First S.T.A.L.K.E.R. hamstrung by over-ambition News
PC Xbox 360 PlayStation 3 News by Robert Purchese
GSC Game World has tried to explain why S.T.A.L.K.E.R. took so long to make, admitting that inexperience and over-ambition were to blame.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. took six years, and GSC's Oleg Yavorsky sees the funny side of this. "Children are born and start going to school within that period," he told Eurogamer in today's interview. "Our big problem was we were developing our technology and the game simultaneously, which for us was a lot of headaches.
"When we wanted to try out a gameplay element, it wouldn't work because there would be some problem with the engine, which was still not finished. Then there was just this ambitious concept: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was to be the ultimate game, with a mix of pretty much everything - shooter, RPG, survival horror, driving.
"We were inexperienced and took on too much," added Yavorsky. Obviously there's a bit more experience floating around now though, because prequel Clear Sky has only taken a year and a half and will be out on 29th August.
But GSC may not be out of the trenches just yet, with console development providing the next hurdle. "We've just started to figure things out with the consoles," admitted Yavorsky. "The technology's pretty much new to us. We'd love to port Clear Sky onto consoles, but currently there are a lot of technical questions.
"We'll see if our technology runs on consoles and go from there."
Head to our preview of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. prequel Clear Sky to see how it's shaping up.
Are you excited about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky on PC?
View Eurogamer readers most anticipated games
Related Games
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky
Latest Features
-
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl Review [170]
-
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl First Impressions [72]
-
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl First Impressions [80]
-
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl Interview [7]
-
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl Preview [32]
Latest Videos
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Interview [2] 21 March, 2007
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Release trailer [1] 19 March, 2007
Latest News
-
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on sale this week [21]
-
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. free on GameTap [46]
-
GSC confirms S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Prypiat [48]
-
GSC releases 2004 build of STALKER [16]
-
Steam value-bundles THQ games [24]
Latest Screenshots
19 January, 2007 [72]
Want to comment on this article? Log in, or register!
Comments: 1-27 of 27 in total
|
ChthonicEcho
16/06/08 @ 14:14
0
Incoherent story, bugs, clunky combat, zero memorable characters... It had the potential, though. I might give Clear Sky a try.
Btw, I've noticed EG always reposts what is said in an interview as a news post(s). Is that really unnecessary? Those that have ADHD and can't read the interview should be taken care of by natural selection. |
|
0
Did you even play the game? The story is great, the combat is so far from clunky and the characters are the driving force to the whole beginning of the game up until the end.
Did you even play the game? The story is so-so, the combat is pretty average and the characters, while interesting, are ultimately a bit shallow. |
|
Magic Panda
16/06/08 @ 15:11
0
One of the best games I've ever played, had its faults but the atmosphere it creates is absolutely second to none.
|
|
AtomicBanana
16/06/08 @ 15:42
0
So buggy, I found the whole thing comical and broken, nothing more. I'm sure that's not the case with a fully patched version these days, but it left a bad taste and I've just got no interest in going back and trying it again. Saying that, it was always obviously far too ambitious - far too much talk of high concept rather than how it was actually going to play. Then on release they obviously just threw all this stuff together in an attempt to get something that was playable, and nothing like the original concept.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 16/06/08 @ 16:45
|
|
kangarootoo
16/06/08 @ 16:14
0
I rather like it when people have an honest and humble approach to this sort of thing. "We kind of got a few things wrong, but we learned a lot". Nice to hear devs saying that from time to time.
I thought Stalker was great, yes it was buggy and yes it has a few flaws, but I think it realised enough of its ambition to really draw players in. You can't please everyone, but for the gamers who were likely the target audience, I think the majority of us were pretty pleased with the end product. ...and at the risk of diverting this thread still further (and feeling bad for telling my grandmother to suck eggs), I would also like to add my 2p to the growing pile that represents those of us who object to article referencing tiny snippets of other existing and equally current articles. If someone has such a short attention span that they need directing to the INDIVIDUAL SENTENCES within a paragraph, they are probably a little too young to be using a PC unsupervised and so should ask their parent or guardian for guidance. I also recall that interview last week that ended up spawning 3 more "Same bloke also said this" type news 'articles', and it was just silly. |
|
monkie_king
16/06/08 @ 16:44
0
Gives them the opportunity for more linkage though. Much more likely to get onto Digg with an article headlined "Kojima says MGS4 would be better on 360" rather than "Kojima talks to EG about MGS and the future".
Don't begrudge them the hits, it's easy enough to avoid these interview-extract stories. It also allows the comment threads to focus on individual areas of interest that spring from the interview, like this one. |
|
stoopidgreg
16/06/08 @ 18:13
0
"EG, stop posting interview content in their own news articles."
my sentiments exactly |
|
0
To be fair, it's hard for me to comment on how the game runs on other peoples PCs.
I'm on Vista 64 if that makes any difference, but then I can run Mass Effect and Assassins Creed with everything on full and AA so why should Stalker make such as fuss? I wish I could get it to run properly as the idea of the game excites me.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 16/06/08 @ 23:57
|
|
0
EG, stop posting interview content in their own news articles. For a regular reader like myself it is really irritating. Recently you have spun one interview into about five news articles which is pretty pointless.
I find these news posts working great. I don't always have the time or interest to read whole interviews so a concise news text suits me fine. Don't stop posting these news, EG. |
|
kangarootoo
17/06/08 @ 08:27
0
@spongebob
Maybe EG should start including pictures too, eh?...... oh |
|
0
Yep, it's clear because I had to turn all the effects right down to get a decent framerate on an 8800GT, 2Gb Ram and Core 2 Duo 6600.
I get 70+ FPS (120 odd inside) on my Athlon 5200 X2, 9600GT and 2 gigs of ram with the details maxed out. Your computer is either broken or you don't know how to work it. |
|
0
I should you really install this again and play it.
I have a huge pile of PC games to play. I seem to have little time to play games these days so I've just sold the 360 and am about to shift the Wii too. I'm only keeping the PS3 as it makes a pretty good media device. Hopefully now I can get through the games I have sitting here for the PC. |
|
0
"Incoherent story, bugs, clunky combat, zero memorable characters... "
To each his own but... I was more interested in Strelok's adventures than anything HLČ has ever offered me in its prefabricated, cookie-cutter passive 'interactive' cutscene ways, haven't seen any gamebreaking bugs in 1.004 yet (that's when I started playing it) but there are some odd things with some endlessly respawning quests/enemies idd. The combat was more than decent, period. The only thing you can blame the AI for is not being able to throw 'nades back (will be fixed in Clear Sky apparently) but they were fine and nasty for the rest. I'd even say STALKER had the best weaponfeel of the whole 2007 shooter galore, and that is a great achievement with so many weapons in the game. And if you can't bring up the same camaraderie as the other STALKERs in the game then you should be asking yourself how you were playing it, as another linear "let's get to the end asap" fps or as a game where you can loose yourself in very easily. It's flawed genius, with emphasis on 'genius' though. |
|
Salt_The_Fries
20/06/08 @ 10:43
0
"It was also hamstrung by being a buggy mess."
^ I totally agree, I got stuck in some moments, because i.e. a character was blocking the doors from the other side, and there was no way of getting in to that particular location anymore. I had also some bugs in quests, even when I completed some objective, the game didn't think so. Plus you couldn't have joined any faction, but they fixed that with later patches, but you had to start the game from the beginning to do so. |
Comments: 1-27 of 27 in total
Want to comment on this article? Log in, or register!
