in places, especially the updates of the camera swooping down corridors, now alive with people chatting and shadows flickering. The Ukrainian game’s based on the novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky, in a post-nuclear war Moscow, where the only inhabitable place left is the Moscow Metro. But now it’s being invaded by the “Darkens”, mutated beasties to FPS at.
So here’s the original trailer:
And here’s the new trailer:
Compare and contrast. It’s possibly a bit of a shame that in the two years since this was first shown, things got a bit Russian-post-nuclear in the gaming world.
I think I prefer the old colour scheme to the new ‘shades of grey’ look – at least there was a bit of brown…
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In a world…where several games have given you entire post apocalytpic worlds to explore…one game will dare to be a corridor shooter. Metro 2033, playing in a corner of Fallout 3, Summer 2009
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I dunno. A metro system and the surrounding city could be pretty big. I think its interesting its inverted stalkers safe dangerous relationship with environments. In stalker the surface was safer and the underground less hospitable.
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Looked to me like he’s leaving the tunnels in the end. Hope so.
Btw, are those monsters supposed to be scary? They look so cute!
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I am intrigued. Hopefully this’ll make up for Stalker 2.
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A bit of a pity they’ve spent two years working on graphics enhancements yet the combat still looks so wooden :(
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They are cute. That is what makes them deadly. Its all “all look at those widel eyes… Oh god it ate my hand!”
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AndrewC: Except Fallout 3, consired as a FPS, was a mediocre FPS and this could be a good shooter.
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The Metro of Moscows Dark Future is filled with unhappy children. That certainly is no place for the mankind.
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Well yes, but then Fallout 3 isn’t really an FPS, making the comparison disingenuous.
Equally, those crazy Russians could create an entirely complete and believable world down in those metro tunnels, creating a game that uses claustrophobia for its atmosphere instead of grand vistas, making my comparison disingenuous.
Equally those crazy Russians, against all PR sense, could just not be showing us any of the awesome gameplay they have above ground.
The point being that the worlds now are open, be it by progress or just fashion, and showing us something that looks like it has the game mechanics of a previous generation, when games had to be in corridors due to technical limitations, seems a bit foolish.
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Those monsters look a bit silly.
Still, I get a nice Twelve Monkeys vibe from it and with a bit of luck this game will be unrelentingly bleak for the mankind.
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I too am excited for Hellgate: Fallout: 2033.
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: Over Chernobyl.
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Do those monsters remind anybody else of Cyril Sneer from The Raccoons?
http://www.bobpitch.com/anon/deathrow_tull_The_Raccoons-Cyril_Sneer_smirking.jpg
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fallout? hellgate? WTF?! this looks like freakin STALKER more than either of those two.
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I will play it.
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Is the same trailer. The game not is a sand-box FPS .Gluhovskogo said in his blog that is a HL2 style game – with gread use of th physics + RPG elements
In other interview with Dmitry Gluhovskogo
“The only thing that is not a game-type «Stalker», which have boundless universe – do whatever you want. ”
I believe that some Western media have seen the game, there is a great preview in a German magazine and also some new screens – although some have more than a year old
http://www.pcgames.de/aid,670897/Metro_2033-Screenshots-_Erste_Bilder_zum_Shooter_einiger_STALKER-Macher/Bildergalerie/
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And is a “No HUD game” ;)
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One of the reasons I didn’t like Stalker was the way GSC treated the source material. Game developers should just stay away from the classics unless they can take them seriously.
Glukhovsky’s Metro 2033, on the other hand, is a perfect candidate for an FPS treatment – it is itself, basically, a literary analog of a big, dumb as hell action game.
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Arguably Tarkovsky didn’t take it seriously either, demanding rewite after rewrite until all that was left was the Zone and the Wish Granter.
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I didn’t think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. the game was really based on Stalker the movie or Roadside Picnic, though?
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Nice, i like how this looks! Although i think the older movie looked better, im no fan off all those movie filters.
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Darkens? SOUNDS RACIST!!1
I wonder how much of those vids are “ingame”? I mean, clearly it’s some kind of pre-recorded camera path/demo jobbie, but are humans controlling the people, especially when you imbody it, or is it NPC Ai, or is it some form of scripted AI, etc etc etc?
Still, looks cool…wonder what’s taking them so long?
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I dunno about this one. Two years in development and they couldn’t throw together a new Alpha Demo? Not to mention a new voice-over. “the world with no-place for the mankind”. Indeed.
I also can’t help but notice that the frame-rate has gotten laggy after 2 years of development. It seems like all they did was tweak the lighting and add in a few more people.
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YES! =)))
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You are right, it just borrowed/plagiarised a lot of stuff. It’s just kind of sad that GSC chose to copy the style, but ignore the substance.
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I wouldn’t say that he didn’t take the source material seriously, but rather that he took his goal for making Stalker so seriously that he had to purge out all other elements.
I remember reading about him wanting to make a timeless, genre-less film that would have tremendous impact. Well, bravo Tarkovsky, you did it and what a beauty it is.
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Hmm. Am I just crazy or did some of those locations look a bit more detailed and interesting in the old trailer?
Anyway: I haven’t read the novel, but the trailer kind of gives the impression that most of the people underground get wiped out, leaving YOU as the only hope for going above-ground and achieving some tremendous goal.
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Why are Russians so bleak?
Oh, right.
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Supposedly this is by some of the team that worked on the original Stalker, members of GSC that left before the rest worked on Clear Sky.
It shows. It looks like it’ll be everything Clear Sky isn’t. Dark, tense, claustrophobic, chilling, creative, and – crucially, unlike Fallout 3 – INSPIRED.
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The game is made by the author of the engine of STALKER and the chief designer of STALKER
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