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:
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
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