GSC Game World has announced a prequel to the critically acclaimed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl first person shooter for PC, launched in March, and we’ll all get our hands on it sometimes in the first half of 2008.

The game will be called Clear Sky, and is not a sequel, but a prequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl, taking place a year before the tragic events that caused the irradiated hero to lose his memory and start searching for answers through the Chernobyl wastelands. Since Shadow of Chernobyl spoke of the unspoken horrors lurking in the Zone in 2011, we should assume Clear Sky’s plot is wrapped around year 2010.

However, you are not playing as the amnesic STALKER anymore, but as a trained merc who is involved in the creation of the horrific mutations taking place inside the Zone and the Zone itself. The merc is also involved in the events that eventually determine the explosion of the death-truck carrying the STALKER to his doom, and in the time-anomalies scattered all over the Zone.

GSC Game World worked at S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl for more than 7 years, and although far from being perfect, the game received applauses for its extraordinary realistic atmosphere and the gloomy combination of graphics and sound. Despite the inherent bugs that crawl inside the game’s code (GSC and publisher THQ have received strong criticism for this “oblivion” because, after all, a period of 7 years is more than enough to hunt down bugs…), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has been quite successful among gamers and this is probably why THQ and GSC have decided to continue working at the title.

Clear Sky promises to be even more enticing than its “ancestor”, allowing players to explore new areas on the map, like Red Forest, Limansk, and the Pripyat Undergrounds. The game will also feature a new animation engine, improved AI, and a new upgrade system for weapons and armor.

Scheduled for a Q1 2008 release, Clear Sky will apparently take full advantage of Windows Vista’s DirectX 10 technology, meaning that the game’s X-Ray engine will be adapted for Shader Model 4.0. The Ukrainians at GSC Game World are also striving to include high-end features like parallax bump, soft particles, depth of field, motion blur and eye adaptation effect.

Let’s just hope Clear Sky won’t share the same path with Shadow of Chernobyl, whose 7 years of development and coding bugs have exhausted some gamers and completely disappointed others…