https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/postsovetskaya-legenda-kak-sozdavalas-s-t-a-l-k-e-r-shadow-of-chernobyl

Kane Dane February 21, 2021 DOOM, Game Developers NEWS, Game Platforms, Gameplay Videos, New Game Release, World Of Warcraft, Xbox

Following Venom, which received low-key criticism and moderate love from players, the studio began work on two shooters: FireStarter and Oblivion Lost. The first, released in 2003, tells about the virtual reality machine of the same name, into which, alas, a virus climbed. In the story, the user of the device is locked in a car, and in order to get out, he has to go through the downloaded game to the end, otherwise death will come after some 48 hours.

At its core, FireStarter is a shooter arena: the player regularly finds himself in a small enclosed area, where he must reflect the waves of advancing opponents for several minutes. Before (and between) the wave, of course, a little time is given to search for useful items such as weapons, first aid kits, ammunition and armor. The presence of RPG elements dilutes the gameplay: killing adversaries in arenas brings experience points that can be spent on purchasing perks. The set is familiar: you can improve the amount of health, the speed of movement and shooting, get the opportunity to shoot with two hands (and in some cases, use four), and so on.

All this did not really help the shooter: it was quickly labeled “Alien Shooter from the first person, only more boring” and forgotten. However, the team did not give up, and work on Oblivion Lost was going on in full.

New worlds

Initially, Oblivion Lost was completely different from what S.T.A.L.K.E.R. eventually became: in the early version, the basis was taken from the movie “Stargate”, in which people traveled to other worlds through a mysterious portal discovered during excavations in Egypt. The shooter offered a similar experience: the player, as a member of the Pathfinder group, traveled to different planets, little alike, and fought with aliens and robots. The latest technology of hyperspace tunnels was used to move, and the team members were to become pioneers in new worlds. As planned, the game was supposed to include 15 large levels with a unique style, as well as the ability to move on foot and by transport (one of the prototypes had a helicopter).

As Grigorovich recalls, at every meeting the phrase sounded: “What we are doing is complete nonsense.” The team felt that it was clearly moving in the wrong direction, and then again remembered the “Roadside Picnic”. In addition to the fact that the previous concept did not like the employees at the ideological level, it was also cumbersome and required serious investments: making 15 different worlds was much more expensive than one. But working with familiar landscapes was much easier, and the concept of finding artifacts in the Forbidden Zone looked extremely attractive. In the first versions, the action took place in the area of ​​the Crimean nuclear power plant. As one of the former GSC employees Oles Shishkovtsov recalls, the territory was extremely convenient for the game: the mountains naturally limited the Zone and made it possible to cut off unnecessary geometry, and the unfinished Crimean nuclear power plant could be easily filmed from all sides.

Oblivion Lost officially became S.T.A.L.K.E.R .: Oblivion Lost already in 2002, the release was scheduled for early 2003. The dots in the name, by the way, appeared due to copyright problems, and the decoding of the “abbreviation” was invented much later: Stranger – wanderer, Trespasser – intruder, Adventurer – adventurer, Loner – loner, Killer – killer, Explorer – explorer, Robber is a robber.

Already in the early stages, the concept changed again: Grigorovich saw on TV a video about the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and decided to transfer the events of the game to a real exclusion zone. Not the whole team was happy because of the moral side of the issue: it’s one thing to work with science fiction, and quite another to work with a real disaster. The head of the studio insisted, noting that Chernobyl is known all over the world and this will make it easier to break into new markets.

Concept reversal

From the “Crimean” version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Still, some pieces remained: thanks to a number of leaks (there are, by the way, Oblivion Lost – you can find “Aztec” levels on the net) gamers were able to see the first version of Cordon, a trial level of the game. It was made, by the way, on the basis of live footage: a small team of GSC employees traveled to Crimea, where they carefully recorded all interesting objects that could be used in the game, including the unfinished nuclear power plant, which by that time was planned to be dismantled.

Naturally, the real work began after the adoption of the concept of Chernobyl and Pripyat. Grigorovich and his colleagues made several trips to the exclusion zone to shoot materials that could be used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The trip itself greatly influenced the mood and approach to the game: for example, the developers learned that many wild animals were bred in the vicinity of Pripyat, which are not hunted for obvious reasons – radioactive meat is not so good for health, although the animals themselves feel quite well not bad.

Many things we saw migrated into the game almost unchanged: for example, a vehicle graveyard, one of the locations of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R., really exists in the village of Rassokha, and the red coniferous forest from Clear Sky was filmed near the nuclear power plant. Of course, fiction was “layered” on real locations, and we are talking about both the mutants of the zone and the territories created for the game.

Development went into active stage in 2002. It was at this time that the final version of Cordon and the Agroprom Scientific Research Institute were created, as well as the Rostok plant and the Dead City, which were not included in the release version of the game. The first location was based on the plant of the same name, in which GSC rented premises: a huge industrial complex consisted of several workshops, underground labyrinths and an unfinished zone, and only got into the game as a multiplayer map.

The dead city was completely removed as unnecessary: ​​it was a small settlement with several abandoned five-story buildings, a shop, a school, a city committee and a square with an indispensable statue of Lenin. At the same time, the first mutants, blind dogs, rats and an early concept of a stalker in a Steel Fly overalls were created. The programmers, on the other hand, were actively working on artificial intelligence and the A-Life life simulation system, which later became one of the key features of the shooter. As if this was not enough, the developers managed to make a controlled “Niva”. The future seemed brighter than ever.

The burden of responsibility

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