S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky - Progress Report @ IGN

IGN on Clear Sky here.

Overall it seems Clear Sky will be more of the game GSC envisioned with Shadow of Chernobyl, with more emphasis on interactions with squads of NPCs, more developed role-playing and customization aspects, and, ideally, less bugs. The game shifts the setting one year behind the events of Shadow of Chernobyl and brings into the fold a slew of new characters, including a new protagonist. You'll be playing as a Stalker mercenary working against Strelok from the original game. Yavorsky said some of the story will focus on making sense of the first game's universe. "While there were many new thing introduced with the original game like Stalkers, anomalies, and artifacts, we felt like giving some other story which would explain those ideas better before doing a full-fledged sequel." Yavorsky went on to explain that Clear Sky would illuminate more of what happened to the first game's protagonist, including why he started out in the back of a death truck. So it seems, at least from what we've been told, that this game will fill in the gaps and provide a welcome sort of continuity to the strange and dangerous events surrounding the Exclusion Zone. Because this game will hook directly into the beginning of Shadow of Chernobyl, there'll only be a single ending.