S.T.A.L.K.E.R. -Clear Sky

After a gestation period that could only be rivalled by the collective efforts of 15 pregnant elephants, GSC Game World's STALKER eventually became the most atmospheric and original shooter to feature in these pages in recent years.

A lovable rogue of a game with a fair few rough edges in presentation that belied some razor-sharp gunplay and genuinely unsettling wanders through the wilderness. And now, the Zone wants us back.



Clear Sky kicks off a year before Shadow Of Chernobyl's amnesiac lead character, one Strelok, began chasing his own tail through the wastes. Indeed, the game builds up to explaining where he comes from and why exactly it is that the many and various fates of the Exclusion Zone rest on his gruff Ukrainian shoulders. In fact, now, playing as a stalker mercenary of a rival faction, you're out to kill him.

The theatrics of vanilla STALKER were actually the forgetful Strelok's third visit to the CNPP at its hub, you see - the first of these visits unbalanced its fragile state and caused frequent blowouts to ravage the wastes. "Each of these blowouts scorches this new protagonist's nerve system more," explains project lead Anton Bolshakov.

"There's no way out - in order to survive you'll have to find and stop Strelok."
And so begins an unstoppable bullet-ridden journey that may well leave our former buddy lying brain-bumped in a soon-to-be-electrified death truck at Shadow Of Chernobyl's start.

THE BAD OLD DAYS
Just because it's a prequel, though, don't expect everything to kick off all shiny and happy, with a moment where a seven-year-old child accidentally destroys a military starship. It turns out that Shadow Of Chernobyl was a time of relative peace and normality in the Zone, and that one year earlier, Strelok's first walking tours through Soviet nuclear history had everything royally screwed.

"The Zone is agitated... Energy seething..." intones Bolshakov solemnly. "The anomalies are extremely active and the landscape is vastly different to what you've seen before. Instead of the serene-looking way it looked before - green grass, trees, ruins of buildings and so forth - there will be simply horrifying anomalous phenomena.

"The ground distorted outwards or inwards by concentrated pockets of gravity, greenery defaced by strokes of what we call 'electra'. Even the air isn't as pure as in the original STALKER - with these 'spatial bubbles' which are like confusing Möbius rings that whole expeditions of Stalkers simply can't find a way out of."

PICNIC, ANYONE?
Imagine, if you will, that the Chernobyl exclusion zone is a very big pie with the power plant at its centre. It's not a particularly nice pie - the folks at Fray Bentos shouldn't be unduly concerned - but the original game covers what's essentially a southerly slice of it.


The prequel, meanwhile, gives you an extra slice of this metaphorical pie at the same time as covering some noteworthy changes within what we've played through already - to the extent that the game is 50% completely new areas, and 50% twisted renditions of what you've played before. You won't be revisiting the doleful Big Wheel of Pripyat, for example, but you will be scuttling beneath the town through its increasingly manky underground system, while new highways and byways will be opened up into the Red Forest and a lost city known as Limansk (see boxout, above).
Once again, it's all down to the wanderings of Strelok.

On one of his pre-amnesia jaunts up to the power plant, the resultant nuclear blowout, put simply, redrew the map of the Zone. Anomalies blocked existing paths, new areas suddenly became less toxic to human presence - and the territorial balance between the major groups of stalkers such as Duty and Freedom was thrown completely out of whack.

"In the STALKER you've played, it was beneficial for different groupings
to coexist rather than live in conflict," explains Bolshakov. "But now, in a blink of an eye, everything's changed, and fights have flared up for new territory. The biggest-scale battle is for the lost city of Limansk - which opens a new path towards the Zone centre."

IT'S A STALK-OFF
At this point things get really rather exciting for armchair Stalkers such as you and I: there's an entirely AI-driven Stalker war for you to participate in. While we may not be talking Call Of Duty here (we're looking at scuffles with numbers of perhaps ten against ten), but upgrading the vanilla game's A-Life system to deal with guerrilla warfare is quite ingenious. You can join any of eight factions, each with its
own base, leader, guards, bar, mechanic and full complement of characters.

From each base, groups of AI-controlled Stalkers will set out on game-generated missions to capture noteworthy points on the map - areas with artefacts and anomalies that could well help the cause, and scientific labs which will open up access to superior weapons and equipment - or simply to rebuff AI-driven counter-attacks. The war will move back and forth, with its climaxes coming thick and fast as you overrun (hopefully) the bases of your rivals in final pushes against the enemy.

But don't expect to be part of that force straight away. You'll start labelled as
a rookie, with familiar dogsbody jobs like, er, killing packs of dogs before climbing up the ladder to veteran and being asked to perform tasks more intrinsic to winning the war.

"We also want the player to see what their actions lead to," adds Bolshakov. "So, for example, a control point leading to an artefact-rich area might be controlled by the Bandits faction, and eliminating them means that the way to the resources is safe.
So you'll see Stalkers of your grouping setting off towards the artefact spot. Another example is that the more artefact-bearing spots that are won for a certain faction, the more high-rank Stalkers it can recruit."

You won't be forced into joining up with a faction straight from the off - you can potter around as a lone wolf as you did before - but the primary path to the centre of the Zone through the lost city of Limansk will only be accessible once one of the primary groups has been trashed. So your help would probably be appreciated.

With each faction planned to be subtly different from the others in terms of the tactics it employs, and tactical spots changing hands almost in the fashion of a slow-paced Battlefield, GSC have also used the opportunity to pack in some impressively built stand-off scenarios. Take the set-piece of the mangled bridge - with numerous points of cover along either side, a steep gully and the veritable sniping haven of its construction.

Now imagine the sheer joy of a multi-character battle playing out over it - each side ducking, hiding, popping out for a quick headshot and attempting to win control. It's trench warfare, but with only one trench. We're definitely in for some fun.

THE FIX LIST
Our Ukrainian friends haven't ignored some of the more glaring issues with vanilla STALKER either. The game's dodgy interface is getting a rethink, the PDA is being redesigned to make mission markers a little more obvious and your screen is generally being cleared of unnecessary clutter.

"Another notable direction we're working in is to make the behaviour of rank-and-file Stalkers a bit more lively and fun," adds Bolshakov. "Neutral Stalkers will pay more attention to a passing player, and have a chat with him. So you can trade and discuss more topics."

A bunch of new monsters, meanwhile, will crop up in the Pripyat underground system, with a few new roaming beasties on the surface to boot. GSC are also pumping up their menagerie's AI, physics-object manipulation and psychic abilities. As for graphics, well, they're working flat out to provide a DX10 version, but don't want to 100% promise it - as it stands, the engine is enormously tweaked from what we've played before. Oh, and they're thinking of adding vehicles to multiplayer as well. There are tons of tweaks going on.

Aside from interface niggles, my primary problem with the original STALKER was simply that I rarely felt truly engaged with current affairs in the Zone. Both scripted and AI-driven Stalker confrontations would kick off - but there'd rarely be a genuine sense of occasion, nor any ascertainable meaning behind exactly why so many identikit men of similar background and appearance were so angry with each other. Now, though, it feels that a gameplay model has been found to add some drive, a feeling of Stalker brotherhood and - most importantly - keep unnecessary scripting at bay. I'm honestly impressed.

But - and you knew this one was coming - just when do GSC Game World expect Clear Sky to tumble off the production line? Frankly, they're not the gaming world's most renowned timekeepers. "STALKER was just one big lesson," smiles Bolshakov. "We've mastered it. The prequel's release is set for the first half of next year. There won't be any delays." I've got my fingers crossed - feel free to join in.


gameplay trailers

http://pc.gamespy.com/dor/objects/945039/stalker-project-1/videos/stalker_gameplay_trailer_080107.html

http://pc.gamespy.com/dor/objects/945039/stalker-project-1/videos/Stalker_TheZoneWorldAtmosphere_071608.html