S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky

Written by Jason Cisarano  on February 20, 2008

First Impressions: You'll be back in the Zone before you know it.

Tweet

Comments

After lengthy delays and extensive refactoring, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl hit the ground running and won over all but the most disgruntled fans and critics. It put players in the shoes of Strelok, an amnesiac stalker just trying to get by in the unforgiving Zone. The Zone was rendered uninhabitable first by the catastrophe at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Still, stalkers were able to enter the Zone in search of relics until they brought about another catastropheЧa release of inexplicable energy that rendered some areas impassible, trapped stalkers in the Zone, and even created other, unknown areas. It's after this second event that S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky begins, one year prior to the story of Shadow of Chernobyl. Yep, it's a prequel, but it's not afraid to change the rules of the Zone in order to keep players guessing and give them a new experience in the Zone.

First off, you won't be playing as Strelok this timeЧin fact you'll be contracted to kill him! Though that's probably not such a big problem, since Strelok was actually conditioned to (paradoxically) kill himself the first time out. So as this new stalker, you'll once again be trailblazing in the Zone, through a mix of new and familiar areas. Some reports say that it'll be about 50/50 new versus old material in the Zone, though it will all get a next-gen technology facelift to improve its looks. Screenshots and video released so far are amazing, giving any current game a run for its money in the looks department.



Even though the Zone looks better, it seems that the stalkers will be going about business as usual. There will be the usual anomalies and artifacts scattered around, and it seems like collecting and selling artifacts will still be an important form of income. But they'll be tougher to find this time, requiring a hand-held detector to reveal their presence. This means that you'll either carry a rifle OR carry the detector and a pistol. It makes perfect sense from a realism point of view, but it really sounds like it will be an annoyance for players, you'll likely want to carry the detector most of the time, meaning that you'll have to switch weapons before every shootout. Hopefully it will include a good hotkey system that streamlines weapon switching. We should see some new anomalies and artifacts in Clear sky, and there's been some talk that the Blowout anomaly will make an appearance. The Blowout is a huge anomaly that starts in the center of the Zone and sends waves of distortion across the landscape. It was a Blowout, of course, that caused Strelok's amnesia in the first place.

The factions from the first game will reappear in Clear Sky, only this time it seems that the player will have more interaction with them. The first time out, the player could befriend the Duty and Freedom factions by running missions for them. This time, the player will be able to actually join any one of five different factions and actually help the faction defeat the others. Not only will you get access to faction-related missions, you'll also get rewards in the form of equipment as you gain rank in a faction. Factions will also provide a few special services to members, including traders, mechanics, and guides. Mechanics will be able to fix those worn-out weapons, while guides help you cover long distances more quickly by using shorter paths that might be more dangerous.

A-Life, the artificial intelligence system designed by GSC, will actually control much of the faction war. In Shadows of Chernobyl, A-Life controlled the way monsters interacted with one another: when they were hungry, when they were angry, when they needed tor rest. If the A-Life controlled factions works out, we should see a much less linear campaign than before as the different groups compete for control of terrain and resources.

It seems like every new game promises AI overhauls, and Clear Sky is no exception on this front: some of the promises include use of grenades, improved teamwork, and better use of cover. A gamplay preview movie shows a character crouched down behind a low wall, spraying automatic fire over the wall without looking. These walls may not always offer cover, thoughЧthe same video shows thin wooden walls splintering under withering machine gun fire. Other AI improvements should make the NPCs more lifelike. In Shadows of Chernobyl, the same NPC stalkers sat around the same fires singing the same camp songs throughout the game, no matter when Strelok might happen by. Clear Sky promises to improve the A-Life system by adding a day-night behavioral cycle and more smart terrain features, meaning that the NPCs will interact with their environment in more ways.

As you might expect, the new game will ship with a slew of visual enhancements. GSC developed the proprietary X-Ray engine for Shadows of Chernobyl, and Clear Sky will use a version they're calling 1.5. It'll give us amazingly detailed scenes that include support for DX10. DX9-only gamers won't be left out in the cold, however. The DX9 render path will support things like motion blur, depth of field, and parallax bump, an improved form of bump mapping that takes into account the angle a surface is viewed at. Character animations and models will also be much more detailed, including support for an animation technique called Уinverse kinematics.Ф Inverse kinematics helps designers connect the joints on their models to create the perfect pose.

It seems like this process will allow for more procedural animations by allowing animators to animate a hand, say, by determining the final position of the hand without the need to directly manipulate the shoulder, elbow and wrist jointsЧall that happens in the algorithm. Cool.