S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

[Paul_cz]

Maybe dumb question, but who is actually making this? Is GSC made up of completely new people who didn't work on original trilogy, or are the Vostok people back, or what?

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

Maybe dumb question, but who is actually making this? Is GSC made up of completely new people who didn't work on original trilogy, or are the Vostok people back, or what?

They brought back Dmitriy Iassenev, the Lead Programmer of the original trilogy (and also from the cancelled S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, apparently). He's the mind behind the A-Life system, and somehow GSC convinced him to come back and work in the next iteration of the life simulation system, the A-Life 2.0.

The rest of the team is a mix of new blood (including modders) and some old Ukrainian farts (Carnivores, anyone?). I also have motives to believe Alexey Sytyanov (designer on Shadow of Chernobyl, Metro: Exodus, and Chernobylite) is doing, or did, some design consulting work for GSC.

 

[Paul_cz]

They brought back Dmitriy Iassenev, the Lead Programmer of the original trilogy (and also from the cancelled S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, apparently). He's the mind behind the A-Life system, and somehow GSC convinced him to come back and work in the next iteration of the life simulation system, the A-Life 2.0.

The rest of the team is a mix of new blood (including modders) and some old Ukrainian farts (Carnivores, anyone?). I also have motives to believe Alexey Sytyanov (designer on Shadow of Chernobyl, Metro: Exodus, and Chernobylite) is doing, or did, some design consulting work for GSC.

So that does not sound completely hopeless. I wonder what GSC devcount is at the moment.

 

[Terenty]

He's the mind behind the A-Life system

 

[gerey]

Maybe I'm misremembering things, but back when the "original" STALKER 2 got announced weren't they citing Call of Duty was one of the inspirations?

The original STALKER games feel more like a fluke to me, a stroke of good luck cobbled together from the corpse of whatever they hoped Oblivion Lost was going to be. STALKER 2 is going to suffer from the same issue many reboots do, developers misunderstanding what made the original(s) popular and chasing after whatever cancerous trends are currently popular.

Also, we need to take into account the fact that we've suffered through more than a decade of open-world trash games, and that many of the people involved in the project have played them (or even worked on them) and were likely influenced by them to a lesser and greater degree - so there's a big chance that the game is going to be tainted in some way.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Maybe dumb question, but who is actually making this? Is GSC made up of completely new people who didn't work on original trilogy, or are the Vostok people back, or what?

They brought back Dmitriy Iassenev, the Lead Programmer of the original trilogy (and also from the cancelled S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, apparently). He's the mind behind the A-Life system, and somehow GSC convinced him to come back and work in the next iteration of the life simulation system, the A-Life 2.0.

The rest of the team is a mix of new blood (including modders) and some old Ukrainian farts (Carnivores, anyone?). I also have motives to believe Alexey Sytyanov (designer on Shadow of Chernobyl, Metro: Exodus, and Chernobylite) is doing, or did, some design consulting work for GSC.

There's also some former Frogwares staff (mostly narrative guys) who worked on Sherlock Holmes games and The Sinking City.

 

[Tacgnol]

Maybe I'm misremembering things, but back when the "original" STALKER 2 got announced weren't they citing Call of Duty was one of the inspirations?

Not sure about COD, but it was definitely supposed to be a big console release.

The leaked design documents didn't seem very COD like.

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

He's the mind behind the A-Life system

I don't know if you're laughing or crying, but in his own words:

"For the project S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl I introduced and implemented an ALife - life simulation system by the game characters. It became one of the key features of the game and contributed a lot to the popularity and profitability of the project significantly increasing game replayability. Subsequently, the players created a large number of modifications of the game using this system. Non-person characters AI is considered one of the greatest game strengths. The implementation of the animal-like characters is still a reference for other games."

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2021/03/18/idxbox-twitch-indie-showcase-march-26/

Among other things, the stream will feature "an update on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2".

March 26 at 9:00 am (PDT)

 

[HoboForEternity]

once again my innocent, gullible heart seized by the cruel mistress named hope.

 

[kaiser77_1982]

Among other things, the stream will feature "an update on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2".

If they want to release the game this year, they must show gameplay... I guess.

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

Among other things, the stream will feature "an update on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2".

If they want to release the game this year, they must show gameplay... I guess.

And even then, for all we know, any gameplay shown by them could just be from an internal demo or vertical slice with a few more mirrors and a fog machine added to it (see: Anthem, Cyberpunk, etc).

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

 

[Vexxt]

Yeah I have no clue what they are thinking, but they are going about marketing this game all wrong.

STALKER players are PC gamers, and typically more towards the end of the spectrum that really appreciate game mechanics over glittery shit. I mean, let's be honest here, those types are the only ones that could deal with the launch issues, euro-jank, etc. in order to appreciate what was underneath. STALKER has been kept alive since 2010 by the modding community, and the only people still playing or paying attention are the hardcore fans.

Having said all of that, nobody gives a shit about "in engine" "cinematic" scenes with no HUD or actual gameplay. Market the game to your fanbase! Good examples of what the community actually wants to know\see:

1.) At least a screenshot of the inventory screen
2.) Will the game still have lean?
3.) How many weapons? How will attachments work? Will weapons degrade over time?
4.) Will it still have light survival mechanics like thirst, hunger etc?
5.) How many mutants? Factions?
6.) IS it one giant map with no loading screens? Or is it more like CoP with 3 big areas connected?

Again, a few screenshots of the inventory system and a long Q and A answering some of those questions would go a long way -

I mean holy shit....do they really not know who cares most about this game?

Their reveal trailer was a good way to get interest from people that have no clue what STALKER is, so fine - but can we move on?

 

[Stavrophore]

Im not afraid about game future only IF they make it very open to modding. They can release barebone game like bethesda do, new engine, new good fundamentals and game mechanics, but leave polishing to modders. At least i would bank on modding scene, it would be waste to not count on so many slavic fans doing their shit.

 

[HoboForEternity]

STALKER players are PC gamers, and typically more towards the end of the spectrum that really appreciate game mechanics over glittery shit. I

Lmao you are talking about gamers who spend $2000 more than console gamers so they can play a game in a mode that can render slightly more texture and effects on a rock. PC gamer is all about that glittery shit.

 

[karoliner]

This is nothing but vaporware.

 

[Vexxt]

Lmao you are talking about gamers who spend $2000 more than console gamers so they can play a game in a mode that can render slightly more texture and effects on a rock. PC gamer is all about that glittery shit.

IF that were the case, then back in 2007 nobody would have bought STALKER and the original Crysis would have been the best selling game of all time.

 

[Twiglard]

STALKER players are PC gamers, and typically more towards the end of the spectrum that really appreciate game mechanics over glittery shit. I

Lmao you are talking about gamers who spend $2000 more than console gamers so they can play a game in a mode that can render slightly more texture and effects on a rock. PC gamer is all about that glittery shit.

You're barking up the wrong tree, STALKER players are Slavic DX8 static lighting types with Pentium 4 running on coal.

 

[fantadomat]

STALKER players are PC gamers, and typically more towards the end of the spectrum that really appreciate game mechanics over glittery shit. I

Lmao you are talking about gamers who spend $2000 more than console gamers so they can play a game in a mode that can render slightly more texture and effects on a rock. PC gamer is all about that glittery shit.

You're barking up the wrong tree, STALKER players are Slavic DX8 static lighting types with Pentium 4 running on coal.

Joke aside i do have such a computer with stalker on it,even an HDD with 20gb on it and XP.

 

[Dodo1610]

Strange here in Germany Stalker was known for being one of the few good reasons to overclock your core2duo to 4ghz and to own an 1Gb GPU. The idea of running it on anything on anything except a gaming PC seems wrong to me to this day.

 

[passerby]

I mean holy shit....do they really not know who cares most about this game?

They do, they also know that people who still care about Stalker don't need to be marketed to, since they're a small niche group of customers compared to the numbers it has to sell and they'll eat it up anyway, since the market is not exactly flooded with Stalker clones.

 

[Wunderbar]

 

[ferratilis]

Yeah, alright. Shouldn't they have some gameplay by now? Stalker had gameplay videos all the way back in 2001, and we know how the development of that game went. This trailer doesn't impress nearly as much as the old Stalker trailers, which are almost impossible to find nowadays. As a kid, I used to buy a popular Croatian PC magazine, BUG, and every month there would be a DVD with the magazine containing game demos/trailers etc. with it. There was a series of Stalker trailers narrated by some British guy about combat, anomalies, A-life, the world. Everyone was blown away at the time. Fuck Cyberpunk, the hype for Stalker was bigger. Of course, everyone was disappointed because of how much content they cut, but it was still an impressive game, and remains to this day.

 

[Dodo1610]

No one shows gameplay anymore before the visuals are almost finished. The reason for this is the online mob which does not understand game development and will complain about the pre-alpha graphics until release. Same thing happened with Elex everyone complained that it looked like shit when the game was first shown 2 years prior to release but shockingly on release it looked much better. Of course because of that shitstorm PB hasn't yet released anything about Elex2.