And what subtitle would generate huge sales?
STALKER: Order of the Phoenix?
Not saying a great subtitle will make for great sales… but an obscure one could certainly hurt the title’s marketability.
nuh uh, not when it comes to post industrial ex-soviet awesomeness. obscurity is a big part of its allure. be shure.
I’m sure they design for their region of the globe rather than the US. Pripyat probably sells better than Liberty City, and they did say fans have been begging them for more detailed renderings of that town.
This is a STALKER sequel. You make it sound as if they had a choice whether to set it near Chernobyl.
I WAS somewhat disappointed with Pripyat in Shadows of Chernobly. I felt more could have been done there. You’re pretty much rushed through to get to the NPP as fast as possible as the place is just a warzone.
Can’t sleep, so I’ll see what the Ukranians are up to. A few interesting tidbits from their interview.
And, lastly, starting from next week we are taking on board a whole external testing company which will help us lead the game up to release.
No more randomized side quests, they will all be custom made. Also, I really liked the action-RPG aspect of tweaking gear in Clear Sky so I was happy to hear they will expand that a bit. Still no vehicles, seems like they don’t think they’d fit on the maps or in the gameworld.
They took some recent trips to snap pictures of Pripyat, Kopachi, etc. Neat stuff, the East Europeans need to realize how cool this setting can be to those of us here in the US (at least me, anyway!)
No exact ship date so far, but we expect to get the game out this Autumn already
As for the franchise in general, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. currently is not only a computer game, but also a successful series of novels (with 5 novels out in German and over 20 in Russian (selling over 3 million books in total), a dedicated airsoft game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RPl2LXwCqg), a social network for s.t.a.l.k.e.r.s (currently in Russian only - www.yastalker.com) We’d love to expand the franchise with some new directions, such as official comics stories (and we’re running such a contest already among fans), an official music festival etc. There’s a lot of fun going on here. :)
Someone translate that YouTube of the cosplay or whatever it is. Damn those guys are goofy, but the video had no real action shots so not much to see.
Bad move.
You liked finding the eyeballs? I could go either way. Or maybe it’s a mistranslation.
Love this series, heard about the mod but never played it. Clear Sky was good, but it was definitely missing something that made the first special. Hope they refine the combat, which was aggravating at times, especially early in both games. Hate missing the shot on a motionless person 5 feet away while crouching and looking through the sights, while they could snipe me in the head with a sawed-off shotgun from a mile away. Also, was anyone ever able to stealth kill someone with a knife in CS? Is it even possible?
Actually I haven’t played either game despite owning both. But I always prefer randomized side missions to scripted ones. Or randomized anything to scripted anything, really.
The random missions in STALKER were pretty bland.
ctrl+f
“fast travel”
Phrase not found
:(
Man, fuck that. The most important part of the gameplay experience is traveling through the zone in the dark, no idea when something horrible is going to spring out at you.
Yeah they’re still doing that guide shit. Which was a good idea until I realized it cost thousands of credits just to save 3 minutes of running.
Speaking of the dark, now that sleeping is integrated into the base game, they said nighttime monsters will be more aggressive.
I think I’ll find a nice attic and sleep instead.
Fast travel is good the way it is, the safe and costly route, or the slow and possibly dangerous one. If you’re just zipping around, well, I think it would gut the game.
Both the original and Clear Sky got some things right, I hope they’re going to combine them into the perfect game. Anyway, even if they don’t there’s a ton of mods for those two games, I intend to try Faction Commander once I finish Clear Sky.
Maybe it’s been improved, but Faction Commander seriously borked my game when I tried it. Getting help from friendly AI was like pulling teeth, and spawning squads caused all sorts of problems. It feels like you’re issuing commands that go straight onto little strips of paper and into a party hat, and commands are selected by the AI at random every 10 minutes or so.
I never found the areas to be “dangerous” to run through, but that might be due to Clear Sky’s visible enemy squads on the map. So it was just lame, and like it or not there were times I needed to zip around. If they rebalance it better it will be okay. Cost enough to not abuse it but low enough that if I don’t feel like trudging then that’s okay too.
Quick travel is like far out zoom, people want it until they get it and realise it robs all personality. Clear Sky is far too small for that… and vehicles!