How Shadow of Chernobyl changed during development (Oblivion Lost prototypes and beta versions)

Stalker's Shadow Chernobyl is one of my favorite games of all time. It is an open world fps from 2007 with an extraordinary atmosphere and a dangerous but captivating world. It was way ahead of its time and is one of the few single-player experiences that I still pick up from time to time. Repeat once every few years, but today we're not going to talk about the games that most of us have played. Instead, I want to show you a

shadow

of Chernobyles that has not seen the light of day. This game is a notorious victim. Due to its own ambitions and hype, according to many, it was an excellent and innovative experience, but it was developed over six long years and during that time, this game went through many important and sometimes dramatic changes, which many fans did not notice.

They liked them because the developers promised them something completely different and today we are going to try to understand why this happened and what exactly went wrong. The story of Shadow of Chernobyl's

development

is fascinating for many reasons and the removed content isn't even the craziest part. Such drastic revisions during the course. Game

development

is not unique, but in most cases the general public will never know about it. Most publishers and studios prefer not to reveal their games in the early stages of production because there is always the danger of setting expectations too high and not delivering everything promised. features or simply not making the game good enough in the eyes of fans can backfire on the release date and despite the common misconception, in most cases such changes couldn't happen because the developers greedy people lied on purpose to trick players into buying the game.

Development is difficult and often requires making difficult compromises to create something that people enjoy playing and that's what the developers of Shadow of Chernobyl learned the hard way in the gc game world of 2001. The studios that created the Stalker franchise could not have been considered as Completely inexperienced developers have just released their first game, the real-time strategy Codex of European Wars, which has become a great success both critically and sales due to the great success of its debut game, the studio became more confident and announced Shadow of Chernobyl. a few months after starting its development, to be fair, it is worth clarifying that at that time they were developing something completely different and had almost nothing in common with the games we have in the end, no one would have imagined that this project would change much after the initial announcement and would require six years to finish it and in the case of the

shadow

of Chernobyl we have a unique opportunity to follow all those changes step by step unlike other documentaries about the shadow of Chernobyl in this video we are going to focus on the alpha and

beta

versions

of this game , I've played almost 100 of those unfinished builds and

prototypes

from different years of Shadow of Chernobyl development to recreate a clear timeline for the events of those 6 years.

I also read dozens of interviews and post-mortem articles related to this game and now I will try to show you the most important milestones in the story of how the shadow of Chernobyl was created. You will see features and locations that went through several redesigns or were even completely removed from the final version of the game, this video aims to give you a better understanding of the phenomenon of this series and why it is followed by thousands of fans around the world and even If you're not too interested in the stalker franchise, this documentary can give you an interesting insight into how video games are created.

It's going to be a long journey, so sit back and enjoy the story of how a small team from Ukraine created one of the most unique first-person shooters of all time. Doll started in 2001. When GC announced there were new games called Oblivion Lost, it was supposed to be a futuristic team-based first-person shooter made with a new X-Ray engine. This gameplay footage you can see now It is the first known alpha version of Oblivion.

lost

which has the number 749, was basically a prototype compiled in April 2001 that has a single level and a bunch of placeholder items that were taken from other games, for example the only weapon that is available in this version is A Quake 3 Arena Railgun In the game resources there are 3D models and sound files for other weapons such as a rocket launcher and a mysterious m-gun, but they were not enabled in this build.

The only maps that are available in 749 are unknown Aztec ruins by default, the level is empty but After some slight editing of the script files you can spawn some aliens with rudimental AI, judging by the code those aliens were known as jumpers and engines, probably due to their behavior pattern, those enemies never appeared again in any other builds and were disabled in 749 by default, probably due to the fact that colliding with them causes an app crash, considering this It is one of the first

versions

of the X-ray engine, many basic things are not finished and the highest possible screen resolution available for this prototype is 1280x1024, the game featured first and third person camera modes, but in 749 still there was no character model, so you basically played as a floating railgun.

Interestingly, in this version the water was a surface that you can walk on, so we were probably playing as some kind of holy spirit, well, joking aside, the next known version of Oblivion

lost

has the number 756 and is dated June 2001. It's another tech demo with some empty levels to test a helicopter vehicle. Those maps were almost identical to each other. They had a simple shape. Animated textured terrain and helipad. This build has almost no sound effects, but at least this time they added a character model. It was taken from Codename Outbreak, another fps game created by gsc that was released in 2001.

This game and Oblivion Lost actually had many similarities, but were made in completely different engines and by different teams within the studio. The player model didn't have motion animations yet, but the physics and controls of the helicopter worked well and it even supported different camera modes. Another Lost Oblivion built with the number 788 was shown at the European Computer Fair in September 2001. This version is interesting because it was the first time the game was shown to the public, it was not supposed to be playable, the camera in this version has a predefined trajectory and is flying around the level in a loop to show off the capabilities of the x-ray engine, so it is possible to remove these restrictions and allow free movement around the demo level apparently there was a minigun with parallel spinning animation This weapon briefly appeared in the first Stalker Oblivion Lost Prototypes but was eventually cut from the game a few years later, it's worth mentioning that the 788 was also used to test the helicopter's artificial intelligence.

I guess that's why this tech demo occasionally crashes after a few minutes of playing it without camera restrictions, the last known version of Oblivion Lost was compiled. in February 2002 and was numbered 1098. This build had three different versions that were built on the same day. The first two

prototypes

were mostly similar while the last one had some major differences unlike the first and second versions which have a male player model and fn f2000 as an alternative weapon and sediment build, the protagonist was female and had a groza assault rifle instead, wars mentioned that there is another weapon in the game resources that is called a protector and it is a shotgun that later appeared only in Stalker Call of Priebus and yet it was already here in 2002, as As for gameplay, this version was supposed to be shown at another Western trade show, so it was the most polished playable demo of the original Oblivion Lost concept.

It has a proper heart with a live radar bar and ammo counter. Also improved character animations in third person mode, the only NPCs you can find in 1098 are robots that were called auto support modules in this version, they present themselves as allies and enemies of the player and have basic AI but functional. also the list of commands for units in your squad, but it doesn't seem to do anything and was just a placeholder. The only map available in this build had Aztec ruins similar to the ones we saw in 749. It also included an underground. part you could explore, but other than wander around and shoot some robots, there was nothing else to do in this build.

Initially, the story of Oblivion Lost was supposed to be about a military research team traveling and exploring alien worlds which was going to be a linear story based fps game with many cutscenes and dialogues between the team members, the developers planned Create at least 15 levels in completely different environments, including huge futuristic cities and tropical wildlands. Oblivion Lost was going to have rideable vehicles like helicopters and hoverboards. On each planet you'll fight unique types of enemies, but after the faint sails of the codenamed Outbreak which was also a sci-fi fps with Steam-based gameplay, the development team began to feel that the original concept was not as exciting as they imagined.

First, shortly after introducing build 1098 to the public, gst decided to completely revoke the concept of the next game, after brief consideration, the team chose baris and arcadia steratsky's roadside picnic novella as a new source of inspiration. and that's how Oblivion Lost was reborn. For the first time, once work on the new game concept began, to highlight those changes, GC decided to add the abbreviation Stalker to the title. There are a lot of fun theories about what this acronym means, but the truth is, it doesn't. It has no real meaning and periods were added between the letters to avoid potential copyright issues.

The belief in Lost remained in the title because gsc already spent resources on the game market and did not want to completely waste them initially. mention of the Chernobyl exclusion zone in this new concept, but instead the game was supposed to take place in Crimea, the developers plan to write a story that takes place in the alternate universe where the Chernobyl disaster has never occurred and the construction of a nuclear power plant in Crimea was successfully completed, but shortly afterward a mysterious catastrophe occurred that contaminated and blocked the entire peninsula. This zone concept was close to what we saw in the final game, but the terrain was supposed to be completely different.

The maps were going to have a Many mountains and canyons with rivers and dense forests cutting through the terrain behind the mountains were going to help render massive levels with the X-ray engine, but in March 2002, after watching a documentary about the disaster of Chernobyl, Sergey Gregorovich, the company's executive director. At first he insisted on removing the Crimean setting and replacing it with something more familiar to a wider audience. The team was strongly against this change because they thought that making a game about such a recent catastrophe was inappropriate to prove their point and inspire the team.

Grigorovich took some key developers from Oblivion Lost on a trip to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Together they visited the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the abandoned city of Pripyt with its outskirts. The team was deeply impressed by what they saw and after that journey there was no longer any doubt about what game they wanted to make in May 2002, the development team compiled the first alpha version of stalker

oblivion

lost build 1114 was a test of a new concept and was shown to the public for the first time at e3 2002 , this stack demo. it has two levels, the factory which will later become part of the agroprom research institute and the first version of the coden, the factory level has two variations with daylight and dusk light boxes, this map was used to show enemies like military rats and zombies, and they have already had fundamental AI, the third person camera is still there and allows us to take a look at the new protagonist model that was used in all the annual marketing images, including the thumbnail of this video along with some of lost ancient Oblivion weapons like the Minigun and F2000. in this build where I added new familiar weapons like lr300 and also known as 74. for minigun was the last time it was available during the game, two audio and texture files for this weapon remained in the assets throughout development and were removed only closer to the release date here is another fan tidbit about this f2000 textured build.

You can see a joke message from the developer that basically says what they are going to do today, don't tell me they are going towork, the endless golden compilation is quite different from what we have in the end despite the sky boxes with prepaid and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1114, I still had this Crimean terrain from the first concept of the zone, Unlike the factory level, it was completely empty and had no npcs generated. The starting point was at another factory that was located at the top of the hill. This building was eventually removed from the final version of the map, but was shown in many official gameplay videos and promotional art.

Another construction that was prepared for a public demonstration had the number 1154 and was shown at the gaming convention that took place in Leipzig in August 2002. It also featured two levels, but the map with the Aquaprom factory was significantly expanded and received the scale which remained largely the same until the release date, the level of detail in the codon was also improved with slight differences in the terrain, for example the factory from the previous construction was moved from the top of the hill to ground level Because of the way the images that you can see on the televisions in the final version of the game were recorded in this The construction of the artificial intelligence system was expanded slightly and the humanoid enemies learned some advanced tricks such as rolling and lying on the ground.

The developers also did additional work to improve the sound and graphics capabilities of the X-Ray Engine, but the most important addition of this build was driveable vehicles or, to be more correct, a car model in place of the protagonist. At this point, the vehicle system was completely separated from the normal game and looked a little strange with its slow field of view and crazy car physics. During 2002, the development team was busy building and improving the technical foundation for the future game. The X-Ray Engine received multiplayer support and a new physics system based on the Open Dynamics Engine.

GSC also partnered with Nvidia to optimize and display the Lost Stalker's Oblivion on its latest graphics cards. After completing work on the design document outlining all story details and planned gameplay features, the team began adding actively new levels and other content to the game. The next version worth mentioning was compiled in March 2003 and had number 1465. It was shown to all the major Western publishers at the game developers conference and that's how the game got noticed because a few months later it was officially announced. which will publish Stalker Oblivion Lost on the global market with this version, the developers improved the vehicle. system, they added a visible character model for the first and third person camera modes.

The car physics and controls were also adjusted on foot and the vehicle gameplay was still separate, but it was a major milestone for the development team. Another important addition in this version is a new map that is known as Junk and despite its name, it hardly resembles the levels we have in the final game, everything was completely different from the terrain and landmarks to the combination of colors and atmosphere in 1465 instead of the square shape it had. had in its final version this level was more linear, it is so strange that this map has

changed

so much while the agroprom remained practically intact during all those years, finally, in this construction for the first time where anomalies and radiation damage were introduced, There are also lightning textures. in the game resources, but was not available during the game, but the anomalies in this build were invisible, so the only way to recognize them was the sounds of the Geiger counter.

The use of lightning and particle effects for the anomaly sphere was added only a few months later in the next build. Another playable tech demo was prepared for E3 2003 and is interesting for several reasons. One of the things that makes Construction 1472 so important to our story is the first appearance of one of the most iconic locations in this series, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, unlike the previous one. final version where this level was divided into two parts here it was a single map that has an impressive scale and level of detail even by modern standards at this point the power plant was almost empty with a group of lone stalkers that were supposed to They were to show the The work of the new artificial intelligence system, the AI ​​in the Stalker franchise, is known as Airlife and was one of the most ambitious features of the upcoming game.

The developers were going to make an ultimate open world simulation where all the characters lived their own lives and were not completely dependent on the player's actions. Stalkers were supposed to roam freely around the game world, accept quests from merchants, and even compete with the player for artifacts. The simulation was separated into local and global planes and was supposed to create a unique and unpredictable experience. because all the living players in this build were in their early stages of development and worked only on a single level scale, but the humanoid npcs already knew some tricks like picking up weapons and ammunition from corpses, another important feature of build 1472 It is a new level that was known as that city was a medium sized map with many unique buildings and the player could enter and explore most of them in the early design documents this place was supposed to be the base of freedom the first faction that was added to stalker

oblivion

lost, interestingly, you can also find photos of developers in the hall of fame that is located in the town square, that city has appeared in several promotional screenshots and was supposed to play an important role In the main story we'll talk more about this map once it appears again in the latest

beta

versions of the game, the next line is build 1475 from July 2003, which is highly unstable because it was created specifically to test aerial life, but It is important to our story because it had a lot of the content that was removed from the final version first in this build, the developers tested the Chimera AI, a mutant that first appeared only in Call of Pritivity, it seems that this mutant was close to complete, but if you try to kill that thing. the app will lock the vehicle system received another revision and now the player should have opened the doors before getting into the car but for some reason the physics also

changed

and this made it almost impossible to drive also in build 1475, the team Development The first version of the player inventory screen was added at this point, the inventory had an ammo building section, a 3D preview for selected items, and options to sleep, eat, and use anteride, unlike the version ending of Shadow of Chernobyl, in this build, the anomaly detectors and the knives.

They were available as items you could equip the armor belt with, and equippable anomaly detectors were removed from the game only as the release date approached. The highlight of this construction is the Rostock factory and its stock that was represented as wild territory was not the same. and bar in the final game, but a completely different map according to all the design documents, this level was supposed to be a nest of bloodsucking mutants which eventually became a trademark of the stalker franchise in this factory, the player even had They have to fight against the most dangerous and experienced ones. bloodsucker in the area Fun fact, this map is almost an identical copy of the real factory with the same name that can be found in the cave in Ukraine, although it is not so surprising considering that for several years the gc office was here and was carefully recreated in the game. with a lot of fun details like the door with a plaque that mentions Sergeiger Garage as director of this factory.

In the end, this level did not appear in the single-player campaign, but it was not completely removed from the game, but rather a few years later. was reworked into the map for a multiplayer mode and was available in all currently released major stalker games. Finally, in Build 1475 it made its first appearance, another later deleted map known as Generators. This level contains mysterious sphere-shaped objects that were presumably the reasons. For emissions or as they are also known explosions, it is an extremely dangerous storm that was going to occur unpredictably during the game, but in the shadow of Chernobyl they remained only as written events.

The other notable points on this map were the town with a cemetery and the army. base with entrance to the underground laboratory, this laboratory is known as x18 and was also available and is built as a separate level, so it seems that it did not change much in the final version of the game, the entry point to the slab was moved to Dark Volley and were the first abandoned laboratories the player visited on their journey. As for the generators, this map appeared in several promotional artworks and not only for the shadow of Chernobyl but also for the clear sky, but this level has never been available.

On the main line, stalker sets and generators were later moved to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Another important milestone in our history is build 1511 that was prepared for the 2003 gaming convention. It had virtually the same content as the previous prototype, with the exception of three. new levels that are familiar to fans of this series underground nuclear power plants army warehouses and the red forest at this stage the last two maps were incomplete the red forest featured only the brain-scorching facility the size of the army warehouses was the same as the final version, but the part outside the base had basic terrain with nothing except some trees and roads.

Another test version was compiled in October 2003 and was numbered 1558. It was mainly used to test the vehicle physics and artificial intelligence of new mutants as new types of bloodsuckers. of drivable vehicles, including trucks and even convertibles, were available in the first version of the yantari map. This is another level that is quite recognizable compared to its final version. Jantar from build 1558 had completely different terrain and featured buildings that never appeared anywhere else, unfortunately the btr-70 that can be found on this map is just a static object and you can't drive it, which is a real shame.

This build also marks the first appearance of another iconic map, Abandoned Newbie City, although some fans of the series still believe this level was much larger and more open and the stalkers were blue and lost. This is another misconception that is not entirely true in the early stages of development. The pre-release had a slightly different design, but the scale was closer to what we have. left in the shadow of Chernobyl, the most notable change is the lack of an apartment building separating the starting point from the main square; It was added closer to the release date to fix noticeable drops in frame rate that occurred whenever the player was facing in this direction.

The final note for the 2003 prototype was compiled in December and was numbered 1632, was the first version of the game to feature social interactions between stalkers. The stalker franchise games can hardly be imagined without such bonfires. conversations and this is the moment where it all started, although at this point it was just a scheduled event, I still had serious problems with route finding. Another interesting thing about this build is the early versions of dialogue and commercial heart, although I didn't have any options available. However, it is also worth mentioning that the territories around the base in the army warehouses were expanded and received more detailed terrain.

The end of the year was marked by a leak of one of the old alpha versions from 2002 and it was deeply shocking news for gst the prototype. that appeared on the web has almost identical contents to the 1114 build that you may have seen at the beginning of this part of our story, it was well received by fans and the content of this alpha version was significantly outdated at this point, but this incident became In a wake-up call to the team, the game's development was taking too long and they couldn't keep adding new features and maps forever.

The release deadline was approaching and by the end of 2003 the developers had created enough levels. and other content, now it was time to put all those assets together and make something playable out of it. The last lost versions of Stalker Oblivion that deserve our attention have numbers 18, 28 and 1835. The first was used to test the AI ​​of another batch. of new mutants likedogs and boars and also introduced some new types of anomalies in this build, weapon attachments, consumables like food and medkit and different types of armor were added, there was also a unique rusty car with broken windows and broken seats that never appeared. in any other version it's probably the same car that was mentioned in one of the anecdotes you can hear around campfires in the final game.

Another feature of this alpha version is a mockup of the pda interface, at this stage the only working functionality of the pda was the map with some icons and filters and a connection tab where the player could communicate with other stalkers, so those interactions were limited and most of the time the npcs just told you to be mad, it wasn't very friendly but considering how dangerous the area was. I can't blame them for being too suspicious. Finally a few days later the development team compiled version 1835 which had another batch of new maps, one of them was an obscure download and is so different from the final version that I wouldn't have recognized it.

If it weren't for his name in terms of terrain and layout, he was close to trash and that's probably why he was completely roommates later, according to the layout documents, this map was supposed to be home to two rival bandit factions. , Black Slime and Evil Dead. The idea of ​​different clans in gangs was eventually scrapped, but the black slime was supposedly later revoked in the Forsaken, which has become one of the factions in Stalker Clear Sky. Another striking difference is the red forest, or to be more precise, the lack of a forest on this map. The cultural part remained intact, but the rest of the level was now occupied by huge piles of garbage.

To be fair, this layout actually looked more like what it was like in the real Chernobyl exclusion zone because the red forest was razed and buried in waste cemeteries shortly after the disaster. but still this version of the map was a bit boring, so it's one of the few revisions I can get behind it. The last interesting thing about this build is the first appearance of x10, which at this stage was called the war lab, at this point it wasn't as linear as it has become in the final version, although it was as empty and boring as you could remember.

This map was originally planned to have the entrance to Prippet's underground, but due to deadlines, this idea was scrapped and remained a dead end like all the others. Another spin on the game and prepaid Undergrounds appeared just a few years later in Call of Pritivity in February 2004, which announced in its financial report that the game was renamed once again for the last time, the title was changed to Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl and was a sign that the publisher was preparing for the final marketing push, a new planned release date was set for late 2004, but soon after something went wrong, as you may have noticed during those two years in which the game was known as Stalker Oblivion lost its range.

The project was constantly expanding, but the most important scene, the actual gameplay at this point, was still missing, the whole project was just a bunch of scattered levels and technical demos, but that didn't stop the studio from actively promoting the game and promising that is going to be the next big scene, all this fuss is the reason for the misconception that once Oblivion Lost was removed from the game's title, the studio was forced to tone down the original concept, but in reality the developers They started turning their ideas into something playable only when the game became known as Shadow of Chernobyl shortly after the title change, GSC prepared a new demo for the press which had the number 1844, was shown at GDC 2004 and had several levels. test to show off the weapons and physics of the game on a shooting range that journalists could try out. a few dozen different weapons and even practice with moving targets for the game's physics display.

There was a room with different types of destructible objects and also examples of close-up physics and dynamic lighting. The physics engine in this build looks pretty impressive even by modern standards. I can imagine the reaction of journalists who saw this demo for the first time in 2004, but the highlight of this version was the first appearance of the mission system for this exhibition, the developers prepared a special mission that took place in the army warehouses When does the game begin. In the building that will be used as Liberty Headquarters in the final version, an injured stalker asks players to find the bandit known as the Dog.

He stole the artifact to whom he gave the quest, so you must kill this bandit and bring back the stolen thing. goods to the merchant After completing this mission, the player is free to explore the level and observe a live simulation in action as a vertical section of the next game. This demo was doing a great job despite the lack of peaceful NPCs outside of the quest giver and the merchant built in 1844 was creating the feeling of a dynamic living world, mutants and stalkers wandered around and made their own scene without any script and overall attention to detail was quite impressive.

The advanced physics were here not just for show, but were used in the game as Well, for example, the player could kill the dying stalker by throwing the lightning bolt at his head. Technically this demo looked pretty good for its time, the models and environment were nicely textured and well animated and also featured dynamic weather with day and night cycles in the interface. It was far from final, but it presented such an interesting scene as a map tracking the movement of NPCs in real time. The only drawback was the lack of built-in support for background music, so at this point, to fix this problem, the developers created a batch file that was being opened. the playlist through a third-party audio player when starting the game, what was created was prepared for ambient music tracks number 2 and battle loop xp, they were written by a dark ambient composer known as musee, who will create most of the Shadow of Chernobyl soundtrack. and clear sky built in 1865 in august 2004 was the first that looked like a real game although it was still quite far from the final state this alpha version had 10 levels that were connected to each other including completely new maps along with which I have already seen that the The game began in the Cedar Ridge bunker in the Cordon, but the only mission available in this version was to steal the briefcase from a military blog post.

Outside of this mission, there wasn't much else to do at this point except wander around. around and watch the live simulation work on a larger scale. One of the new levels that were available in this build was known as the bar and included territories around the Rostock factory built in 1475. It had nothing in common with the map with the same name from the final game it was a small town with a lot open space and the bar itself was located in the basement of an abandoned grocery store the only person you could have found here was the waiter who was going to give you a quest but it seems that the quest logic was not implemented yet, for which the game crashes every time you try to talk to him about this topic.

Another interesting place on this map is the base of duty, which has become one of the most important factions in the finals. In the game, their base was located in a vegetable store, which is quite appropriate if you ask me, players might also have witnessed a funny scene of service members sleeping in the basement of the store. There were a few reasons why this level was completely scrapped a few months later. Firstly, the developers suddenly realized that it was too boring, this map had too many empty areas and lacked interesting landmarks. Secondly, it had a lot of geometry and the overall drainage required a significant overhaul.

Eventually this map was removed from the game and location. from the stalker bar was moved to the level known as wild territory, which we will see soon. The previous version of yantari was expanded and featured more detailed terrain, just like in the final game, this level was supposed to be the place with unusual psychic activity that was studied by scientists from the camp on the edge of the map, judging By ancient design documents, the source of those psychic emissions was assumed to be the missing creature, a mysterious mutant that could also create illusions and lure its prey. death traps, but in the end it was revoked to the miraculous machine that was more of a tool than a living creature with its own will in the 1865 construction, the x-16 undergrounds were part of the main level, but were quite simplistic at this point.

The only interesting segments of this laboratory were the room with the missing creature and the subway station, as the surface part of Yantari in its current form was much larger than its final version, but at the same time it felt oversaturated with everything. Those Different buildings and other things in this level, you can find two abandoned towns, oil refineries, several defensive structures and many other artificial objects with an unknown purpose. Some of those buildings have noticeably off proportions and look out of place on this map and most of the textures. were made in low quality for the rest of the year, Jantar remained largely untouched, and eventually the development team decided to revoke this map from scratch.

Another interesting feature of this build was the new types of mutants known as Burr and Tilde Giant, and while Pseodo Giant got by. To reach the final game, Euro has become one of those unfortunate mutants who had to wait for their chance to shine until the abyss opened. He was a dwarf-like creature that used his telekinetic powers to protect himself and attack the enemies there. Some types of artifacts, although they were presented only as part of the environment, not as interactive objects that you could pick up and use, but the most surprising feature of the 1865 construction was the consumable animation for vodka.

Well, technically, the protagonist didn't actually drink. vodka and it was just a looped animation sequence, but it's still impressive that someone actually put the effort into making this animation in the first place. I bet he was cut from the final version. There still aren't many games that actually show the drinking process. The main goal of this alpha version was to test an early version of the live system on a global scale, so, as you might expect, it was a bit broken at this point, airlife has already been able to create a credible simulation of the zone, especially in terms of mutant behavior, but the humanoid npcs often lost their minds and did crazy things like ignoring threats right in front of them.

This alpha version was quite unstable. the fight between npcs somewhere in other parts of the game world was causing a crash of the app. Very often, also in this version, even the helicopters had regents free from the scripts and now you can see for yourself why they appeared in the final game only as part of the scripted events. At this point, Shadow of Chernobyl looked very promising, but there was still too much going on. a lot of unfinished stuff and it wasn't just an unstable living simulation some of the levels had serious problems with geometry and textures places like the Cedarwich bunker lacked dynamic lighting sources the sound mix was strange and not yet supported for background music the interface was missing crucial functionalities such as a menu to take loot from corpses, the planned story was not yet properly implemented, it was clear that the game would not make it to the holiday 2004 release window, for which dhq agreed to delay shadow of

chernobyl

until the first quarter of 2005.

If they knew this was just the beginning, the development team was doing everything they could not to miss another deadline at the same time they still had to promote the game , so in September 2004 they prepared another version for the press exhibition they had. The number 902 was shown in igramania, one of the largest gaming magazines in the post-Soviet region, which eventually made a series of documentary videos of the last few hours based on this build. Everyone, including the developers themselves, believed that the game was close to completion and that it will be. Released soon, the build itself was basically a more polished 1865 with only three first levels, but featured additional quests and content.

The main objective of the game was to find a gunman, which is basically an English translation of the nickname srilok, but at this point this mission was just a placeholder, the developers finally implemented background music functionality, lighting was improved and theuser interface, they also added to the player's PDA the first entries of a massive zone encyclopedia that described mutant artifact factions and other information about the game world since 902 was basically just a demo version, it only focused on the first impression and that impression was really good. The graphics and sound design were exceptional for their time.

The game constantly exuded feelings of sadness and dread. The area felt like a truly dangerous and unpredictable place thanks to aerial life. The game could have generated tons of unique situations that weren't meant to happen in the new game. NPCs roamed the levels and interacted with each other. Military forces patrolled and stalkers even searched for artifacts. The developers added some scripted events like the stalker being injured in one of the abandoned houses or another stalker who was raided by bandits and asked the player for help, although those scripts did not work properly and were added only for demonstration purposes, but overall, At this stage, Shadow of Chernobyl was a true sandbox game.

In essence, the upcoming version has an interesting background because it is the only official one that gc released it on its community forum in 2009 due to the demand of its fans who still dreamed of the shadow of Chernobyl as shown in the old gameplay videos created in 1935. As of October 2004 it was basically a complete version of 902 and was the closest thing to the original vision of the zone that the developers wanted to create. This alpha version had 17 levels, which is almost all the maps that were planned for the final game, the only missing piece. It was the city of Priebit even though it was clearly visible on a global map the dark volley was already replaced by a draft version of a new terrain that was missing many details which makes the lack of prepayment even more strange the old one bar was replaced with the wild territory which is more or less the same as what we have seen in the final game in this version, it was still not separated into two levels and was a much more dangerous place with many controllers and other mutants wandering around the legendary El bar 100 Rats was located in the same old fallout shelter, but it was pretty empty at this point and the bartender looked like a normal stalker along with the generators, the dead city, and other maps we've seen before 1935 featured a single level that appeared alone This construction was known as the Marshes and, while it shared some landmarks with the clear sky map of the same name, this version had a noticeably different layout, also being located far north of the area, while in Clear Sky was As the starting point of the game, this level was supposed to be the home of the doctor, one of the player's allies and one of the most important characters in the story of the shadow of Chernobyl, since we have seen all the levels that were originally planned. for the game it's time to put all the pieces together and see the whole picture according to the 2003 design documents, the developers planned to turn the game into a kind of investigation story in which the player searched for seven pieces of information about the origin of the zone and unlike the final version of Shadow of Chernobyl, the game did not force the player to follow a specific path to achieve this objective.

At the beginning of the game, the player was supposed to receive clues about the last known location of two documents. with the information I was looking for, but those clues weren't simple waypoint markers like they do in most open world games, instead you were basically getting a direction on where to look for them, like finding an underground laboratory abandoned somewhere in the dark or something even more so. vague as if another stalker found the documents the last time he was seen in the army warehouses, the initial set of clues was supposed to be random in each new game, although the player could not predict where he would find all the information this time, Each level was supposed to be some kind of puzzle that you had to solve on your own or with the help of other stalkers.

I've mentioned before that one of the main planned features of the aerial life simulation was to have stalkers compete with the player. Imagine if those crazy people at gsc wanted to make npcs compete with you not only for artifacts and loot but also for that information, other stalkers could have exchanged those documents or even tried to find them all and complete the game instead of the player. Each faction also searched for this information and had their own intentions on what they wanted to do with it, even the members of the monolith were supposed to actively participate in the search for these important documents.

The remains of this idea can be seen when looking at freedom and duty. factions their contradictory ideologies were added not just for traditional reasons to help one of those factions in their quest was going to significantly change the ending of the game. It's hard to deny that the concept of a single-player game where the player is not the center of everything is quite ambitious, to say the least. Hell, in the year 2020 we still don't have something like that at least in the AAA market, where some random NPC can win the game before the player imagines Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but with a mercenary system that actually works as they compete with you for the contracts or they can even kill some of the cosmos cult members now you can understand why people were so excited about the shadow of Chernobyl in the early 2000s this game could have become something really innovative unfortunately one thing is to plan to do something and the other is to make it happen, I know. firsthand because this struggle is the same in all creative jobs and game development is really no different.

I hate to do this, but it's time to get back on the ground because by the end of 2004 the development team had begun to realize that their ideas were a little more ambitious than what they could have achieved in practice. and build 1935 is a prime example of why gsc was forced to develop the original concept: the game was supposed to be released in early 2005, but a functional story was still missing, even the side quests were not implemented, but the game had the same three missions that you could have taken on in Codon and nothing more, but the worst thing about this version was that the problems of the living set became really noticeable on a larger scale in At first glance, everything worked very well, it really seemed like if the world of Shadow of Chernobyl wasn't player-centered, but the more you played this better version, the more it started to fall apart after a few transitions between levels.

Alive was going crazy. and could spawn literally dozens of mutants and npcs in one place. Such disappointing backs coupled with frequent crashes and broken save files made the game almost unplayable and ruined the entire illusion of the zone's living world, so we've probably reached the most important point. point of our story about the shadow of Chernobyl according to various articles and interviews about this game, the fall of 2004 was the time when gst had to completely revoke the original concept of the zone, the developers claimed that the main reason behind this decision was the feedback I received from the first major playtests, they said the game was praised for its impressive freedom and clever AI, but at the same time it was an unpredictable beast.

The shadow of Chernobyl could have generated tons of memorable and unique situations, but in most cases all of them. Those exciting events were happening somewhere outside of the player's site and without clear instructions on where to go and what to do next for most players, the game was becoming a very boring experience where you could wander aimlessly for hours. and literally nothing happened. which is why most aaa developers are still too afraid to create true sandbox games with a non-linear story and a minimal amount of scripts and in the 2000s it was especially difficult to convince the publisher to continue development after such negative comments about the work. but honestly, there's a saying that bothers me about all of this.

I don't deny that playtesting in 2004 actually played a role in the decision about the future of the shadow of Chernobyl, but with all due respect to the developers, all that talk about how awesome it is. it was a live simulation and the unprecedented freedom players had in this game just doesn't add up because i played dozens of different builds and basically followed the paths gc went down all these years and i haven't seen anything truly comparable to this latest game sandbox that was supposedly tested in late 2004. While I can't deny that what they achieved at this stage with Alive was truly impressive, it was still quite far from the scale they achieved. were meant to reach and the lack of any signs of the planned story about searching for documents about the area, not to mention that even the basic side quest system doesn't give much of a destination either, maybe we're still missing some better versions of this period that they had all. those bits of story that are missing and alive without tons of critical bugs, but based on what I've seen in previous versions somehow, I really doubt that personally.

I'm still convinced that doing this review was a big mistake. Yes, at this stage, the game was riddled with bugs. backs and problems, but it clearly had huge potential and with more work gc could have succeeded with its original plans, but unfortunately it would have required a lot more than a few months to clean up this whole mess and if those playtests had been done in the versions that We are not surprised that he was not convinced that the sandbox without a linear story in the scripts was something that the shadow of Chernobyl really needed, especially considering that 2004 was a golden age of linear first-person shooters, this year the world has seen the launch. from half-life 2 far cry the chronicles of friday escaped from bocce bay and many other great games of this genre the world was simply not prepared for something like the shadow of

chernobyl

that existed in 2004 in any case that was when the dream died and The nightmare has begun 2005 was the most difficult year for the developers of Shadow of Chernobyl, according to feedback from the game's testers, gc began work on adding a new linear story while also trying to fix live issues.

One of its solutions was the so-called smart zones. While they were supposed to attach some NPCs to specific locations, the development team had to completely redesign several maps to fit the new, more focused gameplay paradigm. It was a painful process and the lack of experience in developing such large and ambitious projects has started to cause many serious problems for the team. Version 2205 from April 2005 was the first result of this massive overhaul of the game and yes, unfortunately, the difference was really noticeable. I honestly experienced culture shock when I released this version right after. Playing until 1965. Without a doubt, it was a measured visual downgrade that the developers probably had to make to improve performance and make things even worse.

All background sounds and music were missing from this compilation and the old atmosphere was completely ruined. It felt like a completely different game for this better version, the development team finally added a story and side quests which to be honest isn't a bad thing, you were able to play for the first few hours of the story which was more or less similar to what we did. In the final version, at the beginning of the game, the player had a strange vision in which a mysterious voice supposedly the grumpy warlock told him to kill the gunman, also known as srilok, once the player was gaining control over the protagonist, was received with cedarwich. who briefly explains the basics of survival in the area and provides the first tutorial mission.

The story ends abruptly the moment you reach the bar and embark on the mission to find documents from the x18 laboratory. This build did not have the antare map along with In some other late game levels, although the player could not acquire psychic protection from the environmentalists to reach the north of the zone and even with the help of cheats, passing through the red forest was almost impossible due to constant crashes with the addition of the main story. Shadow of Chernobyl finally started to feel like a proper game rather than a captivating but empty tech demo, but at the same time that feeling of a living, breathing world from the older versions was lost to oblivion - yes, that was an intended blessing , sorry, I couldn't. resist anyway, the living system was still there, but in a more limited form,some stalkers and mutants could move freely between levels but most of the npcs were forever attached to those new smart zones compared to the 1935 build this felt like a scripted playground which was fun. to waste time for a few hours, but it could have been something much more than this, since for other changes in build 2205 there were quite a few, but most of the things will be interesting only to hardcore fans of the stalker franchise.

Try to highlight only the most important details of this beta version before moving on to the next one. First of all, the cordon received another revision and this time it had many more hills. The iconic old factory of older buildings was replaced by the familiar one. parking lot that was occupied by bandits, just like in the release version, there was a side quest related to this place, but instead of rescuing the captured stalker, you had to steal the box with dynamite, it was probably the same box that the rookie village wolf. with him in the final game, so we'll never know how he intended to use him.

The trash was slightly modified and received the first version of a vehicle graveyard, although it served no real purpose. At this point the agroprom and its undergrounds were separated from each other and the wild territory was also divided into two parts like in the final game, but the most interesting changes occurred with the dark valley in build 2205, it was almost twice as big than the final version of this map, the factory was hidden The entrance to the laboratory x18 is the same size as the bandits space in the nose and part of the level and also plays the role of the monolith faction outpost.

Build 2205 featured a surprising amount of work on side quests and scripted events, for example. After entering the dark valley, you can surrender to the bandit patrol, ending up in the cage at their base and witness a cutscene where the bandits execute a stalker and throw his body into the pit with their bloodsucker, although due to voice placeholders for npcs in this At this point, the scene seemed quite comical. Many side missions that appeared in this version ended safely in the final version of the game, such as the infamous duty strike squad at the freedom base in the army warehouses, but in some cases there were slight differences like that.

The robbery scene you witnessed when you first arrived at the junkyard in patch 2205 also included a broken down car, so perhaps the developers were still planning to allow NPCs to control the vehicles. Another notable difference compared to the final game is the questline about the An ecologist helicopter crashed in the wilderness in this version it was a freedom squad that attempted to recover the research data, not the mercenaries. This mission even had different results. The player was not forced to help the environmentalists escape their ambush, but rather to be able to see them. I had to go back to the trash where the environmentalist group ended up due to the spawn error.

They asked you to take the research data to the barky and after that you are free to decide if you want to keep your prize or make a deal with it. Instead, in version 2205, the developers added a bunch of new gameplay features, such as weapon durability and the NPC companion system. Stalkers who were not part of any faction and did not have unique names could join the player and help them survive alone in the On the other hand, you can join the factions of duty and freedom once you complete their quest lines, although in This point did not affect your reputation in other side activities.

The player could try to participate in challenges in the arena and even place bets on how fast they will do so. win, but this system was also not fully implemented, so after killing the target, the scripts did not work and the player could crash from continuing to progress from other things that did not work. The day night cycle in this version was disabled so the sleep function was completely useless, there was the main menu screen but at this point it was nothing more than a placeholder with no real functionality. Build 2205 also featured a new mutant known as Islam, another one that was eventually removed from the game, probably happened.

Due to his animations, they were simply too slow for the player to easily dodge his attacks and since this mutant possessed no real threat, instead of revoking Islam, the development team decided to simply get rid of him, it's finally time to talk about the most impressive feature of this beta 2205 really stands out compared to other versions of this period due to its stability, unlike version 1935 which was getting crushed almost every 5 minutes. I played this beta version for a few hours straight until the red forest and only found two glitches, but this result was achieved at a high cost and after this better, the game never managed to reach the scale it had in the 1935 version in early 2005 .Shadow of Chernobyl became a different game, but fans didn't know it.

However, during the development of Shadow of Chernobyl there were quite a few builds to test the multiplayer modes. I didn't talk about them in detail because I personally was never very interested in the online part of this game and I am convinced that the absolute majority. of stalker fans share this sentiment with me, but patch 2215 from April 2005 is important to our story for several reasons and before we talk about them, let's take a quick look at the content of this multiplayer beta. This version includes four maps and three games. modes of this match, team desk, match and artifact search, the most interesting map in this beta version is the factory because later it will be used as a base for a new version of the full campaign in single player to start a match, the testers had to use the spy game. launcher and surprisingly didn't have any DRM protection these days, it's hard to imagine something like this.

Every internal beta version of AAA games has all kinds of protection to prevent leaks from online checks to watermarks with information from probably Shadow of Chernobyl testers and developers. He deeply regretted that they had not thought of all this beforehand because a few months later, this multiplayer build was leaked online, unlike the previous leaks that happened in the year 2003, this build was one of the last beta versions that even included compilers and Other X-Ray Engine Tools To make matters even worse, the game files also contained assets for the single-player campaign, including story and mission descriptions. Rumors said that this compilation was leaked from one of the Ukrainian trade fairs where it was used for promotion.

In any case, the gsc multiplayer tournament did its best to prevent the spread of slick on the web, but it became the final straw for ghq. After seeing this disaster, the editor sent Dean Sharp to the gsc office to take on the role of executive producer. and Chernobyl's certain shadow of development hell, but before we continue, there's another thing that makes build 2215 so special, while this leak was undoubtedly a disastrous event for gsc back then, it also marked the beginning from the modern stalker gaming community thanks to x-ray engine tools from this build fans made the first mods for Shadow of Chernobyl almost two years before the game was officially released along with fan-made bug fixes and Third-party custom tools to adjust game settings.

The moddres even managed to convert singles. player levels from the previous league to this build and use them as multiplayer maps. Several full conversion mods that were created after the release of Shadow of Chernobyl were based on assets that were data mined from this build, it's hard to imagine stalker games without mods and even though it happened under such problematic circumstances, that's where it all started Well, let's go back to late 2005, when the development team wasn't even sure the shadow of Chernobyl would ever see the light of day, so we thought about things like modern support for better construction. 2232 August 2005 can give us an idea of ​​what Dean Sharp saw when he arrived at the gsc office.

It was obvious that the game was slowly becoming obsolete. The X-ray engine that looked impressive in 2004 was barely holding up for the last few iterations. The market design of a complete game caused a whole new set of bugs and crashes, so in build 2232 everything was basically held together with duct tape, for example, to fix the constant crushing, the developers had to add cedarwich to each location, although this solution really helped reduce. crushes for whatever reason, it was clearly just a temporary fix and not just for gameplay and story logic reasons, just look at how creepy this thing looked and what new problems it sounds like, other than this better version was a build 2205 slightly polished that was still missing a lot of things mainly from the later parts of the game yantari were not found again, but at least this time I managed to play the laboratory quest line x18 from what I could see at this point, x18 only had slight differences compared to the final version. even though the chords were the same, due to the backwards physics, even after unlocking the door you had to use explosives to open it completely, there are some differences in the x18 questline along with the monolithic base on thugs dark ones I mentioned before.

After acquiring the documents, the player encounters another stalker who demands to give them those documents. It is possible to talk to him and resolve his situation peacefully, but it's not like there are consequences for this decision. This scheduled event is one of the last remnants of the Old Shadow of Chernobyl game design is based on competition between the player and npcs for pieces of secret documents. Also Wars mentioned that the military forces attack that occurs once the player leaves the x-18 underground was also done on a larger scale, including the military. I had a ptr-70 crashing into the doors of the monolith base, but unfortunately there was still no way to take care of this vehicle, speaking of vehicles, the only thing the developers finally managed to fix was a helicopter.

There were quite a few helicopters in this build. that had a free region and relentlessly attacked the player once they saw him, you could even shoot down those helicopters and witness them crash into the ground in flames. Another thing that was fixed in this configuration is what is seen with an environmental group that was attacked. For freedom in the wild territory, players still had the option to help freedom or the environmentalists, but this time he had to escort the leader of the group of environmentalists across the map and it was not so easy to do it because in this beta version He moved too slow.

Actually, building on other cool features of Bill 2232, the development team added the ability to talk to injured stalkers and give them medicine and unlike the final game, the player could help even hostile NPCs that he simply shoots, although there was little point in doing this. because they remained hostile even after being saved, ungrateful bastards, Newton's selection in the game was expanded with ghosts that looked like zombies but had transparent and shiny skin, as for the common zombies, they received new voice lines that honestly sounded comical instead of intimidating as they assumed. Yes, as I already said, technically there were a lot of problems even though this better version was more or less stable during gameplay, moving to another location almost certainly caused a crash on the loading screen of most of the available maps.

They were compiled in low quality and looked very bad. spawn points were placed incorrectly, there were placeholders everywhere, and even the lanyard was missing in this build for unknown reasons, although the game started from garbage, but to be fair, Bill 2232 had very dynamic weather. The sound was significantly improved and overall, despite reducing the scope of the game, it still had a lot of potential. Someone had to take control and help the team finally get the job done and that was the role Dean Sharp had to take on shortly after arriving. At GSC he took charge of this project, established clear milestones and began making difficult but necessary decisions.

The development team didn't like that very much, but they also understood that they had no choice and that it was their only chance to finish the game. After the press release about Dean Sharp taking overDevelopment broke the news, many fans blamed him for abandoning the game for the Western casual audience, but as we've seen, that wasn't entirely true and he joined the team once for most of the game. The redesign is already done, but that didn't stop some of those fans from going as far as sending death threats to Dean Sharp, which is really disgusting and sad.

Unfortunately, that toxicity is still a big problem in some of the gaming fandoms, so I think this example. It's a good excuse to remind everyone once again that such behavior is absolutely unacceptable. The developers are the same people like you and me, their jobs suck at making an entertaining game for you and this is what they get as a reward when another unexpected delay occurs. or something else happens in the case of the shadow of Chernobyl all this pressure from the editors' deadlines to the working conditions of the fans who were losing their patience was seriously affecting the morale of the death team at the end of 2005 It was the most dangerous moment in the history of this project when even the developers began to lose their destiny as they would ever be able to finish this game after another six months of hard and exhausting crisis in March 2006, work on the story main was finally completed.

Build 2571 was the result of all those efforts that the developer team had to put in to make this happen. This period of severe crisis led to growing dissatisfaction with working conditions among gsc developers despite strong sales of the Kozak franchise and the fact that the studio continued to receive support from Sergey Gorge continuing to refuse to noticeably increase revenues. salaries of their employees, no one really complained about the low salaries until that time, because in the early 2000s, working at gsc was considered a dream job, then the management of the studio was not very strict and working in such The game As a stalker who gained a cult following long before the release date was a great honor for many developers, but it's one thing to work on a beloved project where you have full creative control and another to work for an entire year with strict deadlines.

While being forced to remove features and content and having to go through all of this without receiving proper payment for all the sweat and tears he put into this project as a result of a fight with Garage over salaries in early 2006, several leaders Los Shadow of Chernobyl developers left GSC shortly after founding 4a Games, the studio that is primarily known for its games in the Metro franchise. The funniest thing about this whole story is that Dean Sharp also joined a game a few years later and even became CEO of the company, but in 2006 things didn't seem so fun and there was still a game they had to release despite leaving the studio, the developers reached an agreement with gc management that they would continue working on Shadow of Chernobyl on weekends.

After their main work, this fact shows more than anything else the level of commitment those people had to this game, despite all the problems, they still wanted to make it happen, no matter what it took, after five years of development of Shadow of Chernobyl, no one wanted to give in. We were very close to the finish line, but there was still a lot of work to do and now we return to build 2571 from March 2006, which was made during this extremely problematic period of this game's development. This build had a nearly complete version. From the main story that was only missing a few scenes at this point, Shadow of Chernobyl looked quite similar to the final game, one could even say that it was in a playable state since you could play it from start to finish, but being in a playable state.

It rarely means a stable, unboxed experience in such cases, to put it lightly, build 2571 was a nightmare that barely worked and it's a miracle that it managed to reach the latest levels of all the alpha and beta versions of Shadow of Chernobyl What did I have. The opportunity to play this is definitely one of the worst in terms of stability. I swear I have a lot of patience when it comes to dealing with mistakes and crushes and I can find a way to fix them or at least avoid them, but my patience. It's not endless and I've almost reached my limits while playing this version seriously, I don't even know where to start most of the scripts in this beta were completely broken, random encounters and events not triggering or constantly repeating every The moment you returned alive to the place was just a shadow of its former glory.

Stalkers would occasionally get caught in animation loops or simply lose their minds mid-fight. I wasted a ridiculous amount of time restarting my game from backups. Even manually editing script files to get through specific parts of the game and don't even get me started on the constant crushes that would surely occur after playing this version for more than 5 minutes. I went through this hell to be able to show you the next few minutes of gameplay footage, so if you're still watching this video, you have my deepest gratitude, it means all your suffering was not in vain, in any case, it's time to take a look.

Look at the most interesting part of this beta overall. build 2571 there were not many changes compared to the final version of Shadow of Chernobyl in the main quest line there is one important difference: the big surprise was waiting for me during the second visit to Strelok's hideout in the agroprom underground apparently in this version of The story The mercenaries also found the hideout and set the trap for the player, so after the explosion, instead of the cutscene like in the final game, the mercenaries capture the player and take him to their base in the dead city afterward. to wake up in the cell you can talk to. the doctor who tells the truth about walkok's identity and gives you the key to a secret hideout and privity a few months later, god transferred the doctor to a different location and after that his fate remains unknown, the player manages to escape from the mercenary space and leave the city alone thanks to the sudden military attack.

If you ever wondered why there was a mercenary outpost in the northwest part of the army warehouses, it was because they were guarding the entrance to the dead city and once this level was removed from the game, this outpost remained. in the same place even though it no longer served any real purpose, since for the current city this level was slightly revoked after the last time we saw it in this build, it was populated with mercenaries and bandits who had some kind of truth to each other, each faction had their base located on this level, the messengers occupied the sports complex in the central plaza, while the bandits took refuge in the school building in the southwest of the city, as all of these factions were hostile to the player, the only side.

The quests you were able to get here were from the doctor who suggested stealing the dead city map from the bandits, but despite my best efforts I couldn't find this item anywhere and it's hard to tell if it was because I looked in the wrong place or because from another broken script, the quest line about the x-18 laboratory was also slightly different compared to the final game after the start of the military raid in Dark Valley, the player could steal a car and drive towards the south exit of the level after passing through the gates the game moved towards the maps which was known as the darkscape, it was a narrow path between the mountains that connected the dark valley and gordon and played a very specific role in the shadow of Chernobyl after The developers' imaginary design from 2005 realized that there was not much room left where the player could use the vehicles that were still available in the game to solve this problem.

The development team decided to create three special levels just for the vehicle parts of the game, even their codenames started with the letter k instead of l. Like other maps, which shows how different they were supposed to be from the rest of the game, for each of those levels the developers planned action-packed scenarios where the player was driving through the different obstacles in the Dark Cape. , the player attempted to avoid military blockades and ambushes while also being chased by helicopter. It was supposed to be a unique experience, there were no side quests or secrets and you just had to drive to the end. line and never return to these levels again the other two vehicle maps were known as deadmill and milrat and just like darkscape those strange names were the combinations of locations that were connecting the purpose of darkscape was to connect the dark valley and escape, which was the code name of the The codon for that mill meant that city plus the army, better known as the army warehouses and the mill rat army plus the radar, which was the red forest, while the idea of ​​levels of Special vehicles sounded promising, unfortunately the developers simply did not have enough resources to make the game a reality. was falling apart and spending time creating even more new levels was a luxury they couldn't afford.

Before Dean Sharp took over the project, the development team managed to finish Darkscape alone and start working on Deadmail's geometry, but a time it was We decided that vehicles will be removed from the game. The existence of these levels has lost its meaning. We can only guess why the dead city was removed as well, but I think the reasons were similar to what happened with the vehicle levels since there was no conflict. between mercenary and bandit factions and no living mutant could not create an interesting simulation in this map after removing the swamp and blocking the entrance of this entire level has been isolated from the rest of the game world through the dead city feature . has been reduced to a simple decoration for a main story scene, not to mention that if the player didn't follow the true final quest line, they could easily miss this level entirely.

Lack of time to do another redesign of this map was probably the cause. Which is why the developers decided to remove it from the game, mentions of Dead City and Dark Landscape remained in the game files until the release date and players could still see those levels on the zone's top map as other notable changes to the game. comparison to the final build of the game 2571 had several scheduled events that were removed a few months later, for example, once the player returns to the bar from the x-16 laboratory, they can witness a cutscene with a crazy stalker who was captured nearby. from the entrance to the red forest.

It was related to the personal story of a stalker known as beldi who was given the side mission of killing the traitor in the final version, apparently that crazy stalker was one of his friends known as Spotty who was left behind during the failed attempt to break through the brain culture in this scene. he was ending up shot in the head, so who knows, maybe the developers thought showing suicide was too much even for a game as dark as Shadow of Chernobyl. Two more additional events were supposed to take place in Tripit shortly after meeting the group of experienced stalkers.

Monolith members used vtr-70s to ambush the player. Another difference compared to the final game was a cutscene at the end of the level. Once the player reached the prepaid stadium, he discovered that it was populated with 10. Yes, 10 sealed giants and the only way. The nuclear power plant was on the other side of this field, the military helicopter appearing out of nowhere and doing some missile launches helps deal with this a bit, but it was still a pretty intense difficulty spike that felt like the final boss fight. So I'm personally not surprised that it was eventually replaced by a non-interactive cutscene that you could have seen in the final game, other than there were tons of less important things, like a very strict time limit on the x16 lab I had the player. just a minute to disable the website emissions generator, on the other hand I feel like this last part of the game where you had to jump through teleports in the nuclear power plant was at least twice as long as in the final version .

I lost count of how many teleport jumps. It had to be done before reaching the end point at the top of the main tube. The game was still missing the final cutscene, so that was the reward for all my suffering being stuck here on top of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant waiting for the next explosion. to be able to die before starving fate is such a cruel scene well, to end this part on a brighter note, the last scene of the compilation2571 that I want to show you is the song that I was lucky enough to hear when I was passing by one.

From the campfires, if I'm not mistaken, there were no harmonica songs in the final version of Shadow of Chernobyl, which is a shame because they were quite enjoyable. Throughout 2006, gsc focused on finishing work on the game in May 2006. I preferred version 2559 for the E3 showcase, but it doesn't really deserve our attention. It was basically a demo version that featured only the Agroprom level with its quest line. A few months later, in August 2006, the development team finally completed work on the game's remaining content. Build 2588 was almost identical to the release version of Shadow of Chernobyl, but there was still a lot of work to be done in terms of stability and bugs.

Some features, such as sleep functionality, were sacrificed due to the high volume of bugs they were causing in the meantime. Fans who were still waiting for Shadow of Chernobyl were really worried about the game. All that news about features and cut levels didn't give them any more confidence regarding the quality of the upcoming game almost 6 months later, after countless beta tests and no sleep. The nights that the developers had to spend around the world witnessed the moment that everyone was waiting for in March 2007, Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl was officially released to the world market. This long-awaited version 1.0 had a build number of 2947 despite the team's best efforts.

It wasn't the most stable and box-free experience and they had to spend another year fixing all the problems and the fan reaction was pretty mixed at first, some people loved the game while others hated Shadow of Chernobyl with a passion, it wasn't perfect. game and I can't deny that some of their criticism was justified, but that's another story, maybe one day I will return to the shadow of Chernobyl once again and do an in-depth review, who knows it's hard to make long term plans in In times like this, we will see that the shadow of Chernobyl has reached a difficult path.

Together we have followed what the developers went through for six long years to create this game from the first prototypes and the first sci-fi concepts to numerous redesigns and cut features. You've seen how Shadow of Chernobyl has changed over all these years. There are not many games that allow us to follow almost the entire history of its development and that is another reason why Shadow of Chernobyl is so unique and special. It was a completely different time for the video game industries and now, especially when it came to PC exclusives, making a game as ambitious as Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl was almost impossible without the financial and marketing support of a big publisher like thq, and when support is accepted you can't just do what you think is right, especially when first impressions from playtesting aren't all that glowing, maybe if this game was made now gsc could use the early access model to release the game that fans have been waiting for, but we have many examples where early access was not the best option for ambitious but inexperienced teams like gc, where back then and without the guidance of the editor and producer like Teen Sharp, no one could have helped them save the game if things went wrong.

The creators of Shadow of Chernobyl were dreamers who dared to try to break the rules, but lack of experience almost ruined the entire project, but even after significantly reducing their original ideas and going through development hell, in the end they managed to develop a Great game. Despite all the issues and removed features, the release of Shadow of Chernobyl has marked the beginning of the Stalker franchise, but it still has many devoted fans around the world at the time of making this video. GSC is developing a full sequel that is planned to be released in 2021 and unlike Shadow of Chernobyl, this time the studio prefers to carefully provide new information about its new project and has not shown any gameplay yet, which shows that gsc has learned their lesson and now clearly understands the danger of setting the wrong expectations, although it's not like they need to do anything special to promote stalker 2.

This is a game that fans dreamed about for 10 years at this point and create games that don't destroy Those dreams won't be easy. task, so I wish the development team the best of luck because they will need it before concluding this documentary. I want to talk about something I've been thinking about a lot lately at the time of recording this video a few weeks ago. I've seen the release of another hugely ambitious game. Yes, I'm talking about Cyberpunk 2077 and you know, the more I look at this situation, the more I see similarities compared to what happened with Shadow of Chernobyl.

Think about it. Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that has gained a cult following. I followed it long before its release date, but it was overhyped and mismanaged and is currently facing backlash for bugs and removed content. We even have a bunch of idiots who harassed developers about delays and whatnot. I still haven't been able to play Cyberpunk 2077. but something tells me it's not a bad game either and I wouldn't be surprised if cd projekt rat can fix most of the problems over the next year and turn this whole situation around. What I'm trying to say is that cyberpunk 2077 isn't the first overly ambitious game that didn't live up to expectations and unfortunately it definitely won't be the last.

The lesson is simple. Never fully believe in marketing gimmicks and always temper your expectations about upcoming games. I'm a big fan of the stalker franchise and I'm excited to play the sequel in the future, but I don't expect gc to release the best game ever made and even if stalker 2 won't be perfect, I doubt it will disappoint me. As long as I have fun while playing it, let's hope they succeed and make a game worth waiting for. Wow, it's hard to believe I finally finished recording this video. You know, this documentary is bigger than anything else. more things I've done before and to be honest I didn't expect it to take so long to do originally.

It was supposed to be a simple compilation with short gameplay clips from each alpha and battle version of Shadow of Chernobyl, but at least at some point I realized that it's important to provide context for all of this footage. My life is a mess right now and all those personal problems have noticeably limited the amount of time I can dedicate to creating reviews and essays for my channel, but this video is something I wanted to create no matter what it takes and I hope it was worth it. the shame and that you had fun looking at it.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to make another great documentary like this, but this is definitely the type of content I want to create more of in the future, so if you enjoyed this video, I'll really appreciate it if you decide to share it with your friends and subscribe to my channel anyway, thanks for watching and stay safe.