Rock, Paper, Shotgun has an interview with GSC Game World’s Oleg Yavorsky on the upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, which is due this fall (yeah right). While I know that opinions varied on Clear Sky – a game I now feel I was too hard on – I am a stalwart fan of the series and look forward to this latest installment.
It has always been my studied opinion that the STALKER games, each in their own unique way, come this close to pure awesomeness without ever actually hitting the mark. The original Shadow of Chernonbyl had many issues, from incoherency to bugginess. Clear Sky fixed many of the problems but introduced a number of missteps itself. To some it was a major disappointment, to others (including myself) it was a game that could or should have been better but was, all in all, one I enjoyed immensely.
Yavorsky promises that Call of Pripyat takes all that into account, so with some luck, we’ll see a game that comes ever closer to hitting the mark. The technology behind Call is still the 1.5 X-Ray Engine, presumably tweaked and patched to perform better; the developers also promise a new and improved interface (making it the third complete interface overhaul since the series began), time advancement, improved A-Life AI, and all-new locations to explore.
This last item is especially important, given how much territory you retraced in Clear Sky. Given that the game was a prequel, and one that followed a very specific character on a very specific trek, I can understand the need for repetition, but the truth is the Exclusion Zone is a big place and Pripyat was a big city and there’s plenty of locales left to visit. Call of Pripyat takes place after the events of Shadow, so there’s no real reason to use the same places again. Yavorsky also mentions that preliminary work has begun on a proper STALKER 2, though I’d bet we probably won’t see it until 2011 at the earliest.
Things that must be fixed in order for me to maintain my apologist’s attitude toward the STALKER series:
- Combat AI (go back to the old one)
- Blowouts
- Engine performance
- Firearm accuracy
- Grenade spam
- Animal behavior
- Translation
- Load times
- Zone transitions
- Nightvision
- Weapon degradation
- Story nonsensicality
- Walking speed
- Detector equipment
- Anomaly movement
Wow, that’s a long list, and if I sat here for a while I could probably think of more. Why then do I love the STALKER games so much? Well, I’m a sucker for radioactivity, but chiefly it’s atmosphere. No game makes the bleakness and loneliness palpable the way STALKER does, and like so many other things, a good game is all about location, location, location.
I agree with your comment on atmosphere, Steerpike. Had Fallout 3 had half the atmosphere of STALKER it would have been so much better. There is an x-factor in STALKER, some weirding of the gameplay via music, art and setting that makes it haunting. Of course STALKER wasn’t really an open world game and so had the advantage of steering the player where it wanted.
I didn’t get into Clear Sky when it came out despite liking the look of the previews. I really got into the first one and the dire environment, the unusual original fiction, and maybe a little bit of overdoing it left me with a vivid and thoroughly original gaming experience.
I forsee a great unwinding this fall/winter as pent up gaming forces burst the seams in a new wave of h/w and game purchases and enough time has passed to give this series another visit, even though a number of the ‘features’ added to Clear Sky appear clear misses.
The bigger issue seems to be ‘where to now.’ I don’t want to be a member of a faction rooting out a miserable existence in the zone, I want to save the world and I’ve already done that.
I liked Stalker but didn’t have a lot of interest in Clear Sky since it covered the same landscape. Call of Pripyat sounds like it will have new sites to explore and that interests me.
I’ve decided what I need before returning to Call of Chernobyl. The Explorer mod ( http://sdk.stalker-game.com/en/index.php/Mod:S.T.A.L.K.E.R:_Explorer ) didn’t work exactly as anticipated. While wandering freely and friendly canines are great news, all npcs were lifeless corpses. Additional creep in an already creepy environment.
Playing Oblivion while thinking about what I miss from Morrowind, I’ve hit upon a perfect solution for stress-free Zone adventuring: a) Ring of Levitation and b) Amulet of 100% Chameleon. By judiciously using either or both, I think I could manage with armed & dangerous “living” npcs.
Can we keep the sound engineers and graphic artists from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and fire the writers and game designers for the sequel? The environments and sound make these games worth playing. The plot is a steaming pile, and the shooter hybrid gameplay is decent but far from great.
Clear Sky recycled most of its environments from the first game and completely wrecked its gameplay with inaccurate weapons, DOOM-esque hordes of baddies, and hyperaccurate enemy gunfire.
You are right about Fallout 3, Scout. I couldn’t put my finger on it until now: the game just doesn’t have that creepy wasteland atmosphere of the first two games and especially not that of Shadow of Chernobyl. I blame the fast travel, or more specifically, the overwhelming desire for me to exploit fast travel because the environment isn’t interesting enough for me to walk everywhere.
I think that all the original STALKER team were good – translation perhaps not as good, but the game designers hit it on the mark – so much of the atmosphere was from the mechanics.
I like the list – combat AI myself, being a big time AI fan, is one major thing (and something I haven’t had a chance to see their “improvements” – I guess lack of – in Clear Sky since I had to reinstall and haven’t put it back on my PC to play it yet).
This sequel at least will be fun – I like the premise, the fact it’s set after (yeah!) and they’ll be working out more on top of their existing work then reinventing, I hope. I will be getting it just on the premise of those Army guys having some of the light – poor Ukranian army and this sci-fi world! (Although I presume you basically become a stalker to get into the zone incognito).
STALKER 2 is set to be in the Cryengine right? Will be good for the open world aspect – and man, could be brilliant, we’ll have to see if they can translate some of the brilliant bits of the X-engine thing to the Crysis one – there are some things that seem drastically different.