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[Flying Dice]

The announcement just dropped yesterday.

First trailer. Hot damn if it doesn't look promising.

It's live on the Steam store, so it looks like it's at the very least going to be a PC/Xbox release.

The Steam store page lists the planned release date as April 28th, 2022.

I'll try to keep this updated as more news comes in.

[Jopax]

I swear it feels like there was at least 4 different Chernobyl themed games announced/showcased in the past few days, I know there's probably less but after what feels like years with nothing it's kinda overwhelming XD

Anyways, stalker hype is real, surprised to see it so soon tho, feels like it was properly announced last year only.

[Flying Dice]

From what I remember it's kinda-sorta been in the pipe for more than a decade (albeit with interruptions like when the studio shuttered from 2011-2014), so it was probably just that that was the point where GSC were pretty certain they wouldn't have to do any more major reworks of what they had.

But yeah, between this and the Elden Ring announcement it has been a good week.

[nenjin]

Cautiously optimistic. Not much to go on. Certainly LOOKS like Stalker, down that that sorta-kinda-feels-a-little-eurojank-but-thats-ok feeling.

[None]

It's got the atmosphere pretty close to right, but we got virtually nil for gameplay in the trailer except for staged trailerstuff.

Kinda curious to see what a decade of FPS genre developments will have done for STALKER, kinda scared of it too.

[Damiac]

PTW
Cheeki Breeki comrades

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, there are only ~three mechanical things I feel safe to draw partial conclusions from based on the trailer.

1. On-the-fly attachment swapping. Goodness knows it'll be nice to not have to go to a settlement every time you want to swap a scope.

2. Something weird was going on with bolt throwing. Despite throwing from virtually the same angle every time the distance the bolts traveled was noticeably different each time. The first throw definitely felt a lot less forceful than I remember. Makes me wonder if there's variable-strength throwing for bolts (and grenades?).

3. Visually it looks pretty much like STALKER updated to modern graphical fidelity. That being said, it also looked like it was recorded in-engine... and there wasn't any stuttering even when particles were spraying everywhere. Speaking of which, watch the grenade throw in slow motion. Obviously you've got the lever popping away, but after the detonation not only is there that very nice cloud of shrapnel spraying in the appropriate direction, some of it also impacts objects between the explosion and the player and shatters them, which suggests that object shrapnel still has collision and can do damage.

Might be a subtle bit of implication from the PC's hands being covered in blood that he ate a bunch of wooden splinters as a consequence of his own grenade. If something that detailed was properly implemented, holy hell.

[JimboM12]

get in here stalkerfans, dont just stand there.

the news of an impending stalker 2 release has lit a fire to play stalker and similar style games. im cooled down on tarkov for rn, but luckily we have tons of side options! most free too!

a link to our stalker thread so you too can quench the thirst for stalker:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=174587.msg8020745#msg8020745

[Salmeuk]

Do you think they will go for a large zone, with expansive areas and routes? or more compact design, so less overall map space but each area is more densely packed?

I would imagine the latter is more akin to previous designs. . but part of me really wants Stalker with a little space to drive around in. perhaps that's the American talking, always needing a driving component

[None]

The steam page indicates it's a 64 square kilometre map to play with, so I'd reckon it's 8x8. 'course, it's possible to measure the original map similarly, even though the original zones are very segmented, so who knows. I'm rather curious how they choose to fill that space.

[Flying Dice]

With any luck it's going to be a proper open world, but even just something like the OG map with direct physical connections between areas instead of loading screens would be nice.

[nenjin]

When anyone quotes their map by how many square kilometers it represents, that almost always indicates to me that realism is a priority before compact, flowing game design. So I'm gonna predict it'll be a lot like vanilla S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Dense adventure sites with lots of wilderness around them. Then they will back fill the void with things like random quests, caches, ALife (any word on that?) etc....

TBH, if it's a constricted, encounter-dense map design with a high interaction/sq. km ratio, it wouldn't really feel like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to me. Despite all the dead space, that was part of what added to the game's desolate feeling.

I think the intent of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R was that ALife was supposed to provide all the entertainment out in the wilderness between points of interest. The way it turned out, rather, was that ALife created pockets of hazards to ensnare the new player, and to be avoided by the veteran.

With any luck it's going to be a proper open world, but even just something like the OG map with direct physical connections between areas instead of loading screens would be nice.

Hopefully they're up with their streaming tech. I always thought, even back in the day, that S.T.A.L.K.E.R's zone transition screens were one of the awkwardest and most amateur-looking parts of the game.

[None]

I dunno, you KNEW when you were getting into something when you were getting into something with loading screens. Pripyat? Big fucken' deal. Lab X18? Big fucken' deal. One does not travel lightly in The Zone. I'm not sure that having a transition screen is a bad thing if you're priming the player that things are about to be different, but maybe I'm not super fussed about sensible loading windows. It'd add more to the contention about how the 8x8 playing field is represented, surely.

[nenjin]

They were just abrupt. Janky. Sometimes without warning. Some places like Pripyat were ok, others there wasn't much visual cueing. Just one of the things that always stuck with me about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

[Flying Dice]

When anyone quotes their map by how many square kilometers it represents, that almost always indicates to me that realism is a priority before compact, flowing game design. So I'm gonna predict it'll be a lot like vanilla S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Dense adventure sites with lots of wilderness around them. Then they will back fill the void with things like random quests, caches, ALife (any word on that?) etc....

TBH, if it's a constricted, encounter-dense map design with a high interaction/sq. km ratio, it wouldn't really feel like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to me. Despite all the dead space, that was part of what added to the game's desolate feeling.

I mean that's basically what vanilla S.T.A.L.K.E.R was, as much as I might hate to say it. It was very, very rare to be more than ~a minute's walk away from a static spawn or patrol. Some maps (Red Forest, heh) were so compact that crossing them was basically one continuous firefight. You had the Great Swamps, Yanov, Zaton, Pripyat, Army Warehouses, the Garbage, and Limansk across the whole series as far as decently broad spaces went, and even then most of them are so location-dense that you can usually see or hear the next group of enemies from where you're looting the last.

The narrower scope works if you're playing the game as a linear narrative, but most people by their second or third playthrough weren't doing that, they were playing it as an open-ended open-world survival RPG/shooter. Pretty much every major mod separated the player from the plot and opened up the map as much as possible. I'm hoping for a more open map specifically so that there's more latitude for playing it as something other than a slightly freer linear corridor shooter. More space means encounters can be spread out more, not less.