Was I the only one not aware of this??
 
Check it out!
 
Do you guys know if the games might be related in some way? Do you think GSC was inspired to create the stalker games after having seen that movie? I know there are many resemblances in the synopsis, but it just seems so unlikely...
Again, does anybody know or have any thoughs about the subject?

Fuck! Sorry for the double topic post....

I think STALKER was a originally a book before the movie came out.  Or I could be thinking of Metro 2033.

I'd never heard of that either.

Well I remember reading this from Wikipedia year ago:
 
"The background and some terminology of the game ("The Zone", "Stalker") is borrowed from the popular science fiction novella Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and the 1979 Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker that was loosely based on it, as well as Stalker, the film's subsequent novelization by the original authors."

You should definitely check into Roadside Picnic - the bottom of the wikipedia page has links to download the .pdf. No guns or factions, but anomalies and artifacts are totally there, and they were always my favorite parts of the game anyway.

Ok....so about that movie....what everyone here is saying is correct. The movie itself is based on Roadside Picnic, and the STALKER video game franchise has it's heritage in both the book and the film. I own that film, its okay, you have to really appreciate the meta-physical aspects of it to truly enjoy it, it's an intellectual's movie.

"@SPACETURTLE: The game STALKER was loosely based on the 1979 STALKER film, which was based on a 1972 novel called Roadside Picnic. Instead of a nuclear explosion, it was an alien encounter and "artifacts" are remnants of alien technology. This is because the novel and film was released before the Chernobyl Disaster occurred. "

" Was I the only one not aware of this??
 
Check it out!  Do you guys know if the games might be related in some way? Do you think GSC was inspired to create the stalker games after having seen that movie? I know there are many resemblances in the synopsis, but it just seems so unlikely... Again, does anybody know or have any thoughs about the subject? "

The STALKER movie is an incredibly boring piece of self indulgent tripe. This is one of the few instances where I find the game to surpass its source material. 
 
I rented the movie after playing SOC and was just pissed off by how mind-blowingly slow and uninteresting it was. Maybe if I had seen it before I had played the game, I wouldn't have minded so much (but I still would've found it boring. Maybe just not AS boring.)

" The STALKER movie is an incredibly boring piece of self indulgent tripe. This is one of the few instances where I find the game to surpass its source material.   I rented the movie after playing SOC and was just pissed off by how mind-blowingly slow and uninteresting it was. Maybe if I had seen it before I had played the game, I wouldn't have minded so much (but I still would've found it boring. Maybe just not AS boring.) "

" For those who don't know, it is VERY common for Russian developed games to be based on books. Metro 2033, Stalker and Hard to be a God all being examples of this.
STALKER, in particular, takes its title and some of its concepts from the movie Stalker, which is based off of the short story A Roadside Picnic.  However, all three are fairly different from each other.
 

@emkeighcameron

said:

" The STALKER movie is an incredibly boring piece of self indulgent tripe. This is one of the few instances where I find the game to surpass its source material.   I rented the movie after playing SOC and was just pissed off by how mind-blowingly slow and uninteresting it was. Maybe if I had seen it before I had played the game, I wouldn't have minded so much (but I still would've found it boring. Maybe just not AS boring.) "

Man. I'm gonna try my best to respect your opinion but... goddamn, that is so wrong. "

" @emkeighcameron: It was a great movie that had a weak ending. The bolt part was great, the dialogue was great. A lot of stuff was going on in that movie besides three dudes walking into a zone. A lot was being said. "