mothra on 28/12/2007 at 15:55
after STALKER i have the same problem with theWitcher.
I tried to play more Vampires:Bloodlines or finish my hard-run-thru of Cthulu or just finish my "borrowed" Timeshift installation......it all pales....
if i wanna have that "I'm there" feeling I fire up Crysis or STALKER, mostly STALKER 'cause the atmosphere is even better than in Crysis, if I wanna have a little more dialogue with it I fire up TheWitcher or DeusEx.
I think I will someday end my gaming career with those games :cheeky:
wait, no, i'm gonna have to wait for ClearSky and FarCry2 first !
Hidden_7 on 13/1/2008 at 20:22
I just wrapped it, both wishgranter (I want the Zone to dissapear) and both C-Conciousness endings. And I gotta say, I'm kinda dissapointed it wasn't aliens as well. The core themes of Roadside Picnic, and to a lesser extent Stalker, the movie, was that the Zone was this mysterious place that humans couldn't understand. What are the anomolies, how do artifacts work? We have no idea, all we can do is scavage about like animals trying to get them to do something usefull. The fact that it was all human experiments with some pretty soft sci-fi stuff at the end was kinda... meh, it betrayed the cool themes that I liked from the other "versions" and that the game itself was building.
I also don't mean aliens like you ever get to meet them, but maintain the sense of mystery, the Zone is just from some Alien thing, maybe the Monolith, that crash landed on Earh. Maybe even a piece of Alien garbage. I think that actually works really well with setting it in Chernobyl. You see the dangers of uncontrollable pollution from messing with advanced technology for two different civilizations. It would still be kinda "Man-Made" in as much as not of nature, or whatnot.
Further, the fact that the Wishgranter is just an illusion means that the wishes can't really be all that ironic. Like, the I want to be rich? How was that ironic from the player's point of view? He got a bunch of money, then a roof fell on him. That just sounds like a bad coincidence to me. And while the "I want the Zone to dissapear" was kinda cute, oh look, you're blind, it dissapeared, ha. But from hearing a little about the ironic wishes before I expected something like, I don't know, the Zone expands to the entire world, so technically there is no specific Zone anymore. Or maybe, like, the Zone literally dissapearing, like everything in it, including the Player, so it's kind of this self-sacrifice thing.
Meh, I dunno, I thought at the end having some brain controlling experiment controlling some thought-sphere around Earth was kind of a let down, considering what had gone before. I wouldn't have minded there ALSO being mind control experiments going on, I liked the brain scorcher and the labs, but the fact that all the crazy stuff in the Zone was from that... I would have liked to have something else mysterious going on.
242 on 13/1/2008 at 20:45
Quote Posted by Hidden_7
Further, the fact that the Wishgranter is just an illusion means that the wishes can't really be all that ironic. How was that ironic from the player's point of view? He got a bunch of money, then a roof fell on him. That just sounds like a bad coincidence to me.
Wishgranter isn't just optical illusion, it's equipment that interacts with the Sphere. Rumour that Wishranter grants wishes is illusion :). It does something with people minds. Perhaps equipment interprets wishes incorrectly, or the Sphere is just evil.
Quote:
Meh, I dunno, I thought at the end having some brain controlling experiment controlling some thought-sphere around Earth was kind of a let down, considering what had gone before. I wouldn't have minded there ALSO being mind control experiments going on, I liked the brain scorcher and the labs, but the fact that all the crazy stuff in the Zone was from that...
Experiments? But actual reason was the Sphere. Are you sure you know what it is really? It's described quite inexplicit in the game. It's up to you to decide what it is, is it natural or.... created by your dear aliens :p
GRRRR on 14/1/2008 at 12:26
Quote Posted by Hidden_7
Like, the I want to be rich? How was that ironic from the player's point of view? He got a bunch of money, then a roof fell on him. That just sounds like a bad coincidence to me.
Wasnt really money, but screw nuts getting loosened from the steel roof until it fell down on Strelok standing there grinning in his imagined "golden shower" :p
Where did you get the bit about "ironic wishes", none of em are, the wishgranter just takes the wishes and twists em to a bad outcome for the one making the wish :confused:
Hidden_7 on 14/1/2008 at 18:26
I suppse the way the... was it Nos-Sphere, was described it made it seem like it had always been there and was a natural part of our planet. It really didn't seem like some aliens came in and put it there, and even if they did, that too is kinda silly.
As for the wishes, meh, I suppose I was just expecting the "ironically bad wishes" for some reason, they didn't have to be, though I would have prefered that to "make a wish, unconnected bad thing happens to you." Like, the "Mankind is corrupt, it needs to be controlled" what's even going on there? He gets shown a bunch of bad things, then is in an abyss? What?
Also, question about the "Best" "real" ending, the refuse to join C-Conciousness, is it implied that the Zone disappeared then? If so, was that C-Conciousness scientist just lying when he said that he needed help to try and get rid of the Zone? Surely if that was really their goal they might have tried shutting down the project?
Muzman on 14/1/2008 at 20:27
I think they were saying it was a natural part of the planet and/or life, but that C-consciousness has tried to harness/actively control it and buggered things up.
And yeah, I felt the same about that ending "Had they considered just turning it off?". I think that about the problem of the monolith as well.
It would have been cool if, say, C-consciousness made it clear they wouldn't dare shut themselves down as that might cross the streams/cause a resonance cascade or something, but the monolith was some sort of accidental focus of the Noosphere. So, once he discovers the truth Strelok dares to do what they won't and wish C-Consciousness away. Then we get some sort of uncertain and slightly trancendent ending.
maybe.
Koki on 15/1/2008 at 20:16
The main fault of STALKER is that there's way too many humans in it.
Honestly. For a cordoned-off area full of aggressive mutants and anomalies, it's swarming with people. Bearable at the beginning, it starts getting ridiculous in Dark Valley(Where you need to clean an entire block full of bandits) and then escalates.
It's a shame since fighting humans is too normal. One Pseudodog is enough to send me running looking for some high ground. Twenty bandits/soldiers/Monoliths is merely a routine. The defining point was when I was exiting the Brain Scorcher lab - it gets full of Monolith dolts and you need to fight your way out - I actually thought to myself, "Good, I least I won't need to walk back all alone, that would be creepy". Oh dammit.
As for the ending... I have mixed feelings. I admit that I didn't expect a rational explanation. I didn't read Roadside Picnic, I only watched the movie(Which was kinda crappy by the way), so I guess that influenced my expectations. I assumed I will reach the Monolith and I wanted the meeting to be somewhat sanguine - I.e. whole las level would be nothing but empty corridors and maybe few puzzles as you make your way to the "heart". Needless to say, That's not exactly what I got.
The whole C-C... well, it's good because it gives you an answer, a logical cause for The Zone. It's bad because in itself it's heavy. Accepting the existence of some field of emotions surrounding all Earth is not something I can do in an instant. Plus, it's well, kind of stupid. At least make is some kind of ESP field. But emotions? Meh.
Hidden_7 on 16/1/2008 at 01:07
Yeah, exactly. In explaining the Zone they rob it of its mystery, and in a way make it less believable. It's hard to doubt mysterious and unexplained happenings, because... well what is there to doubt? They are unexplained. You can't say that that explanation is stupid because there IS no explanation. Emotional/Psychic biosphere explosion that for some reason creates all these physical anomolies and magical artifacts? Yeah that's dumb and doesn't make sense, moreso because it TRIES to make sense. The whole Midechlorian effect, basically.
D'Arcy on 16/1/2008 at 01:34
Well, if they had made The Zone anything like what we see in the movie (never read Roadside Picnic, just saw Tarkovsky's movie) then most likely people would get bored and the game would be a failure.
Hidden_7 on 16/1/2008 at 05:49
Well they modeled the look off of the movie pretty heavily, I felt. Even the Stalker from the film I thought bore resemblances to the Marked One. But Roadside Picnic actually had present sci-fi elements. Some of the anomolies seem to be based off ones mentioned in the book, the mosquito mange from the book appears to be anologous to springboard, some others seem to have their names inspired by ones from the book (I think it was something like Burnt Fluff in the book). The idea of artifacts is also taken from the book, though while in the book they appeared to be cast away relics of the alien visitors, otherworldly garbage, as opposed to being forged in anomolies like in the game. Also they were less obviously useful, some of them at least.
Just because not much happened in the movie, which was a more metaphorical treatment of sci-fi elements rather than actiony actualized, doesn't mean that the source material is devoid of exciting things and should be tossed. Indeed the movie is just one interpretation of the source story, while the game is another. It wasn't even obvious that it WAS aliens in the movie. They worked very well as a mysterious force in the book however. Letting weird stuff happen, offering no explanation for why it happens, for what it means, and letting it actually remain weird.
