Stalker trails into view

Ukrainians GSC Game World have released a 42MB trailer for their impressive-looking, potentially radioactive Chernobyl-based first person shooter, Stalker: Oblivion Lost. Due for release in summer 2003, the game actually saw the development team delve deep into the forbidden area around the site of Chernobyl, as we revealed in an interview earlier this year.

"Undeniably we were inspired by the movie Stalker [a Russian sci-fi by Andrei Tarkovsky] when working out the plot of the game," designer Sergiy Grygorovych confirmed back then. "In fact, Stalker: Oblivion Lost is a fusion of the movie and two other things - The Roadside Picnic, a book by the Strugatsky brothers, and the history of the Chernobyl catastrophe. In relation to games, we drew inspiration from many action-adventure titles, from Half-Life to System Shock and Deus Ex."

Far from a Half-Life or System Shock rip-off though, Stalker is a similarly post-apocalyptic tale in which a second disaster has somehow befallen the region of Chernobyl, turning the wildlife into a lethal race of mutant nasties - the player's background as a stalker sees him plunged into the area to ply a trade, by collecting unusual artefacts.

You can read more about the game in our interview with Sergiy Grygorovych here, and you can download the 42MB trailer from 3D Gamers. As you will be able to see from the trailer, the game looks absolutely stunning, with some incredibly high-resolution weapon models and vistas. The camera flies by these in the video introduction, and later in the same clip you're walked through them. However it ends up playing, we foresee Stalker becoming an excellent technical demonstration of the game engine...