Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The announcement of a new Stalker game, Call Of Pripyat, offers an intriguing prospect. It’s a trilogy-completing work – with Clear Sky acting as prequel – and it proports to show what took place in the zone after the events of Shadow Of Chernobyl. The initial announcement seemed to promise a great deal: enhanced A-Life, more freedom, and more survival conditions to consider. But what else is in there? And what did the Ukrainian company learn from Clear Sky? GSC’s Oleg Yavorsky took some time out to answer our questions, and to reveal a bit more about Call Of Pripyat. Foolishly, I forgot to ask about the mystery of the bread. (The images in this article can be clicked on for their full-size.)
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The image above is from this gallery over at Strategy Informer, which is packed with similar lavish glimpses of the forthcoming Stalker prequel. It seems to be showing off some of the new areas, as well as suggesting a level of detail that will cause my graphics card to shudder and slowly die. Elsewhere, our Eurogamer chums have had a long chat with Oleg Yavorsky, the GSC team’s primary spokesman. He says a good deal about the new game, and also talks about the failings of the original game. He blames this in part on the reticence of the US audience in taking to the game, which he sees a fundamental cultural divide.

It seems that to appeal to North America you need really flashy, bright games, and you can see that every eastern European game is very dark. In the end, I guess this just comes down to our culture and history – we’re just different people, and that’s that.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is due out on 29th August.