Still, they’ve finally integrated some mechanics that take the edge off the Eastern Europe game design. The latest game is the easiest to get into and enjoy at a relaxed pace but doesn’t have any of the sequences that made this series a cult hit. The original game is still the best and has the highest high points of the series, but also takes the biggest investment of patience early on and maybe some mods if you can’t tolerate a bit of a struggle. I have a question for all you STALKER veterans: Which of the three games is the best for someone new starting out? Is it best to play them in order, or can you safely skip one of them?Ĭubit you get the gold star for being the first to ask the question I knew would come up. But the exacts tends to defy description. Communicating the concept in a very vague way is simple enough. It’s sort of like discussing consciousness.

Or it mean something altogether different. Or it might mean “doesn’t violate potential player expectations, as defined by the game”. It might mean “conforms to the mechanics of reality”.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t even know how to define realism in a discussion about games. What I mean by that, is that the game shouldn’t define the player’s expectations, but it should define what expectations the player can form, and it shouldn’t contradict them. From my experience (which doesn’t include video game design at all), what games require is something you might call internal-logic-consistency. Games and realism is a tricky combination. It’s hard on the player’s suspense of disbelief, and could easily be avoided if the game used some type of simulation to track and spawn the Zone’s inhabitants. SoCs Farm, for example, will spawn and position bandits if no bandits are there when the player comes within a certain distance, regardless of whether the Farm is occupied by a bunch of relaxing stalkers. Secondly, simulating the ecology could increase the internal consistency of the Zone in the eyes of the player by eliminating the possibility of spawns that conflict with assumptions a player has been led to make by the game. I don’t mean it should be possible for the player to create his own endangered Zone-Species list, but rather that it could allow the player a little influence on what’s fighting and where. Firstly, simulating it could offer the player a degree of control over the spawn system. The reason I’d like an ecology simulation, however limited, is two-fold. The time and effort would be in testing it to make sure it doesn’t go wacky on you.Īnd presumably the time and efforts will have to be spend no matter what approach is used. Most of the heavy lifting has been done by the engine already. Honestly, most of what Disconnected says sounds like math and variables.

Shadow of chernobyl fov