Up until 30 April 1986, Pripyat was a bustling Ukrainian town a mile or so from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Then, four days after that fateful disaster – four days too late for many – the government ordered the entire population of 45,000 to evacuate. It’s been completely abandoned since late 1986, and short of looters, scientists, a few real-life stalkers (those brave souls that mapped the safe routes through the zone) and organised parties of Western journalists, no-one has been back there since.

A 30-square kilometre area known as the ‘Exclusion Zone’ is cordoned off around it, complete with passport checkpoints manned by surly guards with zero tolerance for jokes about the Strontium-90 content of Ukrainian beer. So, with the release of GSC Game World’s second standalone expansion for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., this will be the first time that most people will have the chance to fully explore this surreal and post-apocalyptic area.

“My personal pride is that the game is going to be the most authentic and most atmospheric out of all three,” Oleg Yavorsky, PR director for GSC Game World, tells us, “especially because we are introducing a whole new location, which is Pripyat. We start in the eastern part of the town, and to date this part of the town hasn’t been seen by the public. We’ve taken stalker routes and a number of photos and materials to re-create the whole place. The players will be able to freely roam, explore and see these locations.”

Call Of Pripyat follows one of the endings of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, where Strelok eliminates the C-Consiousness controlling the zone and opens the way to the centre. The military use this opportunity to send a small fleet of helicopters to scout ahead of their main force in preparation to take the nuclear power plant under control, but the choppers disappear without a trace. This is where you come in, as an agent sent into the zone to find out exactly what happened.

As a part of the expansion, GSC has paid particular attention to fan criticisms of its two predecessors, ironing out bugs and changing missions from being AI-generated to a more predictable scripted system. Two new monsters have appeared: the Burer and the Chimera, plus the A-Life system. The A-Life system controls the ebb and flow of individual and groups of monsters and NPCS in an area. It has been a work in progress since the first game and we’re told it will come into fruition for this episode. The original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game was ambitious beyond its time, so we hope more than anyone that GSC finally achieves its dream with Call Of Pripyat.