S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Interview

Its 2007 release? O RLY?

Finding text: 2007
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Well, at least it's not going to be a complete rail-shooter:

"The original idea was to create a totally randomised game, but it took us time to realise that it's just impossible to do," says Bolshakov. "We then had two options: either we did a totally scripted game or we tried to preserve this life simulation. We found a way to combine the two elements in the right way."

Totally scripted FPSes are dead (or at least should be dead). At the very least, new FPS games should have randomly selected enemy insertion (Sin Episodes Emergence does this to a limited extent: you'll see a shotgun guard get dropped in on one quickload, and an elite chaingunner dropped into the same spawn point on the next quickload). Having enemies always in place, able to do their own thing makes for interesting gameplay. Far Cry is a good example, but only if you stir up the hornet's nest of mercenaries by firing a shot out loud. It's not worth it anymore to pay $60 for what's effectively a 10-hour movie. This of course means a bigger production budget and time window for the developers, but it would be more worthwhile to make a more replayable game than it is to make a tech demo for curved surfaces, shaders, HDR, more shaders, environmental effects, yet more shaders, reticulating splines, tracing rivers, etc.