GSC is strapping its standard firmly to the single-player element as its priority: "Primarily, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, as we see it, is a single-player game where the player lives in this world and the game has multiple endings. This will certainly make a welcome change to the linear 'play once and never again' clutch of games that we've blasted through over the years, giving a degree of replayability not seen too much in modern games, particularly FPS titles.
We have over eight different endings," he boasts. "The key message is the player has freedom to act and become - at the end - whatever he wants to, it's up to him. So with its Deus Ex-style non linear overtones, S.T.A.L.K.E.R is clearly more than just about the pretty visuals, and the team has let its imagination run riot with thoughts of what the radiation has done to the environment after all these years: "There are mutants, obviously, who are always hostile to you and you can't do anything about - this is a first-person shooter," insists Yavorsky. You can give them a hand in trouble or you could be a murderer - and there are different types of Stalkers who pursue their own goals." Hostile daughters You can save people for example, you can rescue scientists, or Stalkers. He has the freedom to move and act and it's up to him. Based on the premise that you've gone to explore the 20km 'exclusion zone' of Chernobyl, what you do after that is essentially your choice, according to GSC's Oleg Yavorsky: "We made it an open-ended game where each player can become whatever they want to become. The game itself promises to be a lot more than your average shooter. The mass of untroubled, tangled vegetation is occasionally interrupted by an ominously towering pylon, and it just looks so good you want to just run around like a kid let loose in a field. Every environment is brought to life with textures that have no right to look that good. Every wall is a mass of peeling paint, every structure precarious, dank and twisted with abandonment.
Much like any cutting edge FPS, you'll definitely need the kit, and we're talking high end to do the game justice.īased - with a degree of artistic license - on the real thing, the small team at GSC actually went themselves down to the stricken reactor to gather source material, and have done a fantastic job of replicating the rust and decay. As you will know from the leaked movies and the few official screenshots available, this is a game that takes attention to detail to new levels - if you have the rig, that is.
In common with Far Cry's stunning views, GSC does it too with an engine that seems capable of rendering an entire sprawling landscape to an almost unbelievable degree of clarity, fidelity and detail.
It looks staggeringly beautiful, and takes PC visuals to a place we've all been looking forward to for a long, long time. Can you be beautiful while staggering?Īs for the game.
Instead an indignant French journo let THQ have it with both barrels for 'making money out of a tragedy' before storming off in a huff to drink some free Stella. I didn't know whether to laugh or throw things. Stranger still, during the press conference to promote the much anticipated mutate 'em up S.T.A.L.K.E.R, they wheeled one of the men responsible for the tragedy. But when they invited us on a cheery tour to go and see Chernobyl for fun, we knew something had gone awry in our lives. Of course poker-faced customs officials are par for the course - ever been to the States? Even the legions of furry hat-wearing folk (with no furry hat shops, sadly) and unfeasibly long-legged beautiful women didn't phase us as such, nor the fact that they wired us up to a vodka drip and forced us to eat a selection of some of the most bizarre and inedible 'food' substances ever. Of all the odd press trips in the world, none can quite come close to the culture shock endured on the THQ-sponsored 'jolly' to GSC's Kiev-based studio in the sunny Ukraine.