Rumor: Bethesda Claims S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Rights

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Some people say the STALKER games were "broken," although I suspect those people don't really understand what that actually means, but I never had any such issues, even with the original Shadows of Chernobyl. I did some .ini tweaking to improve the graphical performance (I think I was playing on a Radeon X800 at the time) and it was actually a pretty solid experience. Definitely Eastern European, with all that entails, but no worse from a bug/glitch standpoint than (dare I say it) a standard Bethesda release. I never really understood why people say the "Complete" mod is necessary to make it playable. It changes and adds things, yes, and may very well make the game "better," but it's hardly unplayable out of the box.

My friends and I played through SoC out of the box and it worked fine, I don't see what everyone was complaining about. Maybe it had buggy multiplayer but who cares about that.

It was definitely one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. Including many heart thumping, mouse throwing moments that I haven't felt since the AvP 2000.

If you get the chance try Oblivion Lost, it intentionally "breaks" a lot of the game but in a cool way. Vehicles that can get thrown around by vortex anomolies, blowouts that the AI is smart enough to run away from, Controllers popping up in "safe" bases turning the area into a massive firefight.

I didn't play Clear Sky but CoP was a major disappointment. It was much more polished than SoC but it just felt homogenous and consolized. The world wasn't nearly as "alive" as SoC with most of the buildings being locked and the obvious "quest hub" setting. Two exceptions were the scripted vampire sneaking part and recruiting the NPCs for the tunnel run, that was actually pretty cool. This wasn't the epic modern fantasy story though like in SoC.

I will be disappointed if Bethesda takes the franchise and "westernizes" it by doing something terrible like turning it into a cover shooter with regenerating health.

 

[Phlakes]

Bethesda Softworks owning STALKER doesn't mean Bethesda Game Studios has anything to do with it. Chances are it'll go to (or is already with) some other developer, but I doubt I'll be seeing a lot of people who will recognize that.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

As long as the original devs get to keep working on it, and it's just being published by Bethesda, I don't see much wrong with this.

 

[octafish]

I don't know if I'd be interested in a non European developed STALKER. Devs from "Eastern Europe" (Including Poland and I know it is Central Europe) have a unique sensibility in their games, one that I haven't experienced from any North American dev. I can't think of a Bethesda dev who could do it justice. Once I might have considered Id a possibility but they have lost their way. Bethesda themselves are a terrible fit for STALKER the only sensibilies they share are poor quality control.

 

[Waffle_Man]

I will be disappointed if Bethesda takes the franchise and "westernizes" it by doing something terrible like turning it into a cover shooter with regenerating health.

Funny you should mention that. I'm pretty sure that you did heal over time in Clear Sky (albeit very, very slowly) provided you weren't bleeding. Plus, you were pretty much fucked if you didn't keep running from cover to cover lest you be drowned in insta-death grenades. Also, any player worth their salt would have enough health packs to med-stack their way through practically anything by the third or fourth area anyway, so I wouldn't say that stalker is necessarily any more punishing than a game with regenerating health unless you really have no idea what you are doing.

Facetiousness aside, that would be a bit of a disappointment, but no amount of haphazardly handling the series will take away the current games. Plus, obsidian is a subsidiary of bethesda, and they seem to have a fairly good grasp on deep but buggy-as-hell experiences. There is also Arkane, but we'll first have to see how dishonored turns out (crosses fingers).

 

[robert01]

All I can do is hope with every little bit of fucking ounce of hope that is left for all things pure that Bethesda does NOT get have the rights to STALKER. Bethesda makes games that can't hold a candle to the greatness that is STALKER. I'd rather see it die then they be the ones with the rights to it.

To all the people saying they won't be making it, who the fuck will be? The old developers of the STALKER series have already moved onto different projects, which they are already well invested in (like a year of their lives).

Plus, obsidian is a subsidiary of bethesda, and they seem to have a fairly good grasp on deep but buggy-as-hell experiences. There is also Arkane, but we'll first have to see how dishonored turns out (crosses fingers).

Obsidian is a free lancer developer, they work for whoever pays them money. Out of all their games they have only made one game for Bethesda, and that was New Vegas.

 

[Tiamat666]

Perhaps S.T.A.L.K.E.R. inspired the Fallout 3 quest, "You've gotta shoot'em in the head!".

Stalker was a refreshingly different shooter. But man, curse the inpenetrable bullet vests that every guy in the Ukraine must be walking around with. Never again did I have to perform this many headshots.

 

[Musicfreak]

I really don't get all the negativity about this. Bethesda seems like a better fit than most to me. Yeah sure they could always totally fuck it up but it's not like the series was going anywhere before now(although it may still not be going anywhere).

 

[Kopikatsu]

I keep hearing about how buggy the STALKER games are, but...I went through SoC and Clear Sky and only got a single bug worth mentioning. (A storyline NPC didn't spawn when he was supposed to, so I had to go and manually spawn him in using the console)

Edit: They can't balance guns for shit though. Seriously, almost every gun in that game is horrible. Shotguns and handguns are total shit, and only the high end assault rifles are remotely usable.

Edit 2: I lied. The game bugged out a lot when I would do things I wasn't supposed to do with a sniper rifle. (Like when they told me to sneak a guy around to take out an enemy sniper position...but I just killed the Sniper and all of the Monolith soldiers. So the Clear Sky guys were shooting and yelling at...air, basically.)

 

[Imbechile]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

First Fallout, and now S.T.A.L.K.E.R. will be ruined by Bethesda.

God, please let this be a false rumor.

 

[dyre]

What's up with this weird new format? Anyway, I'm glad Bethseda was able to pick it up. Frankly, its work with the Fallout franchise is head and shoulders above what most devs do when they pick up someone else's franchise.

It might not be the STALKER 2 I wanted, but it'll probably be a good game nonetheless.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Well, if Bethesda are picking up S.T.A.L.K.E.R with any luck they'll leave Fallout to Obsidian.

*fingers crossed*

 

[Scrythe]

Honestly, nobody would notice the change.

It would be just as glitchy in Bethesda's hands as it was with GSC.

 

[the December King]

Awww, I hope this is true!

...

But not in the 'I'm wetting my pants I'm so excited' way.

Just in the 'I'd like to play more S.T.A.L.K.E.R' way.

Call of Pripyat really felt like it was locking it all down, story wise, and I'd like to explore more of the possibilities- I believe, before Chernobyl, there were ten top secret millitary city/bases hidden across soviet Russia, used to devellop their own nuclear capability- why not incorporate some or all of that history into the mythos?

 

[TallanKhan]

STALKER had enough glitches without Bethesda getting their "release it now and fix it if enough people whine about it" hands on the franchise.

 

[Right Hook]

None of this is to say that Bethesda is currently working on a new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, and the more cynical-minded folk out there might suggest that the company picked up the game rights simply to eliminate a Fallout competitor. But that's an unlikely proposition; the two games are only superficially similar, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., despite its genius, has nowhere near enough of an audience to pose a threat to Fallout.

When I read the title I figured this is what they planned on doing. Burying S.T.A.L.K.E.R. before it could become peoples go-to alternative from Fallout. I don't particularly care, I prefer Fallout but eliminating competition is generally a bad thing, since it leads to stagnation. Ultimately I don't care what Bethesda does as long as Fallout 4 is made and is great. If they mess that up...oh boy, Todd Howard can look forward to one hell of a knife fight.*


*The previously mentioned knife fight is for the sake of sarcasm, the author of which in no way plans on knife fighting anyone at Bethesda Game Studios if a title fails to live up to previous expectations.*

*Sadly, I actually feel like I needed to clarify that now. The internet is so srs bsns.

 

[NLS]

Whelp... we wouldn't have seen another Stalker anyway, with GSC going under.

I'm curious as to what the implication of Bethesda NOT owning the brand of Stalker are. Does this mean they can't expand on the existing universe?

I guess it means they can't publish any new books or the planned TV-show. At the moment it seems like it's just the game rights and not the franchise that is "lost", so who knows what kind of legal trouble this may get Bethesda into at a later stage. There's bound to be some problems arising sooner or later because Bethesda published material that isn't part of the game and that breaches some contract, and suddenly it's all Bethesda vs. Interplay 2: GSC Strikes Back.

 

[Stuntcrab]

I don't know what to say.

As long as they keep the feel of STALKER with the whole "Zone lives without you" thing rather than "The whole world revolves around you" idea then i'll be happy

But hell who am I kidding why would a company keep the practice of another?

 

[Don Reba]

Sergey Galyonkin started out as a journalist and is is a long-time Russian/Ukrainian game development industry insider. He is a very reliable person and I would usually take his word over official representatives'.