http://areal.west-games.com/

I recommend any big stalker fans to check it out.

Which STALKER creators? After GSC shut down they seem to have split off into different tribes. Some people left earlier to form 4A and make Metro, there's Vostok making Survarium (a sketchy F2P shooter), and now this.

I think there was another offshoot at one point supposedly doing something. And I think the dude who owns GSC is still trying to do something with that.

I'm a bit skeptical on this. The 3D concept they've shown seems to be taken straight from the Unity3D asset store despite them saying that that it is a "new and fully proprietary game engine." And their Kickstarter is only asking for $50k, which doesn't seem like enough to make a game like STALKER.

I think the folks who worked on the original stalker series that are now working on Areal are mentioned mid way through the kickstarter page for the game.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1577656602/areal

Sounds pretty nice, but let me be the first to say that the concept art for that wolf-thing on the main page is god awful

I thought it looked cool lol xD

@thunderslash: Yeah that seems pretty damning, fund at your own peril.

There's so much weird ass controversy around this kickstarter that it's hard to be smiley face optimistic about it.

Yeah so there seems to be quite a bit of feuding between these 3 tribes. They advertised this as a "spiritual successor" to S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and Sergei, being the owner of GSC (which only exists on paper) and the STALKER name takes umbrage with that, and Oleg Yavorsky (probably the most legit of the three here, since he was with STALKER from start to finish) is heading up Vostok and their Survarium MMO shooter is also claiming that West Games doesn't really have OG STALKER developers and his company is the true lineage to STALKER. There's also claims of using assets without permission and stuff like that.

This will be fun to watch.

Probably the most underrated and influential game of the past 8 years. As a huge fan of the series and been active in the community forever, this could get ugly. Well, it already has and its too bad.

Here's a link pretty much tearing this whole thing apart.

Also, someone on Reddit discovered that the pciture of the Lead Game Designer was taken straight from a stock photo website suggesting he (and possibly other members of the team) aren't even real people working on this game.

This sucks :(

The Metro 2033 people need to transition their games into something more like STALKER, that's our best bet for a spiritual successor anyways.

If they made it open world and a bit deeper it would be a pretty decent substitute. At least the 3 STALKER games still hold up well with the various mods such as Misery and Complete.

I actually read their kickstarter page just now and think it looks suspicious as hell. There's nothing but Unity stock assets and graphics from STALKER, they tout their X-Life AI programming a little too similar to STALKER's A-Life. I would definitely hold reservations about this, but the shitty part is they will probably reach their goal. I mean the whole point of Kickstarter is paying you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

I'm into this... like a lot.

But yeah this Kickstarter is highly suspect.

I don't have an opinion either way at this point, but this seems relevant:

http://www.miserymod.com/?page_id=1911

Unfortunately it's a scam.