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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land After fooling around with a prequel and a lesser sequel, Ukrainian developer GSC Game World gets down to brass tacks with a true sequel to popular first-person shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, due out in 2012.
Developer GSC Game World excelled at crafting a heavy, tense atmosphere in its previous games, and it looks like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat with follow suit.
Stalker (sorry, GSC, we’re done typing it properly) Clear Sky was meant to come out in the US on September 5. Obviously didn’t. There was a problem at the printers. But it’s OK, they delay isn’t a catastrophic one, as the game’s now got a release date of September 15. Least, it does for retailers; Steam has it listed as September 15 as well, but publisher Deep Silver is refusing to confirm a simultaneous retail-online release.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky Hits US Retail Sept. 15; Steam Release Date Not Yet Determined? [Shacknews]
Publisher Deep Silver is teaming up partners GSC Game World, Ascaron Entertainment, and Game Life to form a rather impressive presence at the Games Convention 2008 next week. On the more hardcore side of things we’ll see a definite slant towards PC gaming, with the adventure game Secret Files 2 – Puritas Cordis, Piranha Bytes new RPG Risen, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, and X3: Terran Conflict, along with the Sacred 2: Fallen Angel for the PC, PS3, and 360 and their Wii survival horror game Curs3ed Mountain.
They’ll also be showing off a range of family-friendly DS titles, including their Let’s Play line (Let’s Play Teacher, Let’s Play Vet…Let’s Play Doctor, perhaps?), along with two pet sims from Game Life – Horse Life and Baby Life. Okay, so a baby isn’t technically a pet. They’d just be much more enjoyable if you treated them as such. “Honey, did you let the baby out?” See? Much more entertaining. Hit the jump for more details on Deep Silver’s line up!
Stalker had a roughn start to life, but the game managed to scrape together enough charm and innovation to win itself its fair share of fans. But it’s the game’s prequel – Clear Sky – that’s looking to really nail what GSC Game World have been trying to achieve, since it’ll have the first game’s hook but in what’s hopefully a more refined, polished environment.
A recent post by community manager Don Reba over at GSC Game World’s official forums suggests the developer may be looking to take its open world post-apocalyptic FPS into the realms of the massively multiplayer.
From the post:
2. Will there be S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Online?
We do not quite understand what you mean by “online”. If it is the cooperative mode, then no, there will be none. Even at the time of development of the first part of the game we said that a cooperative mode is impossible, since Life Simulation would be different at each computer. Synchronizing it would be practically not doable. If you mean an MMOG, then we are seriously considering it.
I’m all for a massively multiplayer STALKER game – heck, it would probably be a lot better than Interplay’s current attempt to transform Fallout into an MMO. But considering THQ had to bring in Dean Sharpe to help GSC Game World get STALKER done after an extremely prolonged development cycle (albeit not as bad as DNF), I wouldn’t expect anything to appear for at least a decade.
There’s also a short bit in the FAQ confirming Direct3D 10 support in the new version of GSC’s X-Ray engine. It won’t make it into STALKER, but it’ll definitely be in the developer’s next game.
Community Q&A 2007-11 Answers [GSC Game World, via Blue's News]
