For our book and A/V club this month we read Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and watched the film adaptation Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky. Both these works are inspirations for the video game series S.T.A.L.K.E.R. In case you don’t know S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a first-person-shooter survival horror video game series developed by GSC Game World. It takes place inside of an alternate history version of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. After the nuclear disaster happened laboratories were set up in the zone. Whatever was going on in these labs caused a second disaster to happen in 2006. The second catastrophe caused anomalies to start appearing. These are hazardous pockets of air that can harm you if touched. Most are visible by light distortions, but throwing a bolt inside one will set it off letting you know not to step there. Artifacts are formed from these anomalies, these are what stalkers are after in the zone since they fetch a high price. Stalkers are just people who have come to the exclusion zone Illegally looking for adventure, money or maybe both.
The game has Stalkers decked out in military gear and gas masks whereas the book and movie Stalkers seem to be going to the zone in casual attire.Those stalkers are also going unarmed unless you count bolts. Every Stalker whether in written or polygonal throws bolts to check for dangers in the Zone. Being called Stalkers and throwing bolts is consistent throughout all these works. Even though the video game is a first person shooter, Roadside Picnic and Stalker are anti-gun. The novel’s protagonist Redrick Schuart states “there is no one to shoot in the zone so why bring guns”. Similar events happen in the film when the unnamed Stalker gets angry when the writer he was escorting pulls out a gun stating that the Zone wouldn’t like that.
Another fascinating difference in the versions is the magical rock that can grant you a wish. This is the end goal for all three of these stories but the rock is different in each. In the book the zone is thought to be created by extraterrestrial beings. The wish granter in this version is a reddish pillar that requires one Stalker die in the “meatgrinder” before the others may make a wish. This is similar in the film only we don’t get to see what the wish granter looks like. Another difference in the film is that no one gets sacrificed since the zone deems them to be “good men” according to the stalker. The video game is very different, the wish granter is like a doorway and the wish your character gets depends on your actions in the game. This lines up with all three versions of the wish granter. This magical wishing rock doesn’t listen to what you say, it only gives you what you subconsciously desire. In the movie the wish does come true, the book is unknown, and the games wish is more of a monkey’s paw. Whatever you wish for in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R game comes with consequences such as wishing for the Zone to disappear making you blind.
Learning what inspired the S.T.A.L.K.E.R video games really got me excited for the next release. S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 is set to release this year after being delayed due to the war happening in Ukraine. Here is a way to support Ukraine through an official fundraising platform launched by the President of Ukraine https://u24.gov.ua/ .
For full discussion check out the VGBCs Youtube or Spotify. For what we are currently reading check out GoodReads. If you wanna join in the conversion we can talk chapter to chapter on Fable
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