S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl has been one of the most anticipated and yet most delayed PC titles in recent years. IGN has news updates for the game dating back to April 5, 2002, back when its subtitle was Oblivion Lost. Publisher THQ has admitted that, among other things, the development team (GSC Gameworld) being located in Kiev, Ukraine made it hard to keep a constant eye on the game's status. Now comes news that THQ is getting fed up with the lack of progress.

"We don't care what shape the game will ship in anymore, - said one of the THQ bosses to an IGN journalist, - the game must ship in 2006". In addition to all this last week part of the original STALKER development team was moved to another project and another part was simply made redundant. "These were considerable dismissals," - told the source that still remained a member of the GSC staff, - "I heard that next week a THQ representative will arrive and he is going to stay until the project is finished."

One GSC member speculates that THQ may take the game away from them and hand it off to a different developer to finish. A programmer on the team says this would not be a good idea, because "The code is mostly not documented, they wouldn't understand a thing there." I'm not sure if he meant that to be reassuring, but (if it's true) it would be further evidence that GSC's operations are somewhat slipshod. Other quotes from members of the team in the article make the game sound more like a general concept than a game in real development. "STALKER always was in the state of general design. It's always been a project which was more spoken of than really done."

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. isn't quite in Duke Nukem Forever territory - There was a reasonably playable leaked alpha (a few, actually), and reporters have been given the opportunity to play it before, which is more than can be said for DNF. However, while it's too soon to say without knowing exactly what THQ has to work with, it's looking more and more like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. may limp to the finish rather than be the blockbuster it was hoped to be.

Source: Gameguru Mania