Sure, we all complain about the periodic gluts of movie licensed games that hit the market, but how often have you seen one based on a film by a director like Andrei Tarkovsky? This isn't exactly what you would call a mainstream inspiration or a quick cash-in opportunity. The film was made in 1979, and was in turn based on a short story by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky.
The developer, GSC Gameworld, located in Kiev, Ukraine, provides a glimpse of what indie games might look like in an alternate universe or just perhaps the near future. It's an unabashedly long form game with a distinct perspective that separates it from many mainstream Western or Japanese games, complete with ambiguous endings and emotional nuance.
You wander the Zone, the inhospitable radioactive wasteland surrounding Chernobyl. You spend most of your time avoiding the dangerous radioactive anomalies, dealing with stalkers and others of the morally grey persuasion, and generally sucking down the atmosphere of hopelessness and dread.
The extension from film to game is a very natural one. The film revolves around philosophical discussions by characters exploring the zone, while the game, with the help of some RPG conventions, is actually able to create a more coherent story around your own trip through the Zone. Your uncut first person experience also naturally mirrors Tarkovsky's style of using long takes to capture the sense of time passing and the emotional relationship between moments in time.
The downsides of the game follow a similar indie film parallel - aspects of it can be downright confusing or at least inconsistent, but if you're willing to put some effort into understanding it you're definitely rewarded. I had made it all the way to the end of the game, when I realized what I thought was an ancillary quest was actually key to completing some of the game's endings. While most games I would thrown down in disgust at that point, I was happily compelled to trek back and again across the entire zone to complete the game (well, aside from a moment or two of bickering).
Many of the encounters in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. left me unsettled in some way, whether it was fighting the horrifying remains of the original inhabitants, facing down the wild dogs that roam the Zone, or deciding which characters to trust and which to backstab. The atmosphere of the game is achieved not through a few highly polished missions or well defined moral choices, but through these ever present morally ambiguous decisions. You can help a stalker find his stash or lie to him and steal it for yourself. Heal a dying ally or maybe wait around a little to get his stuff in order to better survive yourself. There's also warring factions of stalkers - you'll have to pick sides or desperately try to stay neutral in their conflicts.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. originally suffered from a number of bugs, most of which have been fixed since its release. Along with the impending release of the sequel/expansion, Clear Sky, now is as good a time as ever to go play that thing - just be appreciative you don't have to write about it. The period on your keyboard will thank you.
(Ed: We'd never run an initially boxed-retail game published by THQ, EVER, with this exception. For an in-depth look at it's making, read this.)
I never expected to see this here...
Ah! and excuse to talk about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.!
The very environment of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. drips menace. The whole place is so threatening and sinister. I fell in love with this game immediately. It draws you in like no other. The first time I was playing and night fell, it was raining and I didn't want to step outside. It look so wet, dark and miserable out there I just wanted to stay in by the fire with the other Stalkers...I forgot it was just a game.
The horror sections work because the game manages to keep the weirdness weird, if you know what I mean. As most of your enemies are human, fighting bizarre mutants never becomes he norm (perhaps with the exception of the blind dogs). Exploring the abandoned science research bunkers with my flashlight while...things....snuffled about in the darkness around me has to be one of the most terrifying moments I've had in gaming. I just wanted to find what I came for and get the hell out of there, back into the air and light of the surface.
I hate good graphics for their own sake, but S.T.A.L.K.A.R is a fantastic example of high end graphics enhancing a game. The natural environments, the lighting and shadows stunningly create a believable world. It's a hard game, and occasionally frustrating, but smarter and hipper than ten Bioshocks or Call
Of Duties.
Exactly!
"It's a hard game, and occasionally frustrating, but smarter and hipper than ten Bioshocks or Call
Of Duties."
And that's why we featured it, even though it was funded by THQ. Those guys took so long to make it. This game is really hot in eastern europe and russia btw.
Stalker!
Outstanding game indeed!
Two further pieces of praise:
I lived in Ukraine for nearly a year in 1989-1990, and the look and sound of the game sent me smack down memory lane. I didn't go into any radioactive wastelands, but the buildings look and are laid out just as I'd expect. The utterly nailed the sense-of-place.
One dilemma you didn't mention: Wounded enemy. They're down on the ground, whimpering, moaning, and crying for help. Friendlies or neutrals you can heal. Not the enemy. So your only options are to wait for them to bleed out, or hasten the process by killing them. This is utterly logical in the game world, and for me it really helped reinforce the bleak atmosphere and gray morality.
.... It also sparked a lengthy and initially heated discussion with my wife, who was horrified to see me knifing the enemy wounded and explaining it as mercy.
Moral dilemmas
OH yeah! The first time I came across a wounded enemy, a friendly came up, muttered something in Russian, pulled out a pistol and shot him in the head. Merciless! I have seen wounded enemies jump up and start fighting though, so now I too finish them off callously!
Ambience, realism, & morality
Yeah, the detail in the world is so key to all of ambience, whether it's the realism, the fact that this is where this team is from, the fact that they actually went out to the Chernobyl site for research (read that in an interview somewhere but I can't recall the link - there's one research field trip I can imagine some of the team members might have passed on), or just the love poured into little details like the fully modeled crumpled cigarrette packs around the wilderness where stalkers often stop.
All of the little decisions and encounters that have these sort of moral ambiguities are so much rarer in a mainstream or western game, too. Compare the killing of the soldiers to harvesting the little sisters in Bioshock, for example, the presentation there is so much in the vein of good/bad. There's some discussion to be had there for sure, but it's not nearly as ambiguous as trying to explain the concept of mercy killing wounded stalkers to your wife. :)
A minor nitpick
Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic," upon which Andrei Tarkovsky based his "Stalker," was a novel rather than a short story.
I found a mod which fixes this game
I found a simply stunning mod which fixes this game to be closer to the original vision. Highly recommended! See me rant about it and get linkage here: http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=7245
Just completed it
Finished S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with the OL mod. My brain is on overload.
I read recently a quote that said games have a "limited emotional palette". Clearly, brother, you have been playing the wrong games.
The last sequence, the last few hours were.... intense. I don't really have the words. It was a deeply effecting experience. It's frustrating I'm not eloquent enough. I could write an essay about this game.