OHGOD!OHGOD!OHGOD!OHGOD!OHGOD!OHGOD!OHGOD!



Those of you who have never experienced the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R probably won't understand the significance of this screenshot. Those that have will, like me, recoil in horror at the memory it conjures up. It is of course a recreation of the player-character's first encounter with the dreaded 'Controller'. A fiendish enemy that could invade your mind, warping your vision as its psychic attack seemingly pulled you towards it, only for its weird dragon punch to send you hurtling back down the corridor of the secret underground military base you were stalking through, somewhere deep in the Zone.

It was one of the many WTF?! moments that littered the original.

To see him again, but this time rendered in the superb looking Unreal 5 engine is enough to send chills down this old Stalker's spine.

The Zone is not quite how we remember it though. A slew of new screenshots released today seem to point to a rather arresting new art style.



'Running through fields of flowers' is not the first thing that springs to mind when talking about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Unless of course those same flowers were irradiated monstrosities that could somehow swallow you whole like something out of Little Shop of Russian Horrors.



This is more familiar. An Anomaly. This one is a Vortex. Typically invisible, until you threw a metal bolt into the air to detect its gravity distortions. In the original, it was something of a macbre delight to hear the distant panicked squeel of an irradiated mutant pig who had accidentally wandered too close to such an anomaly. Worse still to see a NPC stray into one, witnessing his body being lifted up and then spun around like a ragdoll. Limbs torn asunder and bones snapped, the anomaly disappearing as quickly as it had appeared, leaving only a red mist of body parts hanging in the sky.



Dogs. I am not a dog person, I have to admit. I am sure it's nothing to do spending countless hours in The Zone watching wild packs of irradiated mutts gang up on hapless Stalkers, tearing them apart and then dragging their bodies into the woods. It was the game's much lauded A-Life that did this. An impressive AI that controlled both man and beast alike, making for some superb random encounters.

Out 28th April. Cannot bloody wait!