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S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Shadow of Chernobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl box art
Developer(s)GSC Game World
Publisher(s)THQ, GSC Game Publishing (CIS)
EngineX-Ray engine[1]
Platform(s)Windows
Release



Genre(s)First-person shooter, with RPG elements
Mode(s)Single player, Multiplayer

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, previously known as S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Oblivion Lost, is a post-apocalyptic first-person shooter computer game by Ukrainian developer GSC Game World.

It features an alternate reality theme, where a second nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the near future and causes strange changes in the area around it. The game has a non-linear storyline and features gameplay elements such as trading and two-way communication with NPCs. The game includes elements of role-playing and economic games.

Some terminology of the game ("The Zone", "Stalker") as well as the background idea is borrowed from the popular science fiction book Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and the 1979 film Stalker, loosely based on the book.

In S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the player assumes the identity of a "Stalker", an illegal explorer/artifact scavenger in "The Zone". "The Zone" is the location of an alternate reality version of the Chernobyl Power Plant after its second (fictitious) explosion, which contaminated the surrounding area with radiation and caused strange otherworldly changes in local fauna, flora and even the laws of physics.

Gameplay

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a non-linear, sandbox-style game. Players can explore the game world, or complete various assignments given by certain NPCs. Players take the role of "The Marked One", who is a Stalker, a person who lives in the Zone and makes a living collecting "Artifacts" and selling them. The Zone presents various dangers.

Gameplay is an RPG/FPS hybrid, though the player does not gain attributes or increased powers as in a standard computer RPG. Character advancement is achieved through acquiring and strategically using new equipment and artifacts, rather than enhancing attributes and skills. The role-playing part focuses more on traditional RPG elements, such as storyline and character interaction. However, the game does not allow for extensive variety in regards to conversations. Unlike RPGs such as Knights of the Old Republic, conversation branches are extremely limited and do not significantly influence the course of an event.

The Zone comprises a 30 km square area, consisting of wilderness, human settlements, and several heavily-guarded military bases. However, the game world is not a true continuous world, but rather several different maps broken up by loading screens. Transfer from one area of the Zone to another can only be accomplished at certain specific passageways; a white fence border blocks players from attempting to cross the map in any other area. The game does not feature controllable vehicles (although vehicles are programmed in the game code, they are not available without the use of a third party modification [1], [2]), and thus players are required to go from place to place on foot. A sprint option using a limited stamina bar can be used to temporarily increase the player's rate of movement, Can be prolonged indefinite with use of an "Artifacts" although such "Artifacts" can prove hard to find, also players are unable to fire a weapon while sprinting.

Bullet physics

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. uses "realistic" bullet physics, similar in nature to tactical shooters such as Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter or Operation Flashpoint. Bullets are affected by gravity, and firearms are highly inaccurate when fired without aiming. To score consistent hits at medium or long range, players must aim using the iron sights on their guns. Additionally, hit damage is pseudo-realistic, and the player can die after only being shot a few times (although later in the game various armor suits and artifacts can be acquired that increase the player's resistance to damage).

Mutants

The local wildlife and plant life were severely altered by the years of radiation, and have developed deadly instincts and natural defenses to survive the hostile environment. Another factor is large numbers of mutant lifeforms left behind from the unlucky workers and soldiers who were caught in the second blast.

GSC Game World revealed some details about the game's AI in January 2005. IGN reported that the game, while similar to Far Cry, will include more wildlife, and that the animals' behavior in the game is as important to them as the humans'. The animals' aggressiveness will vary with their levels of hunger and rest, as well as other factors. Thus, the game will have some element of fight or flight to it.[3]

Factions

Many human NPCs in the game belongs to a Faction, designating their group loyalties and attitude towards the player. The Faction an NPC belongs to affects how they interact with other NPCs as well as the player. NPCs without a Faction are considered Lone Stalkers; they are generally neutral to all other characters, and the player can even interact with and accept missions from some of them. Lone Stalkers are actually a Faction of sorts. If the player kills a Lone Stalker, word will get out and most Lone Stalkers will refuse to interact with you, or even attack on sight.

The most omnipresent Faction in the Zone is the Ukrainian Military, who are attempting to control and police the Zone to separate it from the outside world. The Military are hostile to all Stalkers (whom they regard as trespassers), and use ground troops, helicopter air support, and elite Spetznaz special forces to control the Zone's inhabitants.

The two most important Stalker Factions are Duty and Freedom, as they are the only Factions that the player can befriend (friendship with a Faction allows various benefits such as access to their facilities and supplies, but the player is not actually able to join a Faction in the game although the player may find Uniforms used by the factions in various Places in the game). Duty and Freedom are philosophically opposed to each other, and the two Stalker groups are at war; members attack each other on sight, and assisting one group can cause the player to become the enemy of the other group.

There are also a few other Factions, such as scavenging Bandits and professional killer-for-hire Mercenaries, AKA Mercs. These Factions are always hostile towards the player, and generally serve as enemies for the player to overcome. Finally, there is the mysterious and elite Monolith Faction, who control the center of the Zone, including the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The later stages of the game revolve around a full-scale conflict between Monolith and all other Stalker Factions.

Technical features

File:STALKER screenshot.jpg
A screenshot from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

X-ray graphics engine

The X-ray Engine is a DirectX 8.1/9 Shader Model 3.0 graphics engine. Up to a million polygons can be on-screen at any one time. The engine features HDR rendering, parallax and normal mapping, soft shadows, motion blur, widescreen support, weather effects and day/night cycles. As with other engines that utilise deferred shading, the X-ray Engine does not support anti-aliasing with dynamic lighting enabled. However, a "fake" form of anti-aliasing can be enabled with the static lighting option; this format utilizes a technique to blur the image to give the false impression of anti-aliasing.[4] The game takes place in a thirty square kilometer area, and both the outside and inside of this area is rendered to the same amount of detail. Some textures in the game were simply photographs of the walls in the developers' studio.[5]

Artificial intelligence

The X-ray engine uses GSC Gameworld's proprietary ALife artificial intelligence engine. ALife supports more than one thousand characters inhabiting the Zone. These characters are non-scripted, meaning that AI life can be developed even when not in contact with the player.

The NPCs have a full life cycle (task accomplishment, combat, rest, feeding and sleep) and the same applies to the many monsters living in the Zone (hunting, attacking Stalkers and other monsters, resting, eating, sleeping). These monsters will migrate in large groups. The non-scripted nature of the characters means that there are an unlimited number of random quests. For instance, rescuing Stalkers from danger, destroying Stalker renegades, protecting or attacking Stalker camps or searching for treasure. The AI characters travel around the entire zone as they see fit.

Numerous tactics can be employed to complete the game, such as rushing, using stealth and sniping. The NPCs will react in a different way to each of them. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s NPCs plan ahead by "Goal-Oriented Action Planning" in order to achieve this.

Physics

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. uses a heavily modified version of the ODE physics engine, supporting hundreds of physics objects on different levels. Ragdoll physics, destructible objects, realistic bullet ballistics and skeletal animation can all be found in the game.

Weather

A weather system is integrated into various parts of the landscape and allows a variety of weather effects, such as sunshine, storms and showers. The weapons available, behavior of the AI, game tactics and ranking systems will depend on the weather.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer, like many other modern games, will be available over both LAN and the Internet with up to 32 players. Currently the three game modes are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Artifact hunt. The game will also use a ranking system.

Software Development Kit

A beta for the multiplayer SDK was released on May 14th, 2007. Along with plans to release a strong mod community, GSC promised to release the single player SDK.[6]

Initial concept

Early in the development of the game it was named Oblivion Lost, and the game was planned to have more of a futuristic theme before the idea was reworked to set the game in Chernobyl, being a nearby location to the game's Kiev based development team. Eventually, this was reflected in the change of the game's subtitle to Shadow of Chernobyl. Screenshots and trailers of this early version can be found on various web sites, depicting the robots and spacecraft originally planned for the game.

While the source of the Zone may still turn out to have extraterrestrial connections (like in Roadside Picnic, where the Zone is thought to have been an absent-minded, accidental creation of a careless, vastly superior alien race), there is no indication that such more direct manifestations will return.

Development delay

The game was first announced in November 2001 and has had its release date, originally in 2003, pushed back several times. Meanwhile hundreds of screenshots of the game have been released, as well as dozen preview video clips, accompanied by other forms of promotion by GSC, such as inviting fans to their offices in Kiev to play the current build of the game. However due to the delays some considered S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to be vaporware,[7] like the game Duke Nukem Forever, or feared that the game would become a new Daikatana.

In their E3 Awards for 2005, IGN gave S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s absence the award of "Biggest PC Surprise"; the runners-up were the absence of Fallout 3 from the show, and the lack of a new announcement from Blizzard Entertainment.[8]

In February 2005, THQ expressed desire to see the game released toward the end of its 2006 fiscal year (March 31 2006) but maintained that no release date had been set.[9] In October, 2005, THQ confirmed that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. would not be out "until the second half of THQ's 2007 fiscal year - October 2006 at the earliest."[10] In February of 2006, THQ revised this possible release window, saying the game would not be in stores until the first quarter of 2007.[11]

In an interview at the Russian Gameland Awards, PR Manager Oleg Yavorsky indicated that release was planned for September 2006.

In 2006, the game came 9th in Wired's Vaporware '06 award.

THQ ran a competition in January 2007 offering the lucky winners the chance to play the beta version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R, in a 24 hour marathon session. The event, scheduled to take place on the January 24 2007, was subsequently changed to a 12 hour session days before it was supposed to occur. On the morning of the event, the 'lucky' winners were met at the venue by the THQ staff that had organized the event, who were embarrassed to report that they had been unable to get any copies of the game. In late February GSC managed to release a public beta. Multiplayer demo was released to public on March 15 2007.

On March 2 2007, it was announced that the game went gold.[12]

Reception

According to producer Rommy Roskelivech, the game has surpassed great expectations although it has fallen a little short of others. Reviews of the game have been largely positive, noting the immersive, atmospheric setting and fairly open-ended, rewarding gameplay. Some aspects of the game, such as the translation of printed text, the absence of subtitles for spoken Russian have received negative criticism on west as well as general game performance. It has also been noted that there are numerous sporadic bugs which can affect gameplay, although most of these are considered minor. In the newly released patches 1.0001, 1.0002 and 1.0003; some bugs and glitches were fixed, including many multiplayer glitch fixes.[13] Another common criticism is the fact that only half of the viewable map is actually accessible by the player.

Plot

Several years after the Chernobyl disaster, the Zone was occupied and "repurposed" for several clandestine research projects run by the Soviet government. Facilities were constructed or expanded under the abandoned military bases and civilian factories and industrial sites in the area, and a large lab was established directly beneath Reactor 4 and its Sarcophagus. These experiments were focused primarily on various aspects of the mind, including creating and enhancing ESP in humans, psychotronic weapons, and an experiment intended to create a human hive mind: the "Collective Consciousness," or "C-Consciousness," project.

Shortly after C-Consciousness was successfully created by the fusion of seven human minds through a computer interface, the Soviet Union collapsed. In the years that followed, some of the research labs were abandoned, and the C-Consciousness entity took greater control over the few facilities that remained in full operation - including taking over the minds of the research team which created it. With its enhanced cognitive abilities, C-Consciousness was able to perceive and eventually to directly alter the "noosphere" (the collective "environment" of all thought, just as the "biosphere" refers to the sum total of all biological matter and its myriad interactions).

The intention of C-Consciousness was subtle mind control on a global scale. It believed that by manipulating the noosphere that the more negative and destructive aspects of human consciousness, cognition, and emotion could be eliminated to create world peace and harmony. Unfortunately, in 2006 C-Consciousness's first major attempt to manipulate the Noosphere resulted in disaster. There was a massive explosion of both psychic and physical force, and the noosphere in the vicinity of the C-Consciousness lab was twisted and distorted. In much the same way that the biosphere can permanently alter the physical landscape of the earth, so manipulation of the noosphere can distort all manner of physical reality: mind over matter on a massive scale.

This distortion of the noosphere powered by C-Consciousness and the machinery it was connected to created the anomalies and many of the mutants that inhabit the Zone in 2012. Desperate to correct its mistake and in order to shield itself from outside interference, such as the the meddlesome "Stalkers" looking for treasure and the Ukrainian military which was desperately trying to reassert control over The Zone, the C-Consciousness created an "Alien Monolith" in the center of the gutted Reactor 4, and used its ability to take control of the minds of normal humans to create the "Monolith" cult, a group of heavily armed zealots whose tenets included worship of the Monolith and the prevention of "heretics" from approaching the remains of Chernobyl. They converted the Steel Yard radar facility near Pripyat into a powerful "Brain Scorcher" that would blast the mind of any unprotected human who approached too close, turning them into mindlessly aggressive zombies (while allowing C-Consciousness to select some individuals to brainwash into new members of Monolith). Finally, they used some of their agents (former Stalkers spread throughout the Zone) to disseminate stories of a "Wish Granter" at the heart of Chernobyl, ensuring that anyone who did manage to evade both the Monolith faction and the Brain Scorcher would be drawn to the Monolith and disposed of, rather than discovering the existence of the C-Consciousness lab.

This lasted for several years, but the continued efforts of C-Consciousness were unable to repair the damage they had done to the Zone. In fact, the damage appeared to be getting worse, with "Blowouts" deepening the distortion of the noosphere around the Zone at irregular intervals. Still, the C-Consciousness entity persisted in its experiments, behind the shields of the Monolith and the Wish Granter myth, the Monolith faction's patrols, the Brain Scorcher, and the dangers of the Zone itself. Occasionally, though, special circumstances would require an agent, a human able to do what was needed to preserve the Zone's secrets without revealing the existence of the C-Consciousness project. In these cases, Stalkers who were tough and resourceful enough to make it to or past the Brain Scorcher would be captured, brainwashed, and sent back into the outer areas of the zone on one of the "Death Trucks." These agents were marked with the tattoo "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." This is where Strelok, the main character, enters the story.

Strelok and his allies, Ghost, Fang, and Doc, were a group of Stalkers who had a particular interest in what exactly lay at the center of The Zone. At some point a few weeks before the start of the game, they managed to slip past the Brain Scorcher and all the way to the Nuclear Power Plant, finding the Monolith, an electronically locked vault door beneath the Monolith chamber (which leads to C-Consciousness), and documents hinting at the fact that the giant glowing Monolith was in fact a deliberate trap for anyone attempting to discover the secrets of the Zone. Unfortunately, they were forced to retreat, and their next attempt to penetrate into the heart of the Zone met with disaster. They had managed to obtain an electronic lockpick that would open the vault door, but this time the Monolith was ready for them and they were forced to retreat again, and their escape was further complicated by a blowout. Strelok was caught in the blowout and rendered unconscious with a severe case of amnesia. This made for a perfect subject for the conditioning process for a human agent of the C-Consciousness entity. Ghost and Fang escaped, but Fang was seriously wounded and died before the pair made it out of Pripyat, with Ghost moving on to find "safer" work in the outer regions of the Zone.

By this point, Strelok had become a serious threat to the security and secrecy of the C-Consciousness lab and the entity contained there, and it was decided that Strelok must be killed. However, due to unknown factors, C-Consciousness made a mistake: not realizing the identity of the man who had been caught in the blowout, they attempted to program him to kill Strelok, when in fact the man was Strelok. A second accident, the chance destruction of the Death Truck meant to carry this new agent back to the outer Zone, resulted in a loss of C-Consciousness control over him. Strelok was a free agent once again, though confused, amnesiac, and stripped of his possessions.

If the player chose to complete some of the additional quest missions, he could retrace his steps through the past few weeks, tracking down his old associates and, over time, putting back together the evidence that had led him to become a danger to C-Consciousness in the first place. With the help of Doc to reveal his identity and to point him in the direction of a backup cache of documentation and another electronic lock pick, Strelok returned to Chernobyl and penetrated to the chamber under the "Monolith," destroying the projection device that created the illusion.

C-Consciousness, having no other option, confronted him to offer an explanation of their actions, the nature of the Zone, and a choice: to join them, bolster their numbers, help them repair the harm they had caused and shepherd humanity's consciousness towards peace, or to face a final confrontation with the remaining forces of the Monolith Faction in an attempt to reach the heart of the real C-Consciousness Lab, in order to put a stop to their manipulations and machinations.

Alternatively, if the player did not complete the additional quests, Strelok is confronted by the "Wish Granter", and based on the amount of money he has, reputation (good or bad), whether he killed Lukash and Voronin, or none of the above, one of several alternate endings will occur.

References

  1. ^ "Engine - STALKER". Stalker game website. GSC Game World. Retrieved 2007-03-31.
  2. ^ "Stalker". Office of Film and Literature Classification. Commonwealth of Australia. Retrieved 2007-03-31.
  3. ^ Tom McNamara. "The A.I. of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Revealed". IGN. Retrieved 2007-03-31.
  4. ^ TweakGuides. "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Tweak Guide". TweakGuides. Retrieved 2007-04-03.
  5. ^ "PC Gamer UK" (135). 2004: 38–41. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  6. ^ http://www.stalker-game.com/en/?page=news&item=39
  7. ^ IGN Editorial Team. "Top 10 Tuesday: Modern Vaporware". IGN. Retrieved 2007-03-31.
  8. ^ IGNPC Staff. "PC Best of E3 2005 Awards". IGN. Retrieved 2007-03-31.
  9. ^ David Adams. "S.T.A.L.K.E.R Delayed". IGN. Retrieved 2007-03-31.
  10. ^ THQ lessens loss, talks next-gen, by Tor Thorsen, Gamespot.com
  11. ^ THQ announces holiday results, delays S.T.A.L.K.E.R., by Brendan Sinclair, Gamespot.com
  12. ^ "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. goes gold". GSC Game World. Retrieved 2007-05-13.
  13. ^ S.T.A.L.K.E.R. official website. "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Patches" (in Russian). Retrieved 2007-05-13.
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