Aja on 23/11/2010 at 07:24
They can cut costs by having long scenes where the door guard says "DON'T STAND THERE, I SAID COME IN" over and over.
Koki on 23/11/2010 at 09:08
And they can crash the episode as a cliffhanger.
Sulphur on 23/11/2010 at 09:58
Or show someone unable to move when they add that last piece of irradiated bread to their very full backpack.
mothra on 24/11/2010 at 23:16
I'd like to see only episodes inside a bunker during blowouts, something like eaton place without the butler
James Sterrett on 28/11/2010 at 12:33
Quote Posted by Muzman
I wonder if any from our Eastern Bureau feel like giving a better translation than those subtitles. Particularly the bit where the soldier is talking to the (guys who look like) prisoners. The subs there make no sense at all.
A stab at this:
The bit about "industrial reserves" (more precisely translated, labor reserves) and "building a happy future"?
Both are basically prime Soviet bureaucrat-speak references with some pretty dark tones, exactly as you'd expect from Stalker.
Labor reserves calls to mind two things -- first, prisoner labor, as you surmised (and implies a "need luck to survive" situation); second, the use of soldiers to try to put out the fire at Chernobyl in 1986. Various machines kept failing on getting close, so soldiers with little or no protective gear were told they each had to put one shovelful of dirt on the fire. Most of them got entertaining radiation diseases.
"Building a happy future" and phrases like it were common exhortations to work hard and endure the less-than-wonderful today in hopes of a brighter tomorrow, especially under Stalin. A particularly common/infamous example was the required chant, "Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood!"
Why the shooting breaks out isn't so clear; could be an execution (logical but the angles and setup look wrong), could be something else.
Muzman on 28/11/2010 at 21:19
Ah, the slogan makes things a bit clearer. Cheers.
Not much though. I guess they are referencing a book series I know nothing about so that makes sense. My first guess was that the guys doing the shooting are stalkers, as in S.T.A.L.K.E.Rs, sent by the C group to stop people getting too close to the reactor. I get the impression somehow that it's all well before the events of the first game, you see. The explosion is recent, the Zone's not as big yet etc ( and I guess that means the newer, weirder Zone within the old exclusion zone).
Complete speculation of course. I wonder if the books are any good. I see game tie ins like that and I move swiftly on. Admittedly the one's I've seen are Doom and Halo (someone's buying them though: huge series of the things). These might be alright, once translated o'course.
ZymeAddict on 30/11/2010 at 18:24
Isn't the story for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. just a rip-off of a Soviet science fiction film anyway?
I seem to remember reading that somewhere...
Sulphur on 30/11/2010 at 19:01
There's a movie called Stalker by Tarkovsky which is based on a book by the brothers Strugatsky called Roadside Picnic. The game borrows in turn from the book and the movie.
Muzman on 30/11/2010 at 22:00
Worth noting that the book and film have almost nothing in common except The Zone, a stalker, a meat grinder anomaly (maybe), a wish granting place and maybe the mutation concept a little. And I guess bolt throwing.
Sounds like a lot but they're really nothing alike. The film is a very alegorical tale of desire and the search for truth with a lot of spirituality thrown in. The book is pretty hard sci-fi about human life and progress, the alien providing the illustration of our smallness (thematically it reminds me of Solaris in that respect).
In fiction terms the film would take place a long time after the book, the Zone's actual power as anything but a symbol having faded almost completely.
The atmosphere of the game is much more like that of the book, with scary gravitational anomalies everywhere, talk of strange beasts, black marketeers, scientific expeditions, heavy military presence etc. It's a real frontier sort of place. The basis of the The Zone itself is completely different though.
242 on 30/11/2010 at 22:19
Quote Posted by ZymeAddict
Isn't the story for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. just a rip-off of a Soviet science fiction film anyway?
I seem to remember reading that somewhere...
No, it's not a rip-off, but music is close ;) Also, things Muzman wrote about, like anomalies.
Devs obviously saw the film and read the book, but if it can be called rip-off, then only spiritual rip-off.
