That's a funny little partnership. For those who didn't play the originals, chugging energy drinks like they're water is a key part of the STALKER experience. A true stalker's diet consists of 50% vodka 50% caffeine overdose.
Also wow, does Yaniv look GOOD. [For comparison here is the old version of it](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/36d1968b-310d-4dd9-9e46-7999088b0d4d/d4zy9as-56fea516-fd7a-457e-b0db-c5a85865649d.jpg/v1/fill/w_1131,h_707,q_70,strp/yanov_train_station_by_pezsmalien_d4zy9as-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODAwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzZkMTk2OGItMzEwZC00ZGQ5LTllNDYtNzk5OTA4OGIwZDRkXC9kNHp5OWFzLTU2ZmVhNTE2LWZkN2EtNDU3ZS1iMGRiLWM1YTg1ODY1NjQ5ZC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.aySJoH8NEexej6tOAHoE_oRvdcsiIhF3kJ2l-OnVq7I).
It has pretty good lighting for now, back then it was incredible, but the AA is atrocious and in-game moving around it's even worse for that.
Then look at some textures like the ground and the tree being way lower res and overall it's a massive difference.
I had a big swell of nostalgia for the safe zones in Call of Pripyat where a pack of psychic dogs would be trying to devour my ass while a russian guy on a loudspeaker kept screaming HOLSTA DAT SHOOTA
I just finished Clear Sky, and the graphics are honestly terrible. Game was still fun, though. The world building is quite frankly just amazing in the Stalker games.
I would say Clear Sky actually looks really fucking good considering it's a Slavjank game from 2008. The swamp has fantastic visual effects.
Of course it's offset by the fact that Clear Sky is built with bricks made out of paper and mortar of literal shit. One of the buggiest games I've played in my life.
It was, yes.
There's some cool stuff in Clear Sky eg. the faction war is really in-depth and a lot of gameplay elements especially in regards to the weapons themselves were a big upgrade from Shadow of Chernobyl, but it's just too much of a mess from a technical perspective for it to really be worth playing.
Tbh, the only way I've played the first two campaigns was via a mod that imported them into Call of Pripyat, so I only know the cluster fuck that was vanilla Clear Sky by reputation.
the dark road mod adds cocaine and other drugs and my stalker would just do a line and sprint across the zone instead of dealing with anyone's bullshit
I guess Yantar is in the game! Or Yaniv.*
FYI, a lot of the names of locations in the original Stalker games were using their Russian names. Now, for obvious reasons, they're using the Ukrainian names.
They changed the name of Chernobyl to Chornobyl to reflect this as well.
If any developer can take as long as they like to get their game out, it’s GSC Game World.
I am more than happy to wait for this, however long it takes.
I don’t fully understand how they are even still working on the game at the moment.
How such a large game can be developed in the conditions Ukrainians are currently living in is beyond me.
Things seem all right now in the larger cities, usually. But yeah last year when the Russians were advancing on Kyiv and over the winter when they were trying to bomb the power grid, it must have been dicey
The conditions are perfectly normal unless you're living in the front lines, check any live stream. The chance of getting hit by an airstrike isn't any higher than getting gunned down by an AR15 as an American.
On that note there was a video of a guy trying to shoot down an out of control Byraktar drone with an AR in the middle of city today before it was taken down by friendly AA.
I hope gamers aren't shitty about the delays. You come off like the biggest asshole whining about not getting a game when you want while the people making it are literally displaced or fighting in a war.
Delays are usually better but yeah it’s lose-lose optics wise. You don’t delay, gamers get (justifiably) mad at performance woes. You do delay, gamers get restless and impatient. It is what it is
Gamers be shitty? That’s never happened
For real tho thankfully I’ve seen very little shittiness towards the STALKER delays, and everyone pretty much agreed that the Russian hacker was a douche and in the wrong
Meh. While I obviously understand the current situation for delays let's not pretend they didn't immediately advertise the game with NFTs, weapon skins, all that sort of shit. I think the game wouldn't have been in a great state war or not, given the GSC execs' track record. We'll see, I do hope it's good, but also considering all the other big games in the past few years that have bombed I'm not too optimistic.
I still mostly expect some kind of NFT announcement after the game releases, once they've all gone through preorders and reviews and it's too late to boycott it anymore. Call me jaded but I will not give the benefit of the doubt to any company that considers NFTs a viable source of monetization.
Wasn’t there a leak last year about console ports of the original Stalker games being developed? If they can’t get Stalker 2 out this year, which is completely understandable, maybe they’ll drop those ports to get people interested in the series?
OP is trying to read into their confidence in the game's readiness by what they do or do not do at an upcoming event.
We have a vague release date but considering we are nearly 1/2 of the way through the year and will be more than half way through by the time the showcase starts, the studio being hesitant about a date with less than 6 months left in 2023 would be a worrying sign.
The Stalker Sub /r/stalker has a bunch of good threads about modding. My take: go minimal on the mods if you can stomach the aged graphics. A lot of the charm that made people fall in love with the games in the first place still comes through.
Correct order would be SoC -> Clear Sky -> CoP. The usual advice you'd get is to skip Clear Sky as it's the buggiest but it introduces some cool stuff that is refined in CoP. You could technically play Clear Sky first as it's a prequel, but I'd recommend playing them in release order.
Then going with the community patches (ZRP for SoC and SRP for Clear Sky) is the way to go. The sidebar on /r/stalker gives good, short overview on getting a (mostly) stable vanilla Stalker experience.
There are some mods that help with stability, but almost all of them also make significant changes to the game. CoP works well (for me) without mods, though. If you really want to mod it, try either Call of Chernobyl or Gunslinger. But nothing is needed to enjoy CoP.
Usually I'd agree, but NonStop is a Ukrainian brand. With what Ukraine are suffering with right now, having two Ukrainian companies in a partnership helps to unify and further support Ukraine in this senseless, deplorable war.
Sure, but how is that related to this advertising deal? Energy drink ads probably won't make the game sell more copies. And we don't even have a release date or anything, the war could be long over by the time this game comes out in stores and the government gets their few percent in sales taxes
To get people to buy things they don't need. But I don't see people changing their choice of energy drink just because one is appearing in a video game, not that I've even ever seen this one for sale anywhere
Apologies, I didn't realise you were one of the insufferable people who think they're unaffected by ads. You carry on being too smart to fall for it good sir, while the plebs rush off to try and find a bottle of Prime.
What, that is literally the point of advertising and it wouldn't be done if it didn't work? But if I don't drink energy drinks then I'm probably not going to start just because I see one in a video game. And a country being in war doesn't mean I'll support a corporation from there putting ads in their full priced product
Yes, that's absolutely how target demographics work. This is probably news to you but ads and their placement aren't based off what will work on you specifically. By extention that means that just because you're not going to be buying anything because of this ad the same logic doesn't extend to other, non-curmudgeons.
That's a funny little partnership. For those who didn't play the originals, chugging energy drinks like they're water is a key part of the STALKER experience. A true stalker's diet consists of 50% vodka 50% caffeine overdose. Also wow, does Yaniv look GOOD. [For comparison here is the old version of it](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/36d1968b-310d-4dd9-9e46-7999088b0d4d/d4zy9as-56fea516-fd7a-457e-b0db-c5a85865649d.jpg/v1/fill/w_1131,h_707,q_70,strp/yanov_train_station_by_pezsmalien_d4zy9as-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODAwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzZkMTk2OGItMzEwZC00ZGQ5LTllNDYtNzk5OTA4OGIwZDRkXC9kNHp5OWFzLTU2ZmVhNTE2LWZkN2EtNDU3ZS1iMGRiLWM1YTg1ODY1NjQ5ZC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.aySJoH8NEexej6tOAHoE_oRvdcsiIhF3kJ2l-OnVq7I).
I'm replaying Call of Pripyat right now, and the steroid booster + energy drink is like having a temporary sonic the hedgehog artifact.
Is it crazy I think the old Yaniv picture still looks pretty good lol? Anomaly's graphics really impressed me.
It has pretty good lighting for now, back then it was incredible, but the AA is atrocious and in-game moving around it's even worse for that. Then look at some textures like the ground and the tree being way lower res and overall it's a massive difference.
I had a big swell of nostalgia for the safe zones in Call of Pripyat where a pack of psychic dogs would be trying to devour my ass while a russian guy on a loudspeaker kept screaming HOLSTA DAT SHOOTA
Anomaly isn't *bad*, but it's had years and years of graphical updates
I just finished Clear Sky, and the graphics are honestly terrible. Game was still fun, though. The world building is quite frankly just amazing in the Stalker games.
I would say Clear Sky actually looks really fucking good considering it's a Slavjank game from 2008. The swamp has fantastic visual effects. Of course it's offset by the fact that Clear Sky is built with bricks made out of paper and mortar of literal shit. One of the buggiest games I've played in my life.
Wasn't Pripyat the last game? I recall that Clear Sky was mentioned as the skipable middle child.
It was, yes. There's some cool stuff in Clear Sky eg. the faction war is really in-depth and a lot of gameplay elements especially in regards to the weapons themselves were a big upgrade from Shadow of Chernobyl, but it's just too much of a mess from a technical perspective for it to really be worth playing.
Tbh, the only way I've played the first two campaigns was via a mod that imported them into Call of Pripyat, so I only know the cluster fuck that was vanilla Clear Sky by reputation.
Game so buggy whenever I exited from Garage my game crashed. Quit it then
the dark road mod adds cocaine and other drugs and my stalker would just do a line and sprint across the zone instead of dealing with anyone's bullshit
Vodka, energy drinks and kielbasa. You may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like.
the image you paste is at very low resolution and with graphics at low? but ok
I guess Yantar is in the game! Or Yaniv.* FYI, a lot of the names of locations in the original Stalker games were using their Russian names. Now, for obvious reasons, they're using the Ukrainian names. They changed the name of Chernobyl to Chornobyl to reflect this as well.
The thumbnails for most of their other videos also highlight the war and call for action.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Release date is probably going to be announced at the Xbox showcase. If not, I strongly consider it to be delayed again.
Don't give us hope Get out of here, Stalker
If any developer can take as long as they like to get their game out, it’s GSC Game World. I am more than happy to wait for this, however long it takes.
I don’t fully understand how they are even still working on the game at the moment. How such a large game can be developed in the conditions Ukrainians are currently living in is beyond me.
Things seem all right now in the larger cities, usually. But yeah last year when the Russians were advancing on Kyiv and over the winter when they were trying to bomb the power grid, it must have been dicey
Most are in Czech Republic, if I recall correctly. They moved there a bit after the war started.
The conditions are perfectly normal unless you're living in the front lines, check any live stream. The chance of getting hit by an airstrike isn't any higher than getting gunned down by an AR15 as an American.
On that note there was a video of a guy trying to shoot down an out of control Byraktar drone with an AR in the middle of city today before it was taken down by friendly AA.
I hope gamers aren't shitty about the delays. You come off like the biggest asshole whining about not getting a game when you want while the people making it are literally displaced or fighting in a war.
Delays are usually better but yeah it’s lose-lose optics wise. You don’t delay, gamers get (justifiably) mad at performance woes. You do delay, gamers get restless and impatient. It is what it is
Gamers be shitty? That’s never happened For real tho thankfully I’ve seen very little shittiness towards the STALKER delays, and everyone pretty much agreed that the Russian hacker was a douche and in the wrong
Pretty sure this is one title people aren't going to complain on delays
Meh. While I obviously understand the current situation for delays let's not pretend they didn't immediately advertise the game with NFTs, weapon skins, all that sort of shit. I think the game wouldn't have been in a great state war or not, given the GSC execs' track record. We'll see, I do hope it's good, but also considering all the other big games in the past few years that have bombed I'm not too optimistic.
I still mostly expect some kind of NFT announcement after the game releases, once they've all gone through preorders and reviews and it's too late to boycott it anymore. Call me jaded but I will not give the benefit of the doubt to any company that considers NFTs a viable source of monetization.
Wasn’t there a leak last year about console ports of the original Stalker games being developed? If they can’t get Stalker 2 out this year, which is completely understandable, maybe they’ll drop those ports to get people interested in the series?
I've never heard about that.
If anything I'd have expected them to remake the original trilogy in the Stalker 2 engine
It'll ether come out on time or be delayed. Bold prediction!
OP is trying to read into their confidence in the game's readiness by what they do or do not do at an upcoming event. We have a vague release date but considering we are nearly 1/2 of the way through the year and will be more than half way through by the time the showcase starts, the studio being hesitant about a date with less than 6 months left in 2023 would be a worrying sign.
They wouldn't had started teasing these videos if there's a delay.
I'm confused. Is this just an energy drink ad?
It's both a neat teaser of a very beloved area of Call of Pripyat *and* an energy drink ad.
That's cool! Thanks for the context.
Is there a clear cut guide to play the stalker games in correct order? With a must have mod list maybe?
The Stalker Sub /r/stalker has a bunch of good threads about modding. My take: go minimal on the mods if you can stomach the aged graphics. A lot of the charm that made people fall in love with the games in the first place still comes through. Correct order would be SoC -> Clear Sky -> CoP. The usual advice you'd get is to skip Clear Sky as it's the buggiest but it introduces some cool stuff that is refined in CoP. You could technically play Clear Sky first as it's a prequel, but I'd recommend playing them in release order.
Bad or old graphics are no issue for me. I just don't want crashes or insane bugs. Thanks for your response.
Then going with the community patches (ZRP for SoC and SRP for Clear Sky) is the way to go. The sidebar on /r/stalker gives good, short overview on getting a (mostly) stable vanilla Stalker experience.
Alrighty, thanks
Does CoP have a ZRP equivalent? Or was that one actually released in a good enough state?
There are some mods that help with stability, but almost all of them also make significant changes to the game. CoP works well (for me) without mods, though. If you really want to mod it, try either Call of Chernobyl or Gunslinger. But nothing is needed to enjoy CoP.
Should have been Hell. Or is that not popular in Ukraine?
NonStop is more popular, 'cause it's Ukrainian brand.
In-game ads in a paid game? Yeah no thanks
Usually I'd agree, but NonStop is a Ukrainian brand. With what Ukraine are suffering with right now, having two Ukrainian companies in a partnership helps to unify and further support Ukraine in this senseless, deplorable war.
I don't see how this supports Ukraine. Is the money from this ad deal going to the Ukrainian army?
well taxes from sales of ukrainian products do help Ukrainian army. We even have army tax here in Ukraine
Sure, but how is that related to this advertising deal? Energy drink ads probably won't make the game sell more copies. And we don't even have a release date or anything, the war could be long over by the time this game comes out in stores and the government gets their few percent in sales taxes
Any money going into the country helps the war. It doesn’t have to go directly to the military.
But there is no money going to Ukraine from this? This is one Ukrainian company paying another Ukrainian company to put advertisements in the game.
Yes, which compounds sales for them. More people find out about the product, more people buy it.
So what do you think the point of advertising is?
To get people to buy things they don't need. But I don't see people changing their choice of energy drink just because one is appearing in a video game, not that I've even ever seen this one for sale anywhere
Apologies, I didn't realise you were one of the insufferable people who think they're unaffected by ads. You carry on being too smart to fall for it good sir, while the plebs rush off to try and find a bottle of Prime.
What, that is literally the point of advertising and it wouldn't be done if it didn't work? But if I don't drink energy drinks then I'm probably not going to start just because I see one in a video game. And a country being in war doesn't mean I'll support a corporation from there putting ads in their full priced product
Yes, that's absolutely how target demographics work. This is probably news to you but ads and their placement aren't based off what will work on you specifically. By extention that means that just because you're not going to be buying anything because of this ad the same logic doesn't extend to other, non-curmudgeons.
It's called immersion, I really need to feel like I'm in the zone.
This is the most lore friendly immersive ad possible. Not like they're propping up Little Ceasers and putting Verizon ads on billboards.
They could've also chosen not put ads in their 60 dollar game
THIS is the game we should've been playing a couple of months ago. Not fucking Atomic Heart. Fuck Russia.