This week Zero Punctuation goes in the zone to nuke S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. - by Malleus
Aja on 18/10/2008 at 07:58
Quote Posted by Scots Taffer
Without having played Clear Sky it seems that he feels the same way about it as I do about STALKER; incredibly immersive and atmospheric and challenging but not exactly doing itself any favours in the gameplay design, lots and lots of dying and a plot that makes less sense than a monkey on acid.
Yeah man... two hours in and I'm kinda wishing someone would play the game for me and I could just sit with a blanket and tea and enjoy the atmosphere.
Stalker is brilliant visually and aurally but god DAMN is it hard work.
Koki on 18/10/2008 at 13:31
Quote Posted by 242
Well, it makes sense, it's just pretty obscure and delivered completely unobtrusive unlike most of games (through easy to miss or forget lines in dialogues, journal/PDA entries, objective descriptions, very obscure movies).
Sorry, but that's bollocks. Writing > Story, and STALKER doesn't even
have writing. There's nothing about story in dialogues, nothing about story in journal, nothing about story in PDA and nothing about story in object descriptions. Movies only relate to how much of a [spoiler]Strelok[/spoiler] you are, which is a minor part of the story, it's not even obligatory to know that in fact you are one.
You go to the first laboratory and no one tells you what it is. Inside there are no hints as to what it is. When you leave it you still have no idea what the hell was it and what are the documents you're holding. Same thing happens in Yantar and at the brain scorcher. Then you go to NPP and BAM! noosphere. What? When? From where? How? Why?
I mean hell, look at Crysis, which is certainly not a pinnacle in storytelling: You get attacked during the drop, teammate dies, you find frozen boat, teammate dies, you find a hostage who tells a scaaary story, you find a frozen dead guy, another teammate disappears, you find frozen "Statue", and so on and so on - you get fed "ICE ALIENS", one slice at a time. STALKER tells you
nothing and then shoves entire pie squarely in your face, and it's impossible to swallow it all. That's why the story feels like it makes no sense.
242 on 18/10/2008 at 14:50
Quote Posted by Koki
There's nothing about story in dialogues, nothing about story in journal, nothing about story in PDA and nothing about story in object descriptions.
You're quite categorical, aren't ya? There are bits of important info here and there. F.e. you get the correspondence between Agro Reaserch Institute's Director
and O-Consciousness member early in the game, you get Strelok's correspondence, you find a bit of info in X18 about what they were doing there,
Doctor tells you that Monolith is probably an illusion and is controlled from a secret laboratory nearby. Just read all entries in PDA, you must have missed at least some of them in various PDA sections. A player basically tries to find who he/she is during the game,
and O-Consciousness along with reasons of Zone's birth is something the player discovers by the way. In SoC, you get the info pretty much like in RL, though it's unusual for games.
Koki on 18/10/2008 at 15:19
Quote Posted by 242
In SoC, you get the info pretty much like in RL
IRL, I can:
a) Read
b) Ask questions
Both of which seem to be out of character's reach in STALKER.
polytourist97 on 18/10/2008 at 18:03
In STALKER you can:
a. read: the pda diary (most important), found pda transcriptions, the encylclopedia.
b. ask questions: most characters in the game. Granted, you can't really choose the question(s), but they still have information available.
Now, I'll agree quite readily that the story and writing in STALKER is convoluted and confusing (being written originally in a different language probably didn't help that), and in the end, isn't really that satisfying considering how much it SEEMED like it was going somewhere. It's obvious that the dev team didn't really get to flesh out the ideas as much as they had originally intended, but there certainly IS information. Is it well-presented and worthwhile? Debatable. I would say not really.
Eshaktaar on 18/10/2008 at 18:12
One oddity (bug?) which threw me out of the story was that the objective "Kill Strelok" didn't disappear when I found out who I really was. To me that looked like even the game wasn't paying attention to the plot.
driver on 18/10/2008 at 19:23
Strange, it always marked up as 'Failed' for me.
242 on 18/10/2008 at 19:25
Quote Posted by Eshaktaar
One oddity (bug?) which threw me out of the story was that the objective
"Kill Strelok" didn't disappear when I found out
who I really was. To me that looked like even the game wasn't paying attention to the plot.
You know, some people still asked
who was Strelok after they finished the game ;)
D'Arcy on 20/10/2008 at 23:49
Same here. I just asked him what the hell was he doing throughout the game. Just shooting stuff, and not paying any attention to the story?
ZylonBane on 23/10/2008 at 20:40
I think my brain rejected the truth about my identity in STALKER as too absurdly contrived. Really, out of all the thousands of stalkers running around the Zone, what are the odds that I'd end up assigned to kill... myself?
Fortunately, STALKER is driven by the atmosphere and gameplay, not the plot.
