S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

[Zenoth]

Can we say yay?

I'm certainly a happy man ever since I've discovered and read the information that has been gathered about it so far, but it's quite recent, it was revealed thanks to a gaming magazine in Ukraine (apparently anyway) around three days ago, and that information silently slipped (not "leaked" per se, the magazine is fully official and well known there and had full permission by GSC GameWorld) to us in America just a few days ago. I myself only learned about it a couple of hours ago.

Here's a link to the GSC GameWorld forums thread in which it started: http://www.gsc-game.com/main.p...=17327&sec_id=1#259980

And two other links provided in the first post of that thread:

http://gameplay.com.ua/forum/?...sg270609;topicseen#new

http://i4.photobucket.com/albu...nelo/stalker/10972.jpg

And some more linked pictures from the magazine:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albu...alker/5457b878169a.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albu...alker/66ed58447a81.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albu...o/stalker/92096315.jpg

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Now, according to the best translation done so far, what we know of that sequel is the following (taken from a post at the Steam Powered forums under the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. sub-forums):

1. The considerable part of Pripyat will be recreated with 100% (!) accuracy - now it'll be the east part of the city. You'll also see the "Jupiter" facility, Kopachi village, which was so highly contaminated that desactivation failed so everything were just buried, and a lot more locations.

2. There will be noticeable improvements in A-Life system: for example, day/night behavior cycle, artefact searching, blowouts with proper NPC reactions and hideouts and a lot more. By the way, there won't be a faction wars - the idea wasn't successful. NPC behaviour will be more "peaceful" (but, well, of course if a Duty stalker will meet Freedom stalker - he know what to do, so it doesn't meet armistice between everyone). Of course, the overall number of stalkers in the Zone will be lesser than it's been in CS.

3. "Call of Pripyat" is a sequel. It follows the ending where Gunslinger destroyed the C-Consciousness project (developers courageously ignore false endings). After this event something changed in the Zone, so the goverment decided to sent military specops squads into the Zone to investigate what happened. But something goes terribly wrong and the whole group vanish. Our protagonist will be the Ukrainian military operative, and one of the prior targets we have is to find that squad and figure out what's going on with them.

4. In previous games the side quests looked like primitive 1-minute generated boring tasks. For now, it'll change. There won't be any stereotyped tasks [a]at all[/a]. GSC is developing about ~70 unique side quests (!). Forget about "kill 5 boars" tasks, they're in past.

5. The community annoyed developers with that so much, so... yes, there will be the burer and chimera. Of course, with reworked behavior and new skills. Prepare for tough fights.

6. Blowouts now affect almost everything in the Zone. It's not only rare effective event - lots of things are binded to it. For example, the artifact and anomalies positions will completely change after each blowout.

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Now, one thing is for sure, GSC GameWorld certainly know what is being done in its modding community, for most of their ideas are taken from the various well known and lesser known mods for both Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky, except done by them, re-thought to some extent, and certainly well implemented this time around (let's hope so) since they now have the experience of two FPS projects in their hands. The one thing that I can't wait to see are the numerous unique and much more complex side-quests this time around, instead of the bland and sometimes life-less "kill three Boars south of that post" type of generated quests.

And from the pictures it looks like they're still using the X-Ray engine, although it has certainly been refreshed yet again (especially on the A.I branch, with new day and night specific A.I behaviors, something that had been tried in the modding community but ended up being impossible simply because the engine couldn't do it). And a good thing surely is the removal of the faction wars, thank God for that, it didn't worked in Clear Sky not only due to a bad execution but simply because the Zone was never meant to be an arena of faction battles in the first place, it was supposed to be a desolated, almost empty exclusion zone in which only small pockets of survivors and stalkers tried their best to gather secrets and items while trying not to die by a hungry but still rare Blood Sucker, and so far only Shadow of Chernobyl came close to that vision, although it wasn't exactly portraying that either.

I'm glad to see GSC still working on that franchise, it'll now be a series and I'm very confident for positive reception of that sequel, let's hope for a 2010 release, I can't wait to play that beast.

 

[Trianon]

nice! Can't wait to play

 

[Sylvanas]

Cool, loved Stalker and am still yet to play through Clear Sky (have had it sitting on hold for ages) so this is good news. GSC are no longer the random small studio making a huge game that they were with Stalker: SOC- they have experience and probably a little more cashed up which bodes well for a quality sequel .

 

[AstroManLuca]

Sounds like they're responding directly to the criticisms of the earlier games. Now if they'd just remove the point of no return at the end...

 

[Billyzeke]

Awesome! I loved the other 2 STALKER games. This one sounds even better.

 

[skace]

It's a shame they are completely throwing in the towel on faction wars. The concept was broken, but I was hoping it could be fixed.

 

[Bateluer]

How many activations will we get? 3?

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
How many activations will we get? 3?

I'm not sure what you're referring to, perhaps the activations limit that was on the Steam version for a period? I know for a fact that the activations limit on the Steam version of Clear Sky (numbered at five) was removed eventually. I myself own the U.S retail version and it never had any activation limits, even though it's using TAGES anti-piracy measures.

If (or more like when) Call of Prypiat is released on Steam I wouldn't understand why they would bother imposing yet again some activation limit only to remove it some time later, if they aren't idiots (publisher, developer and/or Valve) they won't include any such thing.

 

[Red Irish]

Originally posted by: Zenoth

Originally posted by: Bateluer
How many activations will we get? 3?

I'm not sure what you're referring to, perhaps the activations limit that was on the Steam version for a period? I know for a fact that the activations limit on the Steam version of Clear Sky (numbered at five) was removed eventually. I myself own the U.S retail version and it never had any activation limits, even though it's using TAGES anti-piracy measures.

If (or more like when) Call of Prypiat is released on Steam I wouldn't understand why they would bother imposing yet again some activation limit only to remove it some time later, if they aren't idiots (publisher, developer and/or Valve) they won't include any such thing.

I took the liberty of bolding some text in your post, hope you don't mind.

 

[BFG10K]

OMG, I cannot wait!!!

The two Stalker games were game of the year for me in both 2007 and 2008.

 

[Martimus]

That sucks that they are removing faction wars. That was my favorite part of Clear Sky, even if it didn't work quite right.

 

[mrblotto]

Sweet!

 

[ibex333]

I am very excited about this. cant wait!

That being said I saw nothing wrong with Faction Wars in Clear Sky. Aside from some stupid bugs, like a horde of dogs spawning out of nowhere and slaughtering the key npcs at "garbage" when I would zone in/out, and the annoying insta nades, Clear Sky was great. The only thing it ws really "missing" is the sheer spookiness of the original. There was really only one underground facility, and even that was bugged to all hell making the snorks burn to death before I could even get to them.

 

[Kromis]

I hope this game is better than the other two

 

[Schadenfroh]

Sweet!

I liked Oblivion Lost (did not play vanilla Stalker: SHOC), cannot wait to try this one.

 

[wrangler]

If it's got S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stamped on it, I am getting out my wallet.

Favorite fps/hybrid whatever you want to call them of all time. I am still playing it and just finished Priboi Story (which this sounds suspiciously similar).

 

[marmasatt]

Originally posted by: wrangler
If it's got S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stamped on it, I am getting out my wallet.

Favorite fps/hybrid whatever you want to call them of all time. I am still playing it and just finished Priboi Story (which this sounds suspiciously similar).

This. Although I just started Clear Sky and I can't move more than 5 freakin' feet without dying. Damn, I forgot how hard these games are at first........

 

[ja1484]

Originally posted by: wrangler
If it's got S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stamped on it, I am getting out my wallet.

This. Excellent series.

 

[imported_Imp]

Saw this a week ago. Can't get enough of Stalker, so boo ya!

So which one is Pripryat again? The one in Clear Sky, or SoC? I know one was Limansk, don't recall which is which.

That's pretty cool that you're Military and not a random Loner starting out. Hope that means you get 'favours' and perks. At the same time, this means factions wars don't make as much sense, so taking it out might not be too bad.

Also, I really hope they share maps, and use everything from both Clear Sky and SoC. Lot more options, and lot more variety. But if they want to keep it 90% urban, I'm all for it.

 

[Spike]

Nice, can't wait for this. I'm just about to finish Clear Sky for my second time and forgot just how much fun the game is, especially now that most of the bugs appear to be fixed. I never really got into SoC as I bought it after CS and could not get around the interface. I did install the Oblivion Lost mod but my interest died out right there. Maybe it's time to play it again...

Either way I really look forward to another stalker!

 

[The Boston Dangler]

cool.

fwiw, i'm more tolerant of of stalker's faults than something from the huge publishers.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: Imp

So which one is Pripryat again? The one in Clear Sky, or SoC?

It's the big city area you explore just before entering the power plant section in Shadow of Chernobyl (where the Monolith base is).

 

[Zenoth]

The one thing I wish to see being made, but I know might still not be possible due to the engine's limitations, would be a seamless connection between the outdoor areas and any underground levels that would be present within a restricted zone. In my mind such a system if implemented in Shadow of Chernobyl for pure comparison purposes would have the engine still load the levels as we known them, but instead of having sub-levels for underground areas the player would simply have to go down the ladder or whatever needs to be done to access the underground area, without loading anything in the process.

A good way to imagine it in SoC would be to load the Agroprom level as usual, and if the player wants to go in the Agroprom Sewers he'd simply have to go there by going down the ladder and that's it, seamless connection done. With a system like that and if well implemented it would then permit the A.I (both creatures and stalkers alike) to roam and freely venture between both levels of the map just like the player would, so we could have some Pseudo Dog mindlessly or with purpose just going down a tunnel (of course not going down a ladder, that would mess up the animation system for some creatures and potentially just make the whole thing unfeasible) and accessing an underground level, and perhaps to never get out of it again.

In a general sense I'm just getting tired of the "huge" games out there in which we still have to load the outdoor and indoor areas separately, while I do understand what kind of engine capabilities are needed to achieve such a thing I'm just saying that on a pure game-play and gamer's perspective it makes things look a little silly sometimes and certainly immersion-breaking. The best example I can think of... and perhaps the worst example as well, is Oblivion, it's a huge outdoor world, which loads areas per-cell as the player walks about, and despite the downsides of the engine it's something that can be dealt with and endured by the player, but when you have to load that next cave separately, at least for me, made me feel annoyed, those cells should be able to generate the data on multiple layers (ground level for the outdoor areas and new "above" and "below" layers for caves, ruins, forts, etc, as soon as you open up the door to access such a place).

The only game in which I saw an actual connection without the slightest of data loading process between the outdoor world and a sizable indoor area is non other than our lovely Crysis. But I'm probably just dreaming in colors here. I don't think the X-Ray engine, even if yet again enhanced from Clear Sky (which by itself is already enhanced from Shadow of Chernobyl) is capable of such feats. But if it is, then I'm wondering why it wasn't implemented in the first place for SoC. I do know however that the recently released pre-alpha build of SoC dating from 2004 had considerably larger levels than those we have in the final version. It is capable of generating larger levels... but it's probably not capable of connecting them with any other sub-areas seamlessly. All of that for the sake of immersion and game-play advantages (and disadvantages as well, just imagine if the A-Life system could now consider both outdoors and indoors seamlessly for its routines, that would mean that "clearing out" an underground level would never be something guaranteed ever again, for at any moment a new group of stalkers could enter from the surface at any moment).

 

[ibex333]

Btw, I can translate Russian--->English, so if anyone cares I can translate and summarize what's written on the pages of that magazine here.

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: ibex333
Btw, I can translate Russian--->English, so if anyone cares I can translate and summarize what's written on the pages of that magazine here.

Oh, yes, please my friend, do so.