Many things worry the tiny minds of the RPS team, but one of the most oft-concerning thoughts is whether Stalker: Call Of Pripyat, the third (possibly final?) instance of the games of the zone, will ultimately be the best . Can GSC make up for the misstep of Clear Sky and land a game that has the atmosphere and precision of the original, while still being different enough to be worth playing?
If nothing else, the new areas that will feature in Call Of Pripyat should give us plenty of scope for exploration: the clogged, radiation-pooled river valley, a buried and abandoned village, and finally a district of the city of Pripyat itself. All these can be glimpsed in the new trailer (I particularly like the anomaly coming out of the side of a building) which largely consists of fly-through sequences of the new environments. Go check out the spooky new bloodsucker effects.
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People are strange, and it seems to me, very much obsessed with (to me) unimportant details. What makes STALKER’s world the most wonderfully atmospheric gameworld of all time (I`m 37 and been “in” since Pong) is the sum of its parts: 1. The mystical, truelife locations where no man has tread in over 20 years. 2. The fantastic, rusty “East block-design” (even better than Half-life 2!) and moody music/sound. 3. The mythology. So what if my gun is too weak to drop a guy at once – it’s called a gameplay-mechanic, and whether you like it or not, it really shouldn’t have such a frikkin’ big bearing on the total EXPERIENCE. This isn’t a gung-ho action Call-of-duty wannabe title after all for godssakes.
Unfortunately the trailer doesn’t really show what Stalker (I refuse to put the dots in there) is all about. Lets hope this does as it promises. =)
I don’t know how many people know about this, but Clear Sky is a lot faster than Shadow of Chernobyl and as a result isn’t as good looking particularly in the long range view.
However certain driver versions slow it to a pathetic crawl, particlarly around the god rays time of day. It ran silky smooth for me, for example, when I first installed the game (with nvidia drivers 168-something). Then when I updated to 173 (wherever the dot goes), the framerate took a huge dive.
There hasn’t been a patch for a while so it might be one of those see-sawing problems in driver versions.
More S.T.A.L.K.E.R = good
Maybe when I get my new PC I’ll be able to play SoC (on my current PC it always crashes as soon as I get 50m outside the rookie village) as well as clear sky before it’s released. That said it won’t be bought for a month after release so that most of the game-killing bugs have a chance to be patched
I would love to see a STALKER with Oblivion/Fallout 3 type maps (while keeping the indoors as they are. I guess as long as the maps are larger it will be okay. The video makes it look like there are fairly vast distances of empty wasteland to trek in order to get for one landmark to another.
That guy in the first part of the footage without any head coverings looked odd, and out of place.
Ohooo, looking forwards to this!
@ Cannon Fodder: sounds like you have the memory leak problem. Try reducing the lighting settings (static lighting, no shadows etc) and try it again. It’s a known bug.
Didn’t watch.
On media blackout :)
Can’t wait. Hope Call of Pripyat harkens back a bit more to the gameplay of Shadow of Chernobyl, though. The STALKER series is one of the few I still enjoy in today’s drought of deeper, more meaningful game titles. Instead, we find an entire ocean of mediocrity.
Oh man. I sure hope the actual gameplay is good, because it’s gorgeous.
Also, there’s only one detector beep there about a minute and a half in, but I STILL instantly perked to attention.
@ solipsistnation
haha i did the same when i heard it too!
The original Stalker got about as close to my dream game as anything else, which is just a post apocalyptic survival game. I know with the right mods Fallout 3 can be like that, but it never feels right in Fallout’s civilized apocalypse. I would love to see if the Sections of Pripyat are as open as they make it look, getting tired of cardboard buildings.
I will like less action (CS) and more story, mystery and atmosphere (SoC).
I think the way to sum up the effective parts of Stalker is this:
if I was out in the woods, at night, and some clever person also out in the woods figured out how to record and play back a bloodsucker roar, I’d panic. I’d know it was some fool with a tape, but the game is immersive enough that I’ve got a reflexive reaction.
If you look at what people complain about, especially with Clear Sky, it’s any elements that didn’t make sense within the game – people that didn’t die, dialogue that was dumb, etc.
Looks pretty good, just so long as there’s no faction system and less bugs it’’s be better than Clearski.
Oh @ vasagi, nothing would destroy the atmosphere of STALKER more than a Co-op mode.
I don’t think so, being alone in a wasteland and being with 2 other guys who could potentially stab you in the back and rob you might be somewhat interesting. The movie kept interesting despite (ok, it was a little boring, but it’s a Tarkovsky flick, what ya gonna do?) having 3 characters. You want to kill the atmosphere, take away the anomalies and radiation, there, it’s fairly dead.
Fall 2009 my ass
Good point chemix, it’s always good to see another fan of the Tarkovsky film. Stalker could probably lend itself to an MMO really well, its already pretty much a persistent world. But from experience with most co-op games like Gears of War, Time Splitters, and what ive seen of the upcoming Borderlands, imersion is kind of lacking.
Play with the right person and it could work, but I’d probably rather be on my own and i wouldn’t want to squable over loot. Though that could add to the experience, leading to backstabbing and greedy betrayal… I think a system like that could work better with an NPC though.
@Chemix:
It stands for:
Scavengers, Trespassers, Adventurers, Loners, Killers, Explorers, and Robbers.
…basically every role you can take on during the game.
hmmm, really? Is that in the game or from a dev chat because I was thinking about the question-answer sequence where the guy says the mark on your arm is a cryptic anagram and doesn’t explain any further. Usually cryptic anagrams use a letter shift (for example, a 3 right shift would make A’s into C’s or D’s depending on whether or not you count the A) combined with nonsense words to throw off code breakers.
Your explanation makes sense though.
Towards Fullbleed,
I understand your issue, it’s a bit like playing Left 4 Dead, you could wind up with an asshat that purposely screws the game for you, versus a role player that could be more easily accomplished by a pre-scripted NPC; my problem is that a pre-scripted NPC is pre-scripted, they will follow a certain formula, whereas a human is more unpredictable.
You can tell this is the game that GSC always wanted to release.
While the gameplay trailer is cool there’s also a load of russian previews out there showing off a lot more stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtfKJ3jTb2s
you can see some examples of the quests with multiple outcomes and some underground exploration along with some pripyat gameplay. All in russian but you can get the gist of it
Strangely there’s hardly any hype for it outside of eastern europe especially when they’re already releasing countdown to release vids
Yeah i saw this one on youtube.
I might consider buying this couse it looks so awesome.
But from i’ve been reading i saw this:
Only a few dutiers and freedomers reached the Backwater (Zaton) are they stranded? And why are they frendlie this time i dont get it, i like stalker couse you could kick back and relax to the bar tune for example or just go to the freedom base and pay chef (or Ganja) a visit. It seems that there will be only be fighting (mercs, mutants, zombies and monolithians) and no place to hang around, i know that there will be a bar in the old ship but that ain’t enough. I think i will buy it though i love stalker.)
i hope there more weapon & secret weapon & lot of artifact to discovered
I think the stalker games are the best games to play! But did you know that there is a movie to? yes called , what else S.T.A.L.K.E.R It’s A Rusian film and it’s a good .It plays in a post apocalytic chernobyl ,before the real thing in 1986!talk about prophesy,cose the movie is from 1979.But it’s not like the game where stalker gets to shoot his way thr the movie. Stalker has the mission to take 2 people to the wishmaster , witch is in the game Soc.And there are zone’s like in the game. It would bee nice if they made a movie like the game!
And about Pripyat, there are guided tour’s to Pripyat witch is in the ukraine and it’s like they left it in 1986 after the dissaster.Look for pictures,they used it in the game to. Even the bumpercar s are still at the playground.
Cheers