So it seems that DirectX 11 will be supported by Call Of Pripyat, although it’s not clear what difference that will make to the visual fidelity of the game. This new video (below) shows off lots of lovely real-time shadows and stuff, but I was under the impression that Stalker did that in DirectX 9 anyway… (There’s a slightly bizarre comparison of DX9 and DX10 versions of the game here, in which I’m not sure whether one mode could identifiably called “better” than the other from the stills on display.) The trailer, fortunately, also features an encounter with a monstrous psychic dwarf (above), just for good measure.
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@Oz the Magnificent
We the players want a story driven game, and not another doll house game.
All the people complaining about what GSC are offering should really have been keeping up with the interviews being done with them, this is a trailer and as such aimed at people who don’t already know they’re buying the game.
And there’d better be an option to turn dynamic music off again.
There had better actually be “dynamic music”, let alone an option to turn it off. Clear Sky dynamic music is what got me fired up in firefights.
I feel pretty out of touch here. I’ve played through SoC a few times and made it through CS once (and basically enjoyed it, but god almighty am I grateful I don’t have to deal with broken faction wars or play through the ending again), and I dug this trailer just fine. Not sure CoP will be a release-day pickup for me, what with all the other compelling titles this fall, but I’ll certainly buy it as soon as I see a sale of some sort.
@AngryInternetman
Really? in a second sequel?
@ Jayt: what, the picture that is quite obviously capped from a poorly encoded video file?
Psychic dwarves, groovey. Now all they need to do is get them to appear in your dreams and talk backwards, sa taht dluow tsuj eb eht gnici no eht ekac.
Aah, that reminds me of that terrible music. They put it in Clear Sky as well but since the good old STALKER community whined so much about it after the trailers they put in an option to keep the more atmospheric Shadow of Chernobyl style music instead.
Still, with luck GSC will release a mediocre game that will be transformed into my game of the year through the magical pixie dust of mods. Pity CS wasn’t overhaul friendly, but I can’t wait for the release of the foundations of the next Oblivion Lost.
Oh, God! That music in the end was terrible. They lost all points earned for doing other things right. Nice beginning, a grim feeling creeps over me… snap! and it all suddenly feels cheesy!!! Damn.
Some very pessimistic people here. Me I loved SoC, I enjoyed the open parts of CS although the ending was frankly useless.
Is there space for dwarfs in the Zone , well there is space for giant chickens so I don’t see why not as long as its not over done (ie i don’t want to fight off swarms of them).
I don’t see why so many people think that just because they put a dwarf into the game it will not be open ended.
The video is very bad I do admit but frankly they are yet to make a half decent one.
I’m yet to finish SoC. Not for lack of trying, i’m currently in X18 (the second one) and it scares the shit out of me. I can’t play for too long at a time…
I think SoC is probably one of the more terrifying games ever made. The underground sequences are excruciating.
One thing I’d like to know is, if my machine can run the original Stalker, will it be able to run this one?
Also I notice Jim’s just done a Stalker retrospective on Eurogamer and mentioned a few mods for it, but without mentioning what the mods are or where to get them. I mention this because I never finished the game and I wouldn’t mind replaying it from the start with some good mods like the ones mentioned in the article. When the game was orginally being made, the devs were coming out with all this stuff about having to rest up and shelter from rad storms, and having to shoot the local wild life, like birds etc, for food. They made it sound like a survival horror camping trip, which sounded ace, but much to my dissapointment it turned into a more straight forward FPS game. So some mods that rectify that would be good. Something that removes the bloody time limits for the missions would be great for starters. However I’m running it on a P4 3Ghz machine with a 512Mb GeForce 6800 card, so anything with super hi res textures that requires some real grunt will probably not be a good idea. So any suggestions would be appreciated thanks.
Funny, the thought of playing it again is making me tingle a bit with nervous excitement, as some of those dark tunnels underneath the complexes were genuinely nerve wracking to go through.
@Jim Rossignol I agree. I still remember going in the first room underground (was it X18?) and thinking “wait, did I see something move by that chair in the corner?” I continued rummaging around – then heard THAT breathing noise and the bloodsucker’s scream as it noticed my torch. I thought I was going to pass out. Unfortunately I did not really have any such moments in CS, maybe CoP will bring back the fear of being in the dark, feeling like prey.
i’m still not seeing some of the things that i really want to see from a “new” stalker game. (granted, some of these are difficult to depict in a trailer / video…)
1. a complete map of the zone, with all areas of shadow of chernobyl, clear sky and pripyat on one set of PDA screenshots. giving us two or three new areas while taking away two or three of the areas we know and love is not what i’m looking for.
2. a sleeping bag in inventory from the start of the game.
3. as many re-introduced, reinforced, fleshed out RPG elements in the game as possible, the need for food, water and anti-rad drugs / vodka to stay alive. things that reinforce the desperate fight for survival that life within The Zone must be.
4. squad based warfare from clear sky that works out of the box (the way some modders have managed to get both SHOC and clear sky to play). squads you can give orders to and see results, squads that understand the “point value” of positions and locations and can assault, capture and hold them.
5. random blowouts that properly effect the AI (as they have in some SHOC mods) and common sense safe-areas that the player and the AI can use to hide from their effects – unlike the scripted safe-areas from them in clear sky. (why is this cellar safe from the blowout while the cellar 40 feet away isn’t?)
6. free-roaming AI that finally makes use of xray’s clever smartterrain, out of the box. there are few things as fascinating in SHOC and CS to watch than the modded AIs going about their “lives”, seeing them in, say, the army warehouses first and much later in cordon. it helps to create immersion that scripted paths and encounters just cant match.
7. ammunition stats that differentiate between types out of the box so that modders dont have to fix them all over again (for the third time) to realistically give you a reason to get excited when you find an old AK-47 chambered for 7.62 x 39 instead of an AK-74 chambered for 5.45 x 39.
8. the most important of all. an SDK. GSC has been promising and promising an SDK for so long that the modding community has all but given up hope. in many ways, the modding community that helped make SHOC such a fantastic game has moved away from the game (the number of mods for clearsky is a tiny fraction of the mods available for SHOC). the changes to xray from SHOC to CS were not enough to present many new modding opportunities, while changing enough of the scripting and functional variables to make updating SHOC mods tedious for the more creative modders.
modding tools, an SDK, something would go a long way towards luring these modders, and their ideas, back into The Zone.
(basically, i want to see a lot of the things GSC meant to include in SHOC but didn’t, not just cut mutants, intense lightning effects, new particle effects and one or two new levels.)
I’m just about to finish SoC for the second time. I’m at the very last level with the teleporters. (I’ve installed the Complete Mod 2009 by the way).
I hope CoP brings back SoC’s athmosphere, I really missed that in Clear Sky.
Well, that’s two for two now.
Despite this teaser focusing more on STALKER’s more distinctive selling points (the atmosphere and loneliness of the world), this still looks like something a decent mod threw together.
Those boys can make a hell of a game, but someone tie them down for an afternoon and teach them to cut a half-decent trailer.
…. sorry, I have to chime in twice. I’m just upset.
My hopes are gone. This looks like Clear Sky 1.5.
I adore STALKER and will defend it, flaws and all, to my grave… but it seems that I am fond of SoC for different reasons than the developers. As a review in Eurogamer mentioned, the direction taken by the later titles call into question their intentions in the previous titles, and whether some of the excellent design decisions of SoC were, it pains me to even think, accidental and circumstantial.
Oleg, thanks man for this game couse STALKER SOC and CS are the greatest games of all time !
Alldough I have problems running tha CS becouse of the bug, i have finished CS 2times and it is fcking awesoem!
Right now Im playing SOC for 23 time and I just cant get enough of it Xd
Now, lets take a look to the Bar area and 100rads bar.
It is nice place, but there is too much of all kind of Stalkers in there and 95% of them are not usefull.
In CS there is no Bar area, but that is good…why? Well if you make all of those places again and again in all of the STALKER games…game will become boring same as bar area itself.
One thing in both parts so far is bothering me… EXOSKELETON and Skat-9m suit are MUST HAVE!!!
Im not using mods or cheats simply dou to the respect to the game and so far I have not found EXOSKELETON or Skat-9m anywhere but in the Sarcofagus…which is shame.
And another thibg Oleg…please…PLEAAAAAASE MAN get rid off those fcking BUGS!
And no mather which places or weapons or suits you guys put into the Call o.p. it is going to be awesome game!!
Good luck man and greatings from Bosnia ;)