What a good romp in The Zone....but not credited.
Mentioning films, and this is the purpose of my review, GSC has not alluded to the movie, made some time back and now available on DVD, called..."Stalker". It is Russian by director Andrei Tarkovsky, with English sub-titles set in a place strangely enough called The Zone, where a man enters with his disturbed daughter and links up with a Novelist and Scientist to discover what's going on. They meet a loner, called, you guessed it, a Stalker. He has his own motives for leading the group through the mutated wasteland and together they face unkown horrors in an attempt to solve the main character's problems with his daughter. It is based on a novel by Phillip K. Dick ("Total Recall", "Do Androids Dream Of Electronic Sheep", etc), and the influence of this film was heavily felt by Ridley Scott, James Cameron and David Lynch. For GSC to suddenly come up with the title of this game (which many players have asked the meaning of), and to have set it in The Zone seems hardly a co-incidence, however nowhere have the Developers or Publishers referenced the novel or indeed the film. Maybe they thought, as the movie is a "cult" film (and Russian to boot), noone would notice. But even the poster for the film is strikingly familiar to the box art of the game.
C'mon guys, give credit where its' due and you might even find a stronger following for the game if players see the film.
'nuff said!