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[BlackFlyme]

The games deviated quite a bit from the book.

Though there are almost always alternate, less magical explanations for every supernatural experience presented.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

White noise from broken tunnel pipes were damaging people, not malevolent spirits.

Khan is just batshit. After all, only he could read the map.

Artyom was a dumbass accepting that bet though. His 'friend' caught the rat they were betting on literally about an hour or two before the race, and made the bet for both of them.

As mentioned, the philosophers may have just been a hallucination. Wouldn't be the first Artyom's had.

The games are much more inclined towards things being supernatural.

[GiglameshDespair]

There is legitimate supernatural stuff, though.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The tunnel that shows stars when you close your eyes is one.

The Kremlin stars also hypnotise everyone who looks at them, pretty much instantly.

if nothing else, the Dark Ones are psychic.

[Kot]

All of that stuff is pretty regular for Slavic Fantasy/Sci-Fi book. It tends to touch really crazy subjects and in general is very cool. I know when book is written by Russian, Polish or Czech or whatever author. It has this... human feeling to it, it tends to not be that over-the-top and hammy, but it knows when to get serious and in general... I think it's that for me because I get all the sublte references, I understand people's mindsets or something. It's nearly it's own genre IMO.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Possibly this, due to radiation.

IIRC the Kremlin stars Artyom reads about in a book and blacks out because he's a fucking stupid kid that belives that kind of stuff, and it's never confirmed if they actually work that way. If they do it's possibly some psychic shit.

As for the Dark Ones, it might be some kind of pheromones or whatever. I haven't read Metro 2035 yet, so I dunno if there is more about it there.

[GiglameshDespair]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Perhaps they went to space and didn't notice, otherwise that doesn't necessarily seem to apply. It was static; like looking at the night sky, not disparate flashes like that.

Artyom has a dream about the stars after being told about them, but after he's also told by one of the stalkers explicitly not to look at the Kremlin because it hypnotises people, they run in and disappear. He looks at them, and his companions have to run after him and catch him because he gets hypnotised. Pretty confirmed.

There's a monster underneath the Kremlin they encounter, a sea of fleshy goop stuff, that seems to hypnotise people as well, so they jump in. That would be more understandably pheromones, I guess, than the Dark Ones psychic bullshit. Once they injure it, though, it retreats, and blasts them with fear.

Artyom communes with the Dark Ones multiple times through the novel, and never accepts them right until the end. The final time, he's up a very tall tower wearing a gas mask. When he can sense their emotions. Hell of a pheromone.

[Kot]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's radiation, I ain't gotta explain shit.

Because Artyom is retarded kid who belives everything he reads in books and Stalkers were fucking with him. Placebo basically.

Pheromones. Stuff. It's Post-Apocaylpse, it's easier to assume it's just magic.

Pheromones, Artyom having hallucinations, radiation.
Though it's just easier to accept that Dark Ones were actually psychic because really that's not that unbeliveable, it might be a thing.

[GiglameshDespair]

If you're trying to explain things, saying "I ain't gotta explain shit" is somewhat self defeating.

You might as well claim he's just dreaming the entire time. Artyom was just in a coma! Everything is solved!

[Fniff]

Yeah, I get the feeling Metroverse was frakkin' weird even without the apocalypse. I'm guessing the reason why no-one noticed is because they didn't have to hide down in the dark for their entire lives before now, meaning less exposure to the creepy shit.

[GiglameshDespair]

Of course, an alternate explanation: It's not based 100% in reality, psychics exist and reality isn't completely there.

It explains:
1) The mutations (radiation and evolution DO NOT WORK THAT WAY IRL)
2) Psychic stuff. Doesn't exist in reality. This also explains the mindrape that goes on with the Dark Ones
3) The anomalies. Which are areas where reality decides it's fed up with the nuclear holocaust stuff and just goes 'fuck it, here's some weird thing that takes the reality you know and love and turns it inside out'

That's a copout to say: "well, things just work like that in that universe."

The book even mentions  that the weird monsters and stuff that show up aren't normal:

These were strange, freakish, and dangerous creatures, the likes of which might well have brought Darwin himself to despair with their obvious lack of conformity to the laws of evolutionary development.

I think it even mentions that the mushrooms that they use to make tea don't match any species known before the bombs fell, suggesting that after the apocalypse things have started going weird.

[GiglameshDespair]

...no?
I'm completely agreeing that the apocalypse messed reality up majorly.

Of course, an alternate explanation: It's not based 100% in reality, psychics exist and reality isn't completely there.

It explains:
1) The mutations (radiation and evolution DO NOT WORK THAT WAY IRL)
2) Psychic stuff. Doesn't exist in reality. This also explains the mindrape that goes on with the Dark Ones
3) The anomalies. Which are areas where reality decides it's fed up with the nuclear holocaust stuff and just goes 'fuck it, here's some weird thing that takes the reality you know and love and turns it inside out'

That seemed to me to be saying that the natural order was different from the beginning, not that the apocalypse had destroyed the natural order; perhaps I misread. To me, one of those seems much more reasonable to assume, considering the amount the possibility is talked about in the novel itself.

But no, the magic example is irrelevant. Eragon was always explicitly set in a fantasy world, with magic an integral part; Metro is set in a version of our own world. As a consequence there should be reasons for breaks in reality.

[BlackFlyme]

Some are way too out there. Sort-of hand-waved by "untested chemical warfare weapons", but that wouldn't turn a tiger into the monstrous flying Demon-Bitches capable of lifting a firetruck a few feet off of the ground.

The Library would make a great horror game idea though. Impossibly silent apes capable of mimicking human speech and tone? Terrifying.

Most other monsters just get minimal descriptions like dogs with incredibly short or basically no necks.

[GiglameshDespair]

Some are way too out there. Sort-of hand-waved by "untested chemical warfare weapons", but that wouldn't turn a tiger into the monstrous flying Demon-Bitches capable of lifting a firetruck a few feet off of the ground.

The Library would make a great horror game idea though. Impossibly silent apes capable of mimicking human speech and tone? Terrifying.

Most other monsters just get minimal descriptions like dogs with incredibly short or basically no necks.

Hell, the library was pretty tense in the game, especially trying to stare them down.
Unless you had a helsing or the machineshotgun.
Then it was a blast.

[Teneb]

Some are way too out there. Sort-of hand-waved by "untested chemical warfare weapons", but that wouldn't turn a tiger into the monstrous flying Demon-Bitches capable of lifting a firetruck a few feet off of the ground.

The Library would make a great horror game idea though. Impossibly silent apes capable of mimicking human speech and tone? Terrifying.

Most other monsters just get minimal descriptions like dogs with incredibly short or basically no necks.

Hell, the library was pretty tense in the game, especially trying to stare them down.
Unless you had a helsing or the machineshotgun.
Then it was a blast.

Volt driver. Crank it until it hits the max. Melee attack to librarian face. Then again, that gun was so broken you could do the entire game without touching a single other gun.

[Tiruin]

In a different thread, yes.

Nah, I saw that. I assume there's some kind of broader context involving an engine of some kind, which interests me because AI is a subject of some fascination for me.

The broader context is that I'm modding Warcraft 3, as the game I have the most modding experience with and which is probably one of the easiest games to mod effectively, thanks to the powerful internal script engine combined with a large number of useful hardcoded capabilities.

Warcraft 3 Editor \o/
I have been having moments of 'doing everything right and then forgetting the simplest, tiniest detail that's obvious when the thing you're doing starts up' lately. x_x Must be stress.
Like washing glasses with hot water then washing everything else, then hot water + hands.

At least I know my hands are ok vs. scalding water .-.

[TheBiggerFish]

@Tiruin:
Good to see you're okay though.

[Putnam]

why do people talk about alcubierre drives as if they're merely prohibitively expensive instead of reliant on particles that, as far as we can tell, probably don't exist