Stalker: Call of Pripyat

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Dracon M'Alkir

Vault Senior Citizen
This announcement may be a little late, but ever since GSC has first announced a third title in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, the Call of Pripyat, more details have been released.

The game is set to be released in the Autumn of 2009 and carries some pretty hefty system requirements, which should tell you about some of the massive graphical updates / engine work that GSC has been doing with their game.

Now, here's a few things that we know about the game, and a few promises from the developers:
  • Call to Pripyat is a sequel to Shadow of Chernobyl, unlike Clear Sky which was a prequel. According to the game canon, Strelok did in fact destroy the C-Consciousness.
  • A-Life is said to have been vastly improved. Monsters and STALKERs alike will now have their own 'schedules' and do things according to the time of day, such as hunting for prey/artifacts during the day, resting in safehouses and patrolling in shifts at night.
  • A-Life is also supposed to have a 'natural enemy' system with certain groups tending to be 'enemies' with each other. Bandits attacking neutral stalkers more than anyone else, Duty attacking mutants, and so forth. Attacking a certain faction long (being in one yourself) may trigger the AI set to flag your faction as a permanent 'enemy'.
  • The AI is also much better in combat (supposedly).
  • There is supposedly more freedom involved in the gameplay in terms of the story-mode. The developers have stated that there may not actually be an 'ending' to the game, and gameplay may continue on forever far past the natural 'ending' of the game. This is to allow players to go back and to do any side-quests they might've missed on the way.
  • Less bugs, and more stability. GSC has promised thorough playtesting of the game this time, and so we hopefully won't have to wait through six patches just to keep the game from crashing to desktop every 30 minutes.
  • Improved graphics, naturally. I assume they'll be doing something DirectX10, soft shadowing, self-shadowing, HDR, and the-like.
  • Completely new areas yet unseen (or at least in the depth in CoP) from SoC and CS. The entire area of Pripyat will be available and playable/explorable in a full 1:1 realistic scale. A list of some of the promised areas: Pripyat, Kopachi Village, Juipter Factory, Railway Station Yanov.
  • The requirement of sleep (as well as hunger) has been added to the game with severe gameplay consequences. Apparently, stamina will regenerate much more slowly and other actions will be much more difficult if you are exhausted and/or starving.
  • The Burer and Chimera monsters have been re-added to the game.
  • One developer mentioned the possibility of the protagonist (A Ukranian investigator) having 'some kind of powers' that regenerate after you sleep.
  • There will be underground horror locations like in the original SoC.
  • There may be an option of included dual languages on all discs, allowing you to switch the game from English to Russian and vice versa whilst playing. (Voice or text only.)

Rec. System Requirements: Intel Core 2 Duo E7400/AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+, 2GB RAM, nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX/ATI Radeon HD 4850/512 MB DirectX 9c compatible video card

That's all for today. Enjoy and have a wonderful time in the Pre-Apocalyptic Capitalistic Wasteland.

Link: Call of Pripyat homepage
Link: Screenshots from Call of Pripyat on the game's homepage
 
I'm rather excited about it, but I wonder how many patches will be required to make it playable? :P
 
I rather wish they hadn't decided to call their AI "A-Life" since every time I hear the term I think of Alife technologies and that eventually leads to memories of Creatures and I'm already disappointed knowing the AI won't actually be anything as cool.

Stop it GSC.
 
First game sucked, didn't play clear sky, will this be any different than the first one? I really doubt.
 
Didn't like the stalker franchise that much... the game lacked good game design. This one can turn out interesting if they fix all the issues the last games had.
 
I was thinking of getting S.T.A.L.K.E.R., is it any good? Judging by some of the comments, I don't know...
 
Rufus Luccarelli said:
I was thinking of getting S.T.A.L.K.E.R., is it any good? Judging by some of the comments, I don't know...
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The first one... Base game is kind of okay, but obviously had unused potential. The main flaws it suffers from are overall bugginess (though the patches largely cleared this up), sometimes completely redonkulous AI, and a hilariously bad translation. Also the story is convoluted and stupid. With the patches and some mods like the Oblivion Lost mod, it turns into a great first-person post-apoc survival/horror/shooter game. Nights become pitch-black and require the use of the flashlight, many cut enemies are added (like the fucking Izlom ughhh it freaks me out), there are more varied random events, and lots of other stuff.

Clear Sky isn't worth bothering with, imo.
 
Rufus Luccarelli said:
I was thinking of getting S.T.A.L.K.E.R., is it any good? Judging by some of the comments, I don't know...
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It's a lot like Arcanum in that it has an incredible amount of design issues, balancing issues, and bugs, yet the core gameplay is good enough to make it good despite its issues.
Imagine Fallout 3 if the hoard of bugs and shitty design was overwhelmed by the pure quality of the methods the game utilizes in order to entertain you.

Although I'm not a big fan of Arcanum, I'm a fan of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and it's best to tell you this. Either it's going to come off like Arcanum did to me and the issues will be simply too much for you to enjoy the game, or you'll be able to suffer through them in order to experience something great.
It's one of those games you have to try yourself in order to form a developed opinion simply because it's love it or hate it.

@Leon: The Oblivion Lost mod is garbage to me, while the fixes are welcome, I hate that they decided to alter the carry weight, really, I never had the issues most idiotic pack rats had with the game's limited weight carrying capacity. The whole point is to scavenge and only take what you need. Oblivion Lost makes the game too easy and a lot of what it adds in is simply unfinished and annoying.

Play the game vanilla first, if you can't stand it, then try Oblivion Lost, but really, I hate that mod, much like I hated the stupid Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul or whatever the hell it was called mod that everyone loved.
 
It's a bit of a hassle, and by no means does it make up for the flaws OL has for you to begin with, but you can change the carry weight in STALKER yourself.

Isn't Oblivion Lost superseded by AMK or something? Actually, we're probably getting off-topic here.
 
I don't want to carry weight changed, that's my point, it was perfectly fine in vanilla S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Oblivion Lost is still too easy no matter what you do however.
 
I denounced this game big time for the years of delays and not coming close to delivering what promised. Well, I finally got STALKER and the Clear Sky prequel several days ago. Applied this mod http://artistpavel.blogspot.com/2009/04/stalker-complete-2009.html along with some tweaks of my own, and after a few hours it's a really enjoyable experience. Be warned, it takes some time getting into the swing of things. And mutants such as the rarely seen controller and cloaking bloodsuckers will rape you early on. I kept my head low until I got some of the best armor in the game, a sniper rifle, and some advanced assault rifles with attached grenade launchers.

One cool experience I had was in the middle of the night I returned to this big outside research facility from earlier. Hearing lots of gunfire, I climbed to the highest point on the roof of a building. Looking over the ledge I spotted a group of about a dozen enemy bandits shooting wildly at *something*. They were getting butchered one at a time by two invisible bloodsucker mutants. A few bandits freaked out and ran out of the base only to be torn apart by a large pack of wild mutant dogs. The mix of frantic gunfire, guys yelling in Russian, monsters roaring, and dogs howling and all you can see with nightvision turned off are flashes from guns and explosions from the odd grenade.

The underground research bases are spooky as fuck.

Randomization is done well, but after a while it gets repetitive seeing similar groups of bandits attack similar groups of stalkers. Over time they get better weapons.

Main story quests aren't too difficult or confusing. Sometimes an important guy will get killed and it makes reaching the next objective slightly harder to find or you don't get special equipment later on from a friend. But I haven't seen any "YOU LOSE" messages. Save all the time.

Stalker looks really good with the mod I linked above. Get it and don't even bother with the vanilla game. It comes with other minor changes and additions like certain traders being able to repair armor and weapons. I dunno what purpose it served not including this in the retail version. The best stuff is extremely rare.

Overall, very good combat, great atmosphere, large and detailed maps (although I expected a lot more based on all the previews so they felt a bit smaller to me), tons of guns and armor and other stuff, a boring and convoluted story, looks good and runs great on new rigs.
 
Eyenixon said:
I don't want to carry weight changed, that's my point, it was perfectly fine in vanilla S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Oblivion Lost is still too easy no matter what you do however.
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My point was that you can change it back. But hey, if you don't like it, you don't like it. :D
 
Seriously its not bad but only if you play it once i finished SOC...but Clear Sky i stoped in middle...

About Stalker what pissed me? well first there were promises and then they cut out most of the content from game best example is area player can move its small and it was suppose to be very big i think 30km x 30km...
 
Rufus Luccarelli said:
I was thinking of getting S.T.A.L.K.E.R., is it any good? Judging by some of the comments, I don't know...
Click to expand...

If you plan to get SOC, be sure to install the AMK mod. It deals with many ballancing issues and adds quality content. With it, the game was very enjoyable for me, imo it's the best mod for stalker yet...
 
I would really like to see this game succeed.
It has that aroma of doom that fallout have had. It's not just post-apoc, it's that serious attitude toward player that I liked. Simply, flaws aside, game doesn't treat you like a complete idiot (or as "casual player") as many of today's games do.

I could talk all day about flaws of SOC or SC (to be honest most of them are solved already), but at the end of a day, my only real objection is that once you have good weapon and decent armor (mp5 or ak47su and at least bandit armor for example), gameplay becomes very "ordinary" and easy, especially if you played it already. And that could happen very fast. Although artifacts represent some kind of RPG equivalent to PC stats, I would like to see some elements of that in this game, just as an additional incentive for player to continue.

All in all, a rare game that I'm waiting with anticipation, even if it's pure FPS.
 
Mad Max RW said:
It comes with other minor changes and additions like certain traders being able to repair armor and weapons. I dunno what purpose it served not including this in the retail version.
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It changes the game dynamic, all the armours you can find (free), all the dropped or stashed weapons, turn from an essential means of survival into just loot. Instead of scavenging to survive you become a pack rat collecting everything, not nailed down, to sell. I've played Shadow of Chernobyl over a dozen times, at least three or four times with no mods or just graphical changes. Without repair mods every new gun, that's in just a little bit better condition, makes a difference then and there. Every mint armour, even if it's just a bandit jacket, comes between you and reloading. You only carry what you need, you only carry excess when near a trader. If you've run out of ammo, in the middle of nowhere, then take off the attachments and dump the gun. If you do find a suppy of ammo you can go back for it, though your more likely to find another gun along with that supply anyway. Usually by the time your equipment wears out your found a replacement, even if it means temporarily downgrading. But with repair kit mods, or in Clear Sky you hold onto to useless guns and armour until you get them repaired. You need that extra carry limit, Eyenixon moans about, just to carry around your spares.

grayx said:
my only real objection is that once you have good weapon and decent armor (mp5 or ak47su and at least bandit armor for example), gameplay becomes very "ordinary" and easy, especially if you played it already. And that could happen very fast.
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I've never found that, no more than any other game and I'm really glad that they kepy stats & skills out of it. If the Stalker games need anything it's the survival elements that they cut and modders returned.
 
ok... i have never actually finished stalker, i got to that main "city type deal and never made it any farther...

the AMK mod sounds great, but either opera or IE 7 gets java errors when trying to dload it, so cant download from their main mirror, and when you try to go to the main page its in russian, so cant find any other places.

for the graphic 2009 update, its on a shitty file-sharing place and i cap out at 75k/s dload whereas for MU i get anywhere between 1-2 meg/sec. and for a 180 meg file, 75k/s sucks ass.

and i wanted to give stalker an honest-to-god try and see how good it was after being fixxed by the fans... guess that aint gonna happen.
 
i liked STALKER, but in Clear Sky they focused too much on action rather than exploration/survival. they even doubled the map's sizes, and there was hardly anything to do but "take over" enemy camps.

i just hope they learn their lesson and actually MAKE a game they say they're going to make.
 
comscar said:
and there was hardly anything to do but "take over" enemy camps.
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At least half the time in Clear Sky your faction would take over the enemy camp before you can even get there leaving you even less to do. :cry: Or you'd get a task the other side of the map, and given the larger map sizes and decreased stamina, the tasks would be resolved one way or another before you were half way there.

I always thought if you could take GSC's world building and Crytek's programming you'd have one really darn fine game, Clear Sky though could easily be a marriage of Crytek's design and GSC's programming.
 
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