Apart from other comments here I agree whit I hope they have played a few mods to the org Stalker and learned a few lessons.

JojoTheSlayer

This game was supposed to be out in January. Where the hell is it?

Rebelphoenix83

If Stalker's performance was anything to go on, you could consider this gallery a full-on demo of the game.

That being said, I'm looking forward to this. I just hope that in THIS Stalker, money has some sort of purpose (then again, maybe the reason you got soooo much in the original was some sort of statement about Russia's economy*).

*LAWL

Colwyn vs. "The Beast"

@Guttlesswonder: try the redux mod. the anamolies are invisible.

BodyOfTheMany

Hell, Id buy the game even if it had the same flaws as long as theres more stuff to explore.

Maiken

I'm super-excited about this one!
Tarkovsky's film is absolutely my favourite ever (happy to see that it is for others here as well), and the original game was surprisingly awesome, can't wait to see this one in action (although I'm definitely going to need to upgrade my system for the first time in forever).

Runouthearts

I desperately wanted to like the first one, and I did, to a point, and I'm gonna buy Clear Sky for sure, It's just, I...
I don't know why.

StartRunning

Headline looks awfully similiar to Apache's site. ^^.

I enjoyed the first game immensely.

Fyren

I hope they keep the DX8 renderer in there, or at least I don't know, bother to actually optimize the DX9 renderer.

Other than that, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. kicks all forms of ass and this is major do want.

DankPanties

@Koztah:

I know you were talking about the game. I agreed with your thoughts on it. You know, it being good and all.

dead_red_eyes

Can't wait to put my 8800GT to work! Loved the first one, gonna replay that badboy soon

dozerking

I absolutely can't wait for Clear Sky. Shadow of Chernobyl was my favourite shooter of 2007.

Mara

I had heard about STALKER shortly after it was first announced (back in 1830) and was intrigued from the start. That said, having purchased and played it i was a little disappointed. First off the game was a system hog and just felt un-optimized. I'm running a Dell XPS M1710 (Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, 2 GB Ram, GeForce 7950 GTX w/ 512 RAM, 7,200 RPM HDD) and it just chugged. After some optimization I got it to work a little better, but it was still buggy nonetheless. To STALKER's defense, it's got a shit ton of atmosphere. It truly felt like a living breathing world, albeit the running from zone to zone to get new missions grew tiresome... but i digress, here's to hoping Clear Sky alleviates some of the issues with the original...

UncleScrotar

@skullivan: I spoke with the president of Bethesda while he was in Kiev - and he said that the port is currently being worked on by their Scotland team. (he was in Kiev to hammer our the deal with GSC Game World).

Not announced yet, but it's on pretty good authority that they are working on it.

JohnnyHundo

Wait, wait, IMPROVED AI? It was already kicking my ass in the last game. (for the first hour or so) Then again, all the Haloes and Calls of Duty really destroyed my ability to judge.

I mean, I'm so used to the "haha, I'm behind an obstacle, you can't see meeeeee!" or guards going "well, I heard gunshots, but after a ten second inspection nothing seems wrong, back to patrolling."

The first time I snuck up on a group of bad guys in STALKER, I was behind a truck. What do you know? They saw my FEET, called the rest of the posse and proceeded to do a pincer movement using the surrounding trees for cover while the remainder provided covering fire by firing beneath the truck at me. Boy was I surprised.

Siegeman

If the A.I. and shooting mechanics are anywhere near as good as, let alone better than Shadow of Chernobyl's, then this game is an absolute must buy!

monorailcat

@Koztah: thats true, the problem is that the baked on textures for precalculated GI wont work as well for true HDR lit environments and also means that interactive objects wont cast shadows correctly in those areas. This means that there are fake shadows and real time shadows and when the two are running side by side it detracts from the realism making it sometimes look even worse!

perhaps if better exposure controls were used for the games it wouldnt be as bad.

Thanks for discussing it with me :-)

DUOPHONIX.com

It's called Clear Sky, because one of the factions is called... Clear Sky.

Yeah I know it's a joke/pun article but it was still slightly lame. :P

Still I'll forgive since I've never seen those delicious screens before. :)

-MoarPlz-

@DUOPHONIX.com:

Some games just make the ambient a pale blue to remedy this, which then just makes the whole game look washed out (EQ2, for example).

Whee.

Precalculated GI baked into shadowmaps seems to be the only solution until GPUs get seriously insane.

Koztah

@Candlejack:

Strange. I never found any of the quests confusing... Go here. Push this button/get this item. Take it here.

Though, if you don't like exploring and you need stimulation every minute, then this game's not for you.

Koztah

@CyN1caL:

have a look at mental ray, the newest version is far superior to vray ive found. If you want to chat about it or ask need help, drop me a line - :-)

DUOPHONIX.com

i need a better graphics card to play these games.

jackal888

@skullivan: You'll just have to do without then.

ErskinPig

When are they going to announce this game for 360? I've wanted to play it since it was first announced, but I don't do PC.

skullivan

If you really want your mind to be blown, watch the Russian movie and try to figure out how they based this game on such a crazy movie. They should have made the bolt actually be the only way to navigate the anomalies like in the film, or at least made it an option.

Guttlesswonder

STALKER was one of the most immersive and scariest FPS games I ever played. While it did have a lot of bugs and the respawning was too consistent and repetitive, it was a hard game to play and balanced the best of simplistic arcade play with realistic environmental conditions (ie, eating food, limitations on what you can carry, etc.).

I found myself running away from some of the mutants instead of fighting them, which was a first. :)

Executor999

This is the title that will get me gaming on the pc again- since the first "stalker". (with a brief portal interlude, of course.)

I am a big fan of the movie, and even more so of the book the movie (and game) were loosely based on- "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Amazing, early-seventies russian science fiction. One of my all time favorites.

Mega-Driven

hmm somehow I'm not too exited about this one.

After first STALKER I played for about 5 hours, they released a patch that killed my all my saves, and since I can't be bothered to replay it...

Zeuxis

@DUOPHONIX.com: While I'm no where near a pro at Vray, I love how such simple settings can create such fantastic results. They only downfall is how painfully long it takes to render an average scene.

CyN1caL

I don't know why game developer have night scene that are so dark you can't even see. I started TUROK demo and just about break the controller because I can't even see what the hell I'm doing. I hate night time game.

nxp3

I didn't terribly enjoy the first one. It was alright, but I constantly felt like .. "what am I doing out here?" or "why do I care?". The constant respawning of dogs/enemies was kinda neat at first but became a chore and I just wanted to be done with it at the end. First ending I got was the "greed" ending. Not because I was greedy or tried to collect massive amounts of cash, but because I just had a crap load of it with nothing worth spending on except the radiation first aid stuff. Speaking of endings - every single one is quite frankly retarded. How does jumping through a bunch of portals at the end have ... anything to do with the story? How long did it take for the conditions to improve after you killed the tube babies? Did you die in the facility and that was some sort of afterlife? wtf?

Things like needing to eat food felt tacky and after thought. What point was there other than to annoy the player into seeking out another first aid type product? Once I found a certain type of gun, there was really no need to find any others - until the end of the game when the cool guns show up, but you get those for like .. 30 minutes.

At first I liked the game, it felt great, new .. refreshing. Near the end .. I just wanted to be done with it to see the ending and that was a huge disappointment.

Heres hoping the second is better and at least has a better ending.

RE: Bioshock. Bah. Thats all I can really say without typing a load of crap like I just did. I don't understand why people fawn over this game. It felt very generic and the mutations or what ever were just another gimmick. To me, anyway.

Ayanamifan

Hopefully, this one doesn't take 6 years to developed.

CyN1caL

Speaking from the persepective of a professional photorealistic 3d designer, the problem with all next gen games and their graphics is that although they are powerful enough to simulate lots of real world lighting effects that increase realism - it takes far too much power to provide real time irradiance of light meaning that the contrast is always too great.
This is why they all seem to be in sunlight, in order to brighten up the whole game, this however leads to areas in shadow to be too dark.

Anyone who uses renderers such as mental ray or vray will understand what i mean - turn off GI or FG and watch how the shadow areas darken!

DUOPHONIX.com

@Koztah: ...It was? I have awful memories of long, long walking instances and confusing gameplay + quests....

Candlejack

@FadedEchos:
not a living , brathing environment? are you kidding? i have never been in a world that seemed so alive as the zone in s.t.a.l.k.e.r. as a matter of fact that was the best part of the game! the best part of the story were the parts that wernt planened, when you would return to the newbie camp to find everyone gone and one lone hostile stalker guardig the campfire, shooting at you before you even realize dwhat happened. i have never played a gmae wher ei have put a bullet in someones head out of mercy as they lay in agony on the ground, thinking: better me than the dogs. i never felt safe in the zone and this was primarily because it was so unpredictable!

BodyOfTheMany

For those complaining about bugs, I recommend you try the game now since it's been patched heavily. I played it for the first time last month & I didn't notice any serious bugs. It never crashed once for me.

ErskinPig

Worst title acronym ever.

Modus_Operandi

If this game irons out the bugs of the last one, then it truly will be something special.

McPaper

@dead_red_eyes:

I was referring to the game :P Although it is heavily inspired by the film (particularly the bit about throwing nuts/bolts to check for anomalies..)

Koztah

I wonder if they'll make good on the lofty promises they'd made for the first one. Not saying it was bad, but the sense of a living breathing environment instead of scripted events just wasn't there. Needed optimizing pretty badly too (from what I remember.)

Cool game though, definitely watching the second.

FadedEchos

I played this game through completely using two mods, one that improved the weather effects and made the nights realistically dark, and another that made the gun fights more realistic, more difficult, via faster bleeding, loud sound effects, and realistic errors in accuracy. It looks like the dev team is taking the hint and realizing that the game is more horrific if the stakes are higher and it is harder to survive in the game world. from these pictures it looks at least as though they realize that the nights need to be dark as pitch in order to simulate the terror that nightfall would bring in the zone.

BodyOfTheMany

@Koztah:

Agreed!

I just watched "Stalker" last night for the 50th time or so. Looooooove that movie.

dead_red_eyes

Yah it was buggy,
but the atmosphere was amazing.
Only Bioshock has an atmosphere
with the level of depth the first
one had.

Sullyville

Can't wait for this one if it's an improvement over the first STALKER. It's looking mighty tasty.

Lokku

Can't wait for this. STALKER, despite its flaws, was an awesome game.

I'm glad that Steam is providing GSC with a platform to get this out there after the publishing middlemen at THQ ran away. The age of the publishers will hopefully come to an end in the not too distant future. They are merely infrastructure, and yet they have all the power. The sooner they can be cut from the supply chain the better!

ErskinPig

Maybe its an artistic title signalling foreshadowing of the games story?

Yeah... too deep.

Black_Ops_19

I hope to God that the development team actually puts this one through some form of alpha/beta testing because the original was unbelievably buggy... made it a chore and a half to play, and for NOTHING (awful endings).

Ugh.

Revolutionary

The first STALKER was absolutely brilliant. If this sequel is actually improved, then it'll be mindblowing.

Koztah

@DUOPHONIX.com:

Funny you should mention that; STALKER actually supported bouncing light, and can be turned on by fiddling with console commands, even though that's an extreme performance hog, I can imagine a 9900GT running it with some modifications done.

I, myself tweaked the HDR and lightning in the game to levels that albeit made it a tad more demanding, made the lightning much more realistic and beautiful, and dang, some nature scenes were so beautiful that I haven't seen a game top them yet.

And STALKER had tons and tons of this kind of atmos. It never lead the player, which is one of the reasons I loved it, but probably a reason why many hated it as well. Bioshock isn't the thinking man's shooter, STALKER probably is.

On topic again as to what DUOPHONIX said:
Games are trying to get around this problem via some stuff: ambient lightning seems to be the new lightning wave, and I'm sure I've seen a tech demo with this version of the X-ray engine utilizing ambient lightning... But Crysis did it, along with something they called SSAO for extra dark shadows around objects, which, Epic games are copying now in GoW2.

I'm sorry for the long tl;dr-post, but I'm seriously wetting my pants with lurvbs here.

Melonfodder