S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Your feelings?

In Clear Sky there were guides that you could talk to to fast travel across maps. Not sure if that's a feature in CoP. And wouldn't the anomalies, twisted landscape, road blocks, monsters, etc. have made travel by vehicle a bit difficult? According to game lore, the gov't couldn't even fly deep into the zone in helicopters because of anomalies and blow outs.
And I really don't see the problem with limited inventory size. It made sense and added a sort of tactical metagame.

I'll agree on the boring gameworld and story. It just felt really naked to me.
 
sea said:
The issue with STALKER's story and game world is that you can only handle mystery so long... now that we know the backstory and whatnot, there isn't much left to flesh out. They tried to have real characters with Strelok and the like, but I don't think their technology, talent and so forth were really up to it. It's doubly hard to have meaningful characters in a game where potentially anyone can die, and not much fun to work really hard on stuff players can approach from any angle and many will never even see.
This. I dont know if it has as well to do something with east european developers but you definetly can see that they have their own way of "making" games (or the characters/story) to speak so. THe Witcher, Metro, Stalker, Disciples its easily possible to see that those games are different from the usual kind of western/american games when you look for the details. I think one has to get used to the way how they handle characters for example. But thats not really a bad way as seen with Metro and The Witcher. Sadly not exactly sure why the characters or most of them feelt very blant in Stalker like the Merchant which helped you in the begining or the quest for Strelok .

Problem was that I expected a very rich open world game when infact it was a very straight forward shooter : / so yeah ... huge dissapointment ~ but thats how I feelt about it, others might for sure have liked the shooter part in Stalker. Though after I got that weapon-repair mod it was also possible to enjoy the shooter part even.
 
exactly. sadly with many games today particiularly RPGs they go overboard with this, see Dragon Age for example. I mean I like it when a character or NPC gets a really good background story but they exagerated it. Call me old fashioned but I think games in the past have been a lot richer by "less" content to speak so. It was not expected that every NPC gets a voice nor that he needs a story behind him (like your cashier), novadays it seems that EVERYTHING needs a voice and EVERYTHING has to be shown or graphicaly visualized, and thats creating easily games which then need 18 gigabytes of space on your drive and 20 million dollars to produce ... or else it will not get the 90% 10/10 super scores in gaming magazines its like a death cycle in my eyes as youre loosing a lot of quality that way. I always prefered the way how both Baldurs Gate and Fallout 1/2 did it in a way where you concentrated the resources on a few characters gave them great story and voices.
 
Make it a bit more free-roam, put in side-quests that actully are worth doing, perhaps add a couple of gunsmiths to repair that unique weapon you love so much, and I proberly end up getting it. Add a basic transport service running occasionly between the major areas and more stuff to spend your cash on and I definatly will. If it became a true linier shooter, I will proberly hold off until it's bargain binned.

Glitchy Sky did all of that and most people hated it (or so this forum leads me to believe).

STALKER, Metro 2033, Half-Life 2, Fallout 3 etc.

The settings in all of those are different. And, STALKER is hardly 'urban', you spend most of the time in open areas.

Fallout series should drop post apocalyptic setting too and maybe do some awesome epic fantasy hero story.
I though it already did, in FO3.

the people in STALKER have about as much personality as drunk frat boys

I disagree, I found the important NPCs to be fairly well-done. As for the other random people, they don't even matter.

half the people in Call of Pripyat call you "bro"

Shitty localization, no doubt. Nothing of the sort in the original.

sadly with many games today particiularly RPGs they go overboard with this, see Dragon Age for example.

Dragon Age just had shitty writing in general. It's like they were trying to make use of every fantasy setting trope ever created.
 
Ausdoerrt said:
I disagree, I found the important NPCs to be fairly well-done. As for the other random people, they don't even matter..
For shooter standarts maybe ... but I expected a bit more then just that. By the way important NPCs ? maybe the 1 or 2 of them ... seriously next to that I can not remember much then the first merchant you see (and also saved your life) or that Strelok dude youre searching (suurrrpiiseee...). Next to that most if not all of the other people in the zone are flat and trivial and could be easily replaced by apes.

Thing is that I believe Stalker would have been a much better game if they tried to stay true to the nature of the book the story was (loosley) based on with the 3 characters everyone trying to reach the center of the zone with different targets in mind and expanding on that. I also cant say that I like the idea behind it all I mean was there really even a need to "reveal" what was behind the zone ? Why not let it be a mystery ... or trying to get some end where you never really can "understand" what was behind it I am thinking about something like the movie Sphere did which was if you ask me an awesome way to end it, but thats just me ~ Sphere
[spoiler:4ab8a4304f]n the middle of the southern Pacific Ocean, a thousand feet below the surface, what is believed to be an alien spacecraft is discovered after a ship laying transoceanic cable has its cable cut and the United States Navy investigates the cause. The thickness of coral growth on the spaceship suggests that it has been there for almost 300 years. A team made up of marine biologist Dr. Beth Halperin (Sharon Stone), mathematician Dr. Harry Adams (Samuel L. Jackson), astrophysicist Dr. Ted Fielding (Liev Schreiber), psychologist Dr. Norman Goodman (Dustin Hoffman), and a member of the U.S. Navy (Peter Coyote) is tasked with investigating the spaceship. The team (along with two navy technicians) are housed in a state-of-the-art underwater living environment called the Habitat during their stay on the ocean floor.

Upon entering the spaceship, the team makes two discoveries. The first is that the ship is from the future, specifically America. The last date in the ship's log, 06/21/43, does not indicate the specific century. The last entry in the log details an "Unknown (Entry) Event", which depicts the ship apparently falling into a black hole, resulting in its trip through time. The ship's mission involved gathering objects from around the galaxy to bring back to Earth. An item of particular interest is a large, perfect sphere in the cargo hold. It hovers a few feet above the ground and has an impenetrable fluid surface which reflects its surroundings but not people.

Harry concludes from the classification of the event which sent the ship back that the Habitat crew is fated to die: it would not have been an "unknown event" if they had lived to report about it, he reasons. Harry soon sneaks back to the spaceship, and finds a way to enter the sphere. Soon after, a series of binary-encrypted messages begin to show up on the habitat's computer screens, and Harry and Ted are able to decipher the messages and converse with what appears to be an alien (which calls itself "Jerry"), which has been trapped in the sphere. They soon discover that "Jerry" can hear everything they are saying aboard the Habitat.

Harry's entry into the sphere prevents the team from evacuating before the arrival of a powerful typhoon on the surface, forcing them to stay below for almost a week. A series of tragedies then befalls the crew: Fletcher, the navy technician, is killed by aggressive jellyfish; a giant squid attacks and damages the station, killing Edmunds by completely destroying her body, Ted by blasting him with a large fire blast, and Barnes by slicing him in half with a computer-operated door in the ensuing chaos; and sea snakes attack Norman. Jerry is the cause of these incidents.

Eventually, only Harry, Norman, and Beth remain. At this point, they realize that they have all entered the world of the perfect sphere, which has given them the power to manifest their thoughts into reality. As such, all of the disasters that had been plaguing them are the result of manifestations of the worst parts of their own minds. The name "Jerry" turns out to have been erroneously decrypted and is actually spelled "Harry"; it is Harry's subconscious communicating with them through their computer system whenever he is asleep.

At that point, Beth's suicidal thoughts manifest themselves as triggering a countdown to trigger the explosives that were brought along to clear away the coral. They abandon the Habitat for the mini-sub, but their fears manifest an illusion of the spacecraft around them. Norman finally sees through the illusion, and punches the mini-sub's emergency surfacing button. The explosives destroy the habitat and the spaceship, but (unknown to them) the sphere itself remains undamaged. As the explosives detonate and create a huge blast wave below it, the mini-sub rises to the surface, to be quickly retrieved by the returning surface ships, permitting the survivors to begin safe decompression once on board a navy ship.

The film ends with the three deciding to use their powers to erase their own memories before being debriefed, in order to prevent the knowledge about the sphere from falling into the wrong hands. Thus, Harry's paradox, in which they are alive yet no one has learned about the "unknown event," is resolved. As they erase their own memories of the "unknown event," the sphere is seen emerging from the ocean and flying off into space.[/spoiler:4ab8a4304f]



Ausdoerrt said:
Dragon Age just had shitty writing in general. It's like they were trying to make use of every fantasy setting trope ever created.
Hah! So true :shock:
 
The CS leader wasn't bad. The CS weaponsmith was definitely memorable for his great funny one-liners. The crazy dude with the dog in CoP. Scientists, faction leaders, Skull (SC). The ex-Monolith dudes in CoP were really well-done. So yeah, that's sort of what I meant.

And you WISH it actually took anything from the book other than cool words. Well, it didn't and it's more like Russian pulp sci-fi, there's a ridiculous amount of crappy books written based off it now too. Although frankly, I don't think any of the Strugatskiy brothers' books could be adapted into a good quality game, it would be too much work and too heavy for a general gaming audience. What happens if they try - well, there's "Hard to be a God" game.
 
CoP should be regarded as the benchmark for future releases IMO, as it has the best gameplay in the series, hands down. You had big levels and decently written quests which actually reminded me of some adventure games I dunno why. SoC's atmosphere was the best though. CS - it didn't happen for me.

As for the next game I'd like to see one single map with huge fields like the Cordon from SoC (I liked that one the best) between major locations and a better inventory system (hmm I always liked DX1's...)
 
Well, most of game mechanics except faction quests made it from CS to CoP. I actually like those faction action quests too, and would like to see them polish the idea. It sucks as is though.

I'm also positive that 2 out of 3 main locations in CoP were as big if not bigger than SoC's Cordon. At least they felt that way.
 
Uh I don't know, I found most characters to be quite bland, except maybe Morgan. You are correct though, tropes themselves don't define writing quality, their application does. And I didn't find that application to be anywhere above average for DA. Just IMHO.
 
Slight inversion of thread topic-
Anyone have unmodded Call of Pripyat installed? I ran into a bug that maybe someone can help with.

I'm at the Jupiter PP looking for the documents for the "Road to Pripyat" quest. I pick up the last document in the building outside the plant.
After I pick the documents up there's a cutscene where Degtarev walks up to the window. Now I'm not so sure what's supposed to happen after that because after he walks up to the window the screen turns back to first person view and faces the shelf I was previously facing. But now my flashlight is turned off and the HUD is nowhere to be seen. In addition to that I can't do anything. I can't move, I can't enter the pause menu or anything. Here's a fraps vid of someone with the same bug:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dw9dMLKnvs

Here's my savegame. Could someone play it through the cutscene then save it and upload it ? It's for v1.6.02 of the D2D digital distribution, if that matters.
http://www.mediafire.com/?d0obj66977ddmg2
 
Meh. I preordered SoC because I've been waiting for that game about a bazillion years and I just knew it would be the best game of all time (of all time!). It was unplayable out of the box and was cut down to a really mediocre shooter.
Well, now there are some really great mods that make it a really great game.
GSC announced a 1.1 patch that they never released and made a broken and pointless addon instead. I preordered Clear Sky just to be massively disappointed (again). It sucked. Never bothered to play through.
I ignored Call of Pripyat completely, I don't see the point of another broken fullprize addon. SoC has been restored to a really great game, that is enough for me.
Stalker 2... I'll keep it in mind. Maybe they won't fuck with what is left of their fanbase again. If they don't bother with coding their own engine and concentrate on content instead and don't bother with drinking shitloads of vodka and concentrate on quality control instead, maybe it will work out.
Maybe I'll get it when three patches have been released and the prize has gone down to 1/2.
 
Ausdoerrt said:
Too bad, man, CoP wasn't overly glitchy out of the box and featured mostly fresh maps ;)
Yeah, but I'm still too pissed at GSC for being complete dicks the whole time :D
 
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