E3 2006: The truth behind STALKER

As the demo continued, Sharpe pointed out a few of the game's features, including visibility and noise status bars on the HUD, allowing the player to gauge how loud or how visible they are to enemies. By shooting out lights and walking instead of running, these conditions improve so you can sneak around and kill enemies silently.

Also adding to the realism was tinnitus and vision blurring from explosions - get too close and although you might escape damage, these impairments could get you killed anyway.

Speaking of getting killed (and being human and all) you can of course take damage. First you'll have to deal with a 'bleeding' condition, which comes up as a green, yellow or red - in order of severity - teardrop-shaped icon on the right of the screen. You can pick up bandages to remove this condition, and health packs actually get some health back.

Weapons are also very customisable. We were shown a M16-like weapon that had a grenade launcher, scope and silencer attached, which Sharpe explained could be found or bought in the game. And they're just not for show. We saw grenades fly and the THQ representative playing the game made ample use of the scope to pick off opponents.

One thing we noticed during a area change was a loading screen. Sharpe said that not only do these loading screens appear between areas, but also as you walk about the world. So the game unfortunately doesn't feature a seamless world as we once believed.

'There aren't levels so to speak, but there are level loads when you go into areas to bring in new assets,' explained Sharpe.

As we made our way through this new area - a sewer system of sorts - a Geiger counter made itself very apparent; it's clicking and beeping warning of impending radiation. As you might expect, if you're dumb enough to ignore the warnings, you will get radiation sickness. While iodine and Prussian blue don't make an appearance, you can drink vodka to cure yourself. 'The scary part is - not just the guys at GSC [but] people in Ukraine believe that,' said Sharpe.

The end of the demo came as quite a surprise. As our stalker trudged through a long, dark tunnel, we were suddenly set upon by a mutant that took control of our mind. A red head-with-brain-inside icon appeared on the right of the screen, and that was that.

According to the THQ representative who played through the demo for us: 'The guy that killed me there was a mutant who takes control of your mind, sucks you towards him and rips your face off and throws you back again.' The mutant then proceeded to walk over and start eating our corpse. Lovely.

So, what has changed in the game? Sharpe was able to enlighten us.

'There isn't that much that's been cut … I've made some minor changes. There were some types of mutants that I pulled out. I took out sleeping and eating - a couple of the minor RPG elements. I also shortened the amount of dialog in the dialog trees - there [was a lot] of back and forth that wasn't needed.'

What was most surprising however was Sharpe revealing that 'I may or may not take out the vehicles - I haven't decided yet'. Vehicles were a big part of the game's original feature-set. If they were to be removed it would pose more than a few design problems, considering the size of the 30-square kilometre area covered in the game.

Finally, we asked about the engine. When STALKER started development, DirectX 8 was all the rage. GSC hasn't been idle and there's now DX 9 capability. 'The DX 9 renderer is up. That has been put in over the last year,' said Sharpe.
We left the demo confident that the game is finally on track. Here's hoping for a Duke Nukem Forever closed-door session next E3.