Zone Archeology: Anarchy Cell design doc, STALKER 2 art

Tagaziel

Tagaziel

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Greetings stalkers. It's day three of our Zone Archeology feature and this time we're bringing you the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Anarchy Cell design document (which was finally released under the name S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky). This file contains the basic story outline, new content planned for the game, including weapons, monsters, locations, as well as high quality renders originally used for the collector's edition guide and promotional materials.

What's so cool about Anarchy Cell? While most elements made it into Clear Sky, there are several that did not. Most importantly, the Pripyat Underground level, which was entirely cut (though it was advertised as included, even on the game's packaging) and was supposed to include Morlocks: degenerate, mutated workers from Pripyat who were trapped underground in the wake of the second Chernobyl disaster. Then there's the peculiar Cartographer character and his home, full of spatial anomalies, the Bridge over the Pripyat river, Noosphere sentience subplot that was cut altogether and many more bigger and smaller details...

The document is well worth reading for any fan of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, and can be downloaded here.

Second, we also bring you nineteen new pieces of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 artwork: renders and concept art by Anatolij Didko and Nikolai Gatilov:

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Interesting stuff.. pity it reminds me of two things: that I haven't finished Shadow of Chernobyl yet, and that Stalker 2 will never come out. :(

Still, thanks Tagz!
 
Some nice renders there, in particular the Duty Exoskeleton. Such a shame it was cancelled. Also, anybody notice how most of the pre-release names for the STALKER series seem to (at least for me) have almost nothing to do with the storyline or setting. I'm interested to see if there was any particular reason names like Oblivion Lost and Anarchy Cell were chosen.
 
Oblivion Lost was inherited from the first concept for the game, which was a sci-fi setting with wormhole gates, space marines, drones, helicopters and whatnot. They simply added STALKER to the beginning when they decided to adapt Roadside Picnic.

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Anarchy Cell is (I think) the name of Strelok's Group in the document. Not entirely sure, though.
 
Now that I know about some of the problems BF have encountered in finding finances for W2, I could understand some of reasons why S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will not happen.

Still, I can't understand how sequel of this scope can't find finances to continue its development (in the first place as a single player game, Survarium for me is something else). Without doubt, the game's design (and the rest) has its flaws, but overall, the game is way above some FPS games developed right now. There must me something else, beside the money related problems, and it saddens me because this is one of the really rare IPs that I care about.
 
well I have to admit though that STALKER 1 was a rather shallow game.

Fun, yes. And the first half of the game is pretty great even. But as soon you get to the red forrest ... it starts to become very tedious. Not to mention the world for it self was not what I hoped for. To many restrictions and fed ex quests. Walking for 20 min. just to deliver a stone for the 5th time ...

But I have to say that I was very hyped for STALKER and I was pretty young and believed in the developers. They wanted helicopters, cars, a huge area, non scripted RPG elements. They really talked about the game like it was going to completely revolutionize gaming as whole.

So I was a little disappointed. Particularly as the game had quite a few nasty bugs and gameplay elements when they finished. The AI still seems to have a 6th sense or some skill where they can smell you since even enemies without night vision can see you at night from 500 meters. Not to mention I think it was stupid that you could not repair your weapons.
 
Somewhat unfinished? Maybe. Shallow? Not really. The gunplay in the STALKER series is one of the best I've ever experienced, particularly in Clear Sky. The AI is good and generally behaves like normal peeps would behave. The story is also unique and nothing to scoff at - we need more post-Soviet Sci-Fi and good adaptations of classic Eastern Eurasian novels.

It has its flaws, but it ain't shallow. Hey, does anyone know if you can play SHOC using the CS executable/CS itself?

By the way, isn't it funny that posts with pictures get replies and design docs get none?
 
Design Docs where in russian. Really no mood to crawl through that, as Stalker isn't that important to my life. In fact, I kind of feel burned out from Stalker anyway since I bought the first two games on release for 40,x euro and both were buggy as hell even till now (started Clear Sky around 7 times, never finished it due to script bugs). And while the third is the most bug free of them all, the visuals didn't impressed me as much as they did in the second game and ultimately the game became boring for me.

I probably would have bought Stalker 2 only for 10 or less euro, if at all.
 
Tagaziel said:
It has its flaws, but it ain't shallow. Hey, does anyone know if you can play SHOC using the CS executable/CS itself?
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I remember there was a project porting old stuff to newer engine on GSC forums, but don't know if they're still working on it.
I wish we could play both SHoC/CS content on CoP. Personally I like CoP's gameplay system (artifacts & weapon modding) better.
 
Tagaziel said:
The AI is good and generally behaves like normal
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Only if you count natural night vision on bandits normal human behavior and I REALLY tried to sneak in STALKER. I get the feeling you're a tad biased being an east european and all that.

Again. I am NOT saying Stalker is a "bad" game. But it sure was not the next Messiah when it comes to gaming. Not to mention it was full of bugs.

The gameplay was in my eyes average, and I remember we had already that discussion. The fact that your weapons degraded without any option to repair them was simply a very bad choice for a game that actually is basically a shooter.

The shallow part was from the design of the world which contained quite a lot of "walking" for nothing because of those little side quests you could do which was nothing more but "look for object A and get it to person B".

As soon I started to get in the main story exploring underground facilities and the like it was awesome. Creepy, and very entertaining. Up to the point you get in the Red Forrest/Pripjat and it starts to become a simple shooter on rail roads.

If they would have somehow combined STALKER, Clear Sky and Call of Pripjat all in one game, it would have been truly awesome. But that way? Just like Lexx said. You burn out eventually at some point. Particularly as I think that the dev team behind Stalker could learn the one or other thing about how to tell a story. Stalker had an "OK" plot. But the way how it is presented lacks a little. But maybe I am just not used to the east european kind of games. Though The Witcher was doing a splendid job here for example. At leats when it comes to the presentation of the plot.
 
Where are the dragons? Hehe.

The tragedy about STALKER is they spent nearly a decade making a huge persistent coop game (imagine Borderlands but not terrible) then finally realized they bit off more than they can chew and gutted the concept. So we ended up with a linear singleplayer shooter with massive levels and somewhat random AI. What could have been groundbreaking turned out merely OK.

Crni Vuk said:
If they would have somehow combined STALKER, Clear Sky and Call of Pripjat all in one game, it would have been truly awesome.
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There's a mod called STALKERSOUP and it does just that. I never tried it myself because it sounds like the best way to completely break the game and cripple your computer.
 
I played STALKERSOUP for few days last month and it's really impressive what Tecnobacon and dAVROS are trying to achieve. It's still "beta" though, so it's full of bugs, dead ends and similar things well too good known in vanilla stalker, but you can feel what world of stalker would look like if it has been done as it was imagined in the first place (and more). If you give it a try will probably need some help from a friendly forum at steam.

As said at the Tecnobeacon's site, Stalkersoup is translated and modified/improved (mostly in terms od stability, tho it's buggy as hell even now, especially if you have 4GB or less ram and XP) version of the Russian mod Narodnaya Solyanka plus COLECTOR mode from dAVROS.

I didn't play "colector" level (it's above master) but as I understood that will open whole world and "scenario" of stalker from all stalker games and already present additional maps that have been cut out from all three games. Really huge effort. When finished, everyone who likes post-apoc. survival games should give it a try. Unless they fuck up something really bad in the finished mod.

For the rest, it has unique gameplay feel among fps games (which is very rare imo), something similar to what intrigued me in wasteland and fallout games. I'm too tired to think what it is specifically - but it's there and it is not just plain post-apoc. setting (although that's probably part of ... whatever that is).

As for release docs, I didn't read them for a simple reason - I would be more sad about this game then right now. I don't like real life sad stories (meaning what happened with the game).
 
What I am most interested in is Lost Alpha. I probably will install the game again when the mod gets released.
 
Lexx said:
What I am most interested in is Lost Alpha. I probably will install the game again when the mod gets released.
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Judging by the rumors that won't be any time soon, but I would like to try that too if they actually release it. For now, for me - it's in waporware-ish state.
 
I like the effort put into STALKERSOUP, but parts of it look hacked together without much thought (e.g. Pripyat).
 
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