This mod has been a long time coming. Starting in 2008, just a year after the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl release, the team behind Lost Alpha has been hard at work to release this amazing mod... which is now a standalone game!
The goal of Lost Alpha was to restore the scrapped content of Shadow of Chernobyl, and to allow players to experience the game as originally intended. Numerous monsters, levels, quests, and plotlines were redesigned and scrapped throughout development; Shadow of Chernobyl was slated for a 2003 release, and was one of the most high-profiled games of that time thanks to its in-house engine and gorgeous graphics, realistic gameplay, and the new A-Life AI. However, the game would get pushed back and lost in development hell all the way until 2007, when THQ took on publishing the title and set hard deadlines for the development team.
The Lost Alpha development team has worked on their project for the past six years. During this time, the team has actually been in contact with the original development team, collaborating with developers to help expand the game engine, as well as to acquire early game assets and documents. This continued up until GSC's development team was disbanded in late 2011. However, as license-holder, GSC still exists, and there were discussions of Lost Alpha being sold as a legitimate title on Steam if the Lost Alpha team took steps to modernize the appearance and gameplay of the mod. Fans were hoping sales for Lost Alpha would regenerate interest for the canceled Stalker 2 game. Sadly, these plans fell through after an internal leak of the game took place in early April:
dezowave's statement on the leak said:
Lost Alpha was released to the public on April 26th, coinciding with the date of the Chernobyl disaster. It is an essentially-finished build, though bug-fixes and features are still being worked on and will be released over time.
This is actually quite a historic mark in PC Gaming culture. Never have I known a project so dedicating to recreating early parts of a game's development period and succeeding not only in quality, but also in dedication, as well as having the luck to work with the original game designers and developers to achieve their goal. The only comparable example I can think of to this would be if Duke Nukem Forever's development hell was mined over by fans with access to interal design docs and builds, and a finished, quality game would be released from this work.
The mod is now a stand-alone title, and anyone can jump in without having owned a Stalker game.
Good hunting, stalkers!
moddb site and game download
GSC support and discussion forum for the game
