S.T.A.L.K.E.R is G.O.L.D

[D3ads]

seriusly wtf was wrong with the end?

"wtf tha was tha worst pimp. rappa come here! come closa.�. I knizzay you have waited long time.. yo gizzle is here.." this stupid russian voice talked to me over and over!

"why do u stand there? come in!"

rofl!!

wtf was that? you know what I'm sayin?

I tought the game hacked but It didn't.. I understood it should be so.. I entered the blue ice thing and then suddenly money start raining gold coins inside the factory reactor complex map?

How many fingers am I holding up?

Hahaha, I haven't laughed so much in weeks

[JamesL]

***SPOILERS***

I seem to have gotten 2 completely different endings to everyone else. I have never come across the wish granter as far as I know, but I did find the C-conciousness experiment and the explanation of what the zone was, and ended up becoming becoming part of it.

Second ending (I think it was an ending?) I just ended up running about Chernobyl with some kinda weird shit white flashing nuclear pulses that eventually ended up killing me (wth is that all about).

How many endings are there does anyone know?

[ShaDoW]

That second ending (well I don't think its a real ending) might have been because you didn't get inside the Chernobyl power plant before the timer ran out (which starts when you come near it).

The only real endings in the game are the five you get at the wishmaker, which gets you a different ending based on how you played the game (good or evil, rich, etc...) the other two endings are at the C-Conciousness which is based on whether you join it or shoot it.

[JamesL]

I shot it, then during the rather long conversation you have with it, it asks you whether or not you want to join with it. I said no and it placed me outside the plant again. Whereupon I eventually got wiped out by the weird pulsing stuff I mentioned above.

I was kinda wondering if this was an ending or not? *shrugs*

[Aggressor]

No, it was not.

[omgspoilers]You need to shoot the shit out of monolith guys around, till portal opens. Step in and repeat the process ... around 20 times.

I apperantly missed that second thing Aggressor mentioned in his post above mine and thus couldnt finish the game properly. I tried to run back to that spot and also look for the guy in cordon but the it really disappeared apperantly. And without it I cant finish the game in a proper way.

Strange. I think it's a bug, since my friend also had it - you don't get the Guide quest after you loot Ghost.

Open ends fine, but it should be fair and this is not. I couldnt know that the single mission was really that important. If it is, the game should make it clear to me that it is.

Hmm, I somewhat disagree, though it's debatable and depends on what kind of game you're making. Yes, conventional game development practice says that you need to put challenges before the player, but in a nature to make them fun to overcome - not too easy, and not too hard. Everything should flow fluidly in a way so as the player would have an illusion of accomplishment, eventhough we held his hand most of the time. This belief stems from the axiom that fun is the quintessence of computer game. Everything is subject to fun; if playing your game is not fun, then the product is deemed a failure.

But is this necessarily correct? Warren Spector had an opinion article half a year back in Escapist Magazine (can't be arsed to find it ) where he stated that games will be viewed as purely entertainment tool, inferior to art and lacking recognition, until we start to make games which have more to their internal value than pure fun. Games which carry political and social connotation, games that are played not with mere enjoyment in mind. Games which will even irritate players to hell to achieve their goal of presenting a particular idea.

Anyway, we seem to differ even in the very basic notions of what a correct decision-making structure in the game should look like. To some, any backtracking is a nuisance and they want to steam ahead to the end. To others, carefully examining all the nooks and contemplating hidden meanings is the proper way. Because of this it's impossible to devise universal postulates of the game flow. This is why we have very different games on the market. I look forward to seeing even more radical approaches in the future, though the reliance on big publisher's capital is a huge problem here.