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

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Shadow of Chernobyl
Developer(s)	GSC Game World
Publisher(s)	THQ, GSC Game Publishing (CIS)
Distributor(s)	1C (Russia)
Engine	X-Ray engine[1]
Latest version	1.0001
Release date(s)	EU March 23, 2007 RU March 23, 2007 NA March 20, 2007 AU March 20, 2007
Genre(s)	First-person shooter, with RPG elements
Mode(s)	Single player, Multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: M 17+ OFLC (AU): MA 15+[2]
Platform(s)	Windows
System requirements	Recommended: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 / AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, 1GB RAM, DirectX 9.0c compatible 256MB graphics card nVidia GeForce 7900 / ATI Radeon X1900, 4x DVD-ROM, 128kbps Internet connection for multiplayer. Minimum: Windows XP SP2 / 2000 SP4, Intel Pentium 4 2000 MHz / AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 512MB RAM, 6GB hard disk space, DirectX 8.1 compatible 128MB graphics card nVidia GeForce 3 / ATI Radeon 9200, DirectX 9 compatible soundcard
Input	Mouse, Keyboard

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.

The game uses a software component called the "X-Ray engine". It features an alternate reality theme, where the 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 localized fauna, flora and even the laws of physics.

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' behaviour 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]

[edit] Gameplay

Gameplay revolves around the player, known as "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. 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 allow the player to significantly influence the course of events.

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.

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 continous 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 prevents players from attempting to cross the map in any other area. The game also does not feature vehicles, so transit from one area to another can be time consuming.

[edit] 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 Call of Duty 2. Bullets are affected by gravity, and firearms are highly inaccurate when fired "from the hip". To score consistant hits at medium or long range, players must aim using the iron sights on their guns. Additionally, bullets do "realistic" damage, and the player can die after only being shot a few times (although later in the game various armor suits can be acquired that increase the player's resistance to damage).

[edit] Artifacts

"Artifacts" are the product of 'anomalies', which occur randomly throughout the game world, normally a few metres across, these areas are dangerous to enter and can instantly kill the player or cause serious injury. They are characterized by swirling leaves, heat ripples, air fluctuations and static electricity. An anomaly will have a life span of roughly one week in game time, and once they have dispersed the player is able to collect the artifacts left behind, which can be traded for supplies, or worn to enhance some player abilities, with normaly some adverse side effects (an artifact can make bullets less likely to hit you, but will slowly irradiate you over time).

[edit] 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.

[edit] Human factions

The stalkers are further hindered in their hunt for artifacts by the presence of the Ukrainian Military who is attempting to control the expansion of the zone and the spread of mutants. The Military is hostile towards any one who is not Military, and will work as a co-ordinated team to attack anyone they encounter through heavy force and the use of Mi-35 Hind helicopter gunships.

Several other groups operate, and are passive or aggressive based on contextual circumstances. Two groups are of paticular interest: "Freedom" and "Duty" as the only two factions that the player can join. Although there are several other groups, these mostly serve as enemies for the player, with the notable exception of the scientists.

The player also interacts with other NPCs in the Zone, and can join certain Stalker factions and receive missions, which advance the storyline. Players are able to explore over 30 square km of the Zone, including the ghost town of Pripyat and the abandoned Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, while encountering animals and flora mutated by radiation as well as other Stalkers and NPCs.

[edit] Technical features

[edit] X-Ray graphics engine

The X-ray Engine is a DirectX 8/9 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, widescreen support, weather effects and day/night cycles. As with other engines that utilise deferred shading (such as Unreal Engine 3 and CryENGINE2), 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]

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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. Gamespot singled out an impressive physics feature: bullet drop due to gravity after weapons were fired.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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,^[6] like the game Duke Nukem Forever, or fear that the game may 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.^[7]

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.^[8] In October, 2005, THQ confirmed that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. will not be out "until the second half of THQ's 2007 fiscal year - October 2006 at the earliest."^[9] In February of 2006, THQ revised this possible release window, saying the game would not be in stores until the first quarter of 2007.^[10]

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 had gone gold.[1]

[edit] Reception

So far, publications which have reviewed the title have been largely positive, noting the immersive, atmospheric setting and open-ended, rewarding gameplay. Some aspects of the game, such as the translation of printed text, the absence of subtitles for spoken Russian, and general game performance, have received negative criticism. It has also been noted that there are numerous sporadic bugs which can affect gameplay, although most of these are considered minor. However, in the newly released patch 1.0001 it is claimed that many bugs and glitches were fixed as well as better Windows Vista support.^{[citation needed]} Another common criticism is the fact that less than half of the map is actually accessible by the player.

Publications which have submitted reviews include IGN U.S.^[11] (8.2/10), IGN Australia^[12] (8.9/10), Gamespot^[13] (8.5/10), Australian PC User 95% and PC Gamer^[14] (87%). Ukraine's own Gameplay magazine^[15] awarded it 4.5 out of 5.

[edit] Plot

Several years after the Chernobyl disaster, the Zone was occupied and "repurposed" by several 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. 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, especially the meddlesome "Stalkers" beginning to appear in the Zone, the C-Consciousness created an "Alien Monolith" in the center of the gutted Reactor 4, and used its ability to affect 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. The mission to kill himself led Strelok to 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.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website
• THQ's Official S.T.A.L.K.E.R website
• GSC Game World's Official website