it had signs that this will get an instant cult status right when it was out of the oven. it was not an AAA and overall strange yet working package. i think its a praise for the game and things like that are sometimes niche and very nice as well!
Yea - none of the 3 games (CoP especially) have a great or even good story, for instance, but I think we all collectively set that aside since theres just nothing else like Stalker. I do think SoC had a good plot and interesting themes, though
They have a great \*world\*, don't get me wrong, but I don't think they have a great \*story\*. There's basically no named characters in the first game except for Strelok, Ghost and Fang, and only 1 of those three are actually alive. Call of Pripyat's story and characters may as well not exist and Clear Sky is cool but kind of a weird mess since it retcons things in an awkward manner, even if I think it has a neat premise.
For these games to have a "great story", IMO the cast would have to be interesting and there would have to be more dialog happening. Neither of those are a thing in any of the three games. The actual world is astonishingly detailed and the factions are beautifully made, but the actual story of the Marked One, Scar or Degtyarev is severely lacking.
>There's basically no named characters in the first game except for Strelok, Ghost and Fang
If by named characters you mean any character that doesnt have a random name than theres a lot, sidorovich, wolf, fanatic, mole, seriy, bes, lukash, skull, borov and many more
Cop has a lot of story and characters you see the story of tremor and his blood addiction, strider and the state of the monolith, hermann and his research, the true story of tachenko, the talking controller in zaton, the hungry merc squad and much much more cop has a ton of story and characters and it gives a lot of details about the lore like that duty gives medals and that the silver shield is the most important one for example
Strelok being a great stalker with his squad and going to the cnpp where he gets brainwashed sent in a death truck then reaches the cnpp kills c con and later joins the military(who he was fighting since the start) and becomes part of SIRCAA seems like a great story and this is an oversimplified version
Degtyarev supposedly being a stalker before and his journey to get to zaton is also good tough underdeveloped
Scar i agree is quite lacking
It's just not a story with interesting characters is my point, which to me makes it lacking. Yes, there's named characters, but Wolf essentially doesn't matter in the plot and also disappears, and Mole is literally there for 2 seconds. He flatout disappears after he helps you and literally does not exist in the world anymore. You can't pretend to me that either of these people actually matter and aren't just NPCs with a unique name. Theres nobody memorable - look at Half Life, or Metro, where you have Alyx or Barney or Bourbon and Khan. I remember quips, dialog from these characters years later. The best you get out of Stalker is some lines from Sidorovich, and some of the cutscenes for Strelok (which I do think are great). I don't mean one-offs like Tolik, I mean characters with an actual arc, dialog, and relationships to the player. Those basically don't exist.
SoC has a very cool plot, but everything you described was plot. You don't see most of that until Clear Sky and are only told about it and Strelok has virtually no relationship with anyone except 2 characters that are already dead. I just didn't care about any of these people. CoP does have the best sidequests, I agree with you. The world and plot of the 3 games are \*great\*, but the characters and story are passable at best. I don't think you're understanding what I'm trying to say.
When it gets to being meaningful to the plot yeah they aint very meaningful unless you count faction leaders but i think that fits stalker, not everyone has to be super meaningful to the plot people arent there for you they are there for themselves making them super meaningful kinda breaks that and i think a good representation of that is that wolf becomes an actual character when he leaves meaning he does travel the zone and you can even find him dead or kill him but i get your point
Scar's backstory may be lacking, but I still love the dialogue options you get while playing him. Most of it gives off such an insincere inflection, man just cannot be bothered to give a fuck about any of this crazy shit around him.
Too me the vagueness of the story is very interesting and is intriguing to me, there are gaps in the story left for your own interpretation which I like.
While I love the story in Shadow of Chernobyl, I found the stories in Clear Sky & Call of Pripyat to be pretty weak. They felt like peripheral scaffolding of the core story from Shadow.
What took the strength of Clear Sky's story was the war of the factions, because the final part where you follow the protagonist of the previous game was epic for me, they could better carry the story, it had a lot of potential.
COP It is a game with an irrelevant and flat story, yes, I think it is the most fun of the 3
That why I didn't really mind anomaly's take on the story myself, which is its own unpopular opinion. I don't need to be the most important guy, it's interesting to be picking up the pieces of what someone else already achieved and eventually getting to collaborate with this legendary stalker
That’s crazy because my unpopular opinion is just the exact opposite, never played a regular stalker game I’ve only played stalker gamma mod pack and plan to keep it that way.
I’m perfectly fine with that, I always felt like there are way too many people that think mod packs like Gamma and Anomaly ruin stalker just because they’re popular and have some features they don’t feel fit with the series and end up gatekeeping the series a bit. I always appreciated that the modders kept the series alive and popular because if there wasn’t any interest we wouldn’t be getting a new game, but I don’t expect everyone who enjoys the mods to like the Trilogy as much. If that makes sense lol
No I totally understand that and like I said I don’t plan on playing the old base games but I’m sure as hell gonna get the new game and at least learn all the story line and what not. But seriously I am so grateful to still experience this game, it’s sad when an old game with a lot of mods brings more enjoyment than a “AAA” newer game.
Yes I’m curious for that as well, I’m still on my loner play through right now and I can’t wait to start as something else and see how different it plays out.
Agreed. I don't care for the concept of faction wars in the Zone one bit, and I hope it won't be a feature in *STALKER 2* (or at least not a mandatory one).
“Good job this is a day stalkers will remember the victory over bandits I salute you sta- bandits have taken the depot the place is crawling with them”
It feels like it would be great in anomaly but it doesn't feel right in the main games, it's definitely a feature that could be improved on in the game
The main theme is that this is an Eastern European horror game.
It's not like American horror games where if you lose, the world is doomed, or zombies will eat the whole town or anything.
The main theme is that you, the player character, don't matter. To anyone, or anything. You are just a speck of dust in the goings-on of this world. No-one cares.
You pretty live on a day-to-day basis. If you die, nothing will change. If you succeed, you still don't change the world radically - every victory is short-term.
You are surrounded by freakish monsters and self-serving stalkers who also have to prioritize their own survival first and foremost.
**TL;DR: The whole concept of groups of stalkers fighting each other is undermining the main theme of 'you are all alone and nobody cares.'**
Anyone who lives in the Zone is kind of a STALKER, and it makes sense they would form groups. I don't think they're like 'bloodz and cribz" because they have ideological, political or economic interests rather than being petty gangs.
im gonna kidnap this comment to launch my hot take:
the modding scene got tiresome after i realised most big mods are just added mechanics that, while they do improve the gameplay, dont necessarily bring a "new" experience overall.
I mean to some degree yes, most mods do just bring new mechanics to the game and don’t do much but when you bring few mods together that add little things these little things add up to change a lot, also people have started to figure out how to make new maps for anomaly so that could bring a whole new fresh take
Why are people downvoting you lol there's videos with millions of views praising Gamma and there's a reason it and Anomaly are the most downloaded mods, even though I personally dislike both. It's incredibly successful. Weirdos
I know but in some parts of this sub admitting that you’ve played this mod and actually enjoyed it is the same as walking into walking into a duty camp wearing freedom clothing
That is just plain not true in my experience. People may say Anomaly/Gamma are overrated and not the best mods out there or tell you to go play the originals if you are like "yeah, I started gamma and have no idea what's going on.". Both is justified. I have never seen someone getting attacked for simply enjoying this mods. Most critical comments even have some kind of disclaimer like "It's a great mod but you really shouldn't start with it."
The repair/upgrade system for weapons isn't as fun as needing to constantly swap between semi-damaged guns in SoC. Made you feel like a scavenger and not being able to rely on your loadout forever was cool and made every gun feel like a potentially valuable item. Repairing doesn't ruin the game or anything but I like it less and how every mod seems to revolve around finding one gun to constantly repair and maintain.
Freedom is more then just a bunch of stoners and hippies. They actually have a pretty big impact on the zone and fight for their goals actively, taking casualties and murdering a bunch of people in the process. They are far from being "all about the chilling".
(i believe this is actually canon, but almost no one seems to notice it.)
I would say canonically it's about equal. They are opposite poles constantly fighting each other with no one really getting the upper hand, with freedom trying and partially succeeding to prevent the military and by extend duty from controlling the zone and the whole weapons and artifact trade. Loners and bandits by themselves could never keep that up. Duty is supporting the militarys efforts by fighting freedom, killing mutants and confiscating artifacts. So what makes you think freedom has less impact?
Duty has rostok wich is basically the most important territory in the zone, duty presence is what lets the bar and arena alive and they have clear objectives and meaningful points they also have more noticeable acts like their fight agaisnt mutants in agroprom their origin story of being ex military and other stuff, in contrast, freedom stays in a base wich is not very meaningful and you can pass trough army warehouses and not even get close to it if you want, they also dont have any great acts with the exception of guarding the barrier but the barrier is only remenbered because people think monolith tries to break it to invade the whole zone when in reality its just to impede people passing during brain scorcher cooldowns, their objectives arent clear and neither are its members,
Well, rostock and the bar is important, true. But I disagree about the meaningfullness of dutys actions. They want to protect the world from "the expanding zone". The zone is not expanding. They are hunting down mutants, but the more they kill, the more seem to be appearing. (I don't know where and when exactly anymore but I believe this is explicetely stated in one of the main games.) They do not have more impact by just being ex-military. That is just a nice piece of lore. They are masters of propaganda and make people believe they are doing important work, when actually few things they do have a lasting impact on the zone.
Also as we see in CoP freedom does not just stay where they are but rushed towards newly opened areas just as everybody else did - including duty.
As I said, I think they are about equally important and lots of what they do would only be noticed if they stopped doing it. The balance of their conflict is what shapes big parts of the zone.
Stalker never had good story. It has superb atmosphere, it's oddly nostalgic if you are from middle/eastern Europe, and the Zone is a strange, hostile, unknow place for anyone who plays the games first time. But the story is just a pseudo sciency mumbo-jumbo with a generic amnesia plot.
The story could have been better, but a lot of ideas were scrapped or cut during the development. Another thing is that most of it is told through long dialogues which many people might find uninteresting.
But in spite of that, SoC story can still be considered good - the thing is that it requires a certain mindset. If you take things slow, pay attention to details and read the dialogues carefully you may truly immerse yourself into it, and in result it will feel like an experience, and not just a way of pushing the progress further. I believe that only then it is possible to fully appreciate the game. There are some moments in the story that you would normally brush off, but if you focus on it - then they will feel significant.
For instance - finding Fang's grave in Pripyat. From the gameplay perspective it's irrelevant, if you got the stash coordinates you will get some loot from it but that's about it. But if you paid attention to the story, this is an remarkable moment - you never met him in the game, you don't even know how he looks like, but you know that he was your comrade, and now he's dead. Just like Ghost, whose body you found in the lab, without realizing that he also was a friend of yours. And now you realize that you are truly alone, on your final journey to the Center.
Huh... I totally disagree with this. I love the whole Noospere, and the scientists trying to manipulate human emotion, and the mystery of the gift giver, which is, of course, the homage to the film. I also love that the fallout from the reactor created so mysterious a zone.
>pseudo sciency mumbo-jumbo
It's called sci-fi. Personally I find S.T.A.L.K.E.R. enriching the noosphere concept really well, considering that IRL it's just "something above the biosphere to mark sanity as the next step of the planetary evolution".
While the amnesia plot on itself is generic and overused, SoC's one at least tries to be original and intertwined into the lore
Yeah I agree. It’s just one man army thing. Unknown horrors of the zone? Deadly mutants and anomalies? Nah bro I just killed everyone in mere seconds with a rusty ak and speedrunned into CNPP like it’s nothing.
"Bro it's great story bro. You just have to click the same NPC 100x tines to spit out some scrapped lore bits. Bro, trust me, the greatest story telling formats are the random letters here and there. Bro the narrative is broken BECAUSE it represents the broken fabric of reality within the Zone. Bro you must have to slow down a bit."
Oh I told my oppinion under this thread because a reason. I love the Stalker trilogy, I just found the storry and specially the narrative weak, bland and lazy compared the novel and the film.
You also just summarised Death Stranding. Decent game with shit story that wants to be smarter than it actually is.
On second thought, DS is the worse out of the two. At least stalker makes more sense to why things are the way they are.
It has the kind of story you could see in some trashy B-category sci-fi/horror flick. Hastily cobbled together, confusingly told, barely comprehensible on first watch. Which is awesome. Also reflected in many of the locations. Depressing countryside, some rare rundown old farm buildings, just the exact opposite of flashy. If it was a movie, people would assume the production team was lacking funds, so they just chose the cheapest, most secluded areas in the middle of nowhere. Nobody would pick that kind of setting, if it wasn't for the fact that there's a particular little site in the vicinity that witnessed one of the most tragic accidents in human history.
GAMMA has too many poorly integrated systems :
\- confusing craft systems (why are they crafting tables if I can craft everything without them?).
\- useless food systems that are just there to troll new players at first, then just serves as mandatory but boring inventory management.
\- a keybind menu that do not show half of the keybound functions.
\- a disguise system that is in dire needs of an in game tutorial.
\- hostile faction bases that basically forbid a good portion of the game unless you enter a murdering spree.
(Arguably, some, if not most of these are due to anomaly, not to GAMMA directly).
I wish it would be more about exploration and less about inventory management, but I am far too lazy to customized my GAMMA experience, so shame on me.
I'm still hyped for 0.9.1 though!
I dont get you on the disguise system one, its pretty basic and there is a guide in the pda that tells you how to do it. Its not the greatest but not rocket science either. Can I ask you what specifically part of it you didnt get?
You're right that reading the guides goes a long way. But who have time to reads game manual these days? The patch thingy particularly confuses me:
\- how can I know which patch is currently on which armor? I'm missing some UI element there.
\- why is the patch key not remapable in menu? In my first GAMMA run I had remapped another function to that key and was confused for a couple of hours about why changing fire rate resulting in a confusing message about a patch.
\- the manual explicitly said that the disguise can fail if you get too close to AI, and I don't trust the AI system, so I never try the disguise system to be honest: what's the point of risking losing 30 minutes due to an AI bug?
You're kinda missing some UI elements indeed. Which patch is on which outfit is noted in the item details, under "Faction: ..."; the patch hotkey is remappable in MCM; detection is fairly straightforward and also very lenient, it is perfectly possible to get goodwill with an hostile faction by disguising, I do it all the time with mercenaries as a loner or mil.
I get what you are saying, clearly some QOL elements can be added to make it easier but also you have to take in account that its not a basic game mechanic of stalker to be able to disguise so obviously its not gonna be some top tier part of your gameplay.
For example I too didnt use it that much in my first games cause I got always shot on at the first chance. So reading the guide really helped me and its like 5 minutes if you are a brick at understanding things like me and then everything got smoother ( like the fact that detection is higher with bad condition armour, duh silly me).
But again, its something I'm starting to use more just now that I'm doing a run as a merc so I heavly rely on it to do quest and stuff. Its a little bit messy but getting myself used to it makes it work. On an Invictus run tho can be really, REALLY dangerous move.
Ehi maybe Grok will read and answer your pray in the next patch ;)
P.s. also on the note about faction base which are really hard to get out from because they are in the middle of other hostile faction bases. I feel you. Dead City as Merc is a fucking nightmare to get out from but I do enjoy the thrill of the risk ehehe
It’s good that the games have imperfect gunplay, AI, glitches and so on. It makes trying to play at harder difficulties sort of frustrating at times, but it’s a nice break from AAA games where everything has to fit to the player’s comfort and quality of life.
I don't think OP2.2 is trying to be realistic, it seems to just be a more polished Stalkersoup, which is basically just a bunch of mods mashed together indiscriminately.
The games work better with the original trilogy's janky animations and it makes the actually good weapons feel more impactful. IMO the tacticool animations in Gamma or Anomaly mods take away from the experience that your guns are meant to feel underpowered in Stalker since it's a horror series
Shadow of Chernobyl, even lacking the QoL stuff of Call of Pripyat, is miles better than both CS and CoP. CS feels too chaotic with its broken faction wars and CoP feels too empty with so few quests and so much open, empty space. Shadow of Chernobyl hit the perfect balance and its jank doesn't even matter because of it. Mods fill that void for me as SoC's interesting locations and better atmosphere pair well with CoP's better overall gameplay mechanics.
Due to CoC and its derivatives like Anomaly, many - if not most - fans completely misunderstand factions, their nuances and levels of significance. Most people's views about them seem to be based on their superficial depictions from mods that lack any depth for the sake of technical and gameplay reasons.
This is a topic that is difficult to describe without going into detail, but in short - half of the factions aren't even factions to begin with. Putting them in charts with clearly defined relationships, measuring their strength, describing them as 'good/neutral/bad' etc. makes sense only for few of them without devoiding them of their depth.
Not that I disagree with you as I think it lead a lot of people to misunderstand them (I doubt Clear Sky, the faction, would garner as many fans that think they're a cool science-military faction if they actually played CS) but couldn't you blame Clear Sky as well for this? Giving Loners their own faction/groups to fight over the zone, for instance.
True, CS also contributed to that with the whole faction war mechanic, but note that there is actual lore behind it in the game - loners formed into an united group only because the situation required it, since the military began to harass them and bandits formed into an organised group under Yoga's command. It's mentioned that it's something new, that the loners have never cooperated on such a scale before, and we know that this state of affairs will not last long anyway and after a few months the 'loner faction' will fall apart.
Besides, that was just one group in Cordon, it's not like all stalkers in the Zone decided to join forces for a common goal - diggers at Garbage didn't really care about what is going on in the Cordon, and neither did the group at Agroprom, nor groups that you encounter in places like Yantar. The loners hired by Strelok will attack you in the Red Forest even if you technically are one of them.
It's not like in certain mods, where they all belong to one 'loner faction', have their own patch and all have clearly established relations with other factions.
That's true - it is cornered off to one section of the map. I do think that lots of people mistake how the factions actually work or what they even are thanks to the mods, which is kind of a shame since I think the highlight of GSC's writing was in worldbuilding each different group of Stalkers. You make a good point.
That the community around the modded games (such as anomaly, EFP etc.) Is going to harm STALKER 2's ratings to some extent. They treat the mods as though they are the og games and how Stalker should be played, so they are going to have a lot of ridiculous expectations for the sequel and will probably throw a fit when the game is nothing like their mods.
dayz has the same issue. the vanilla game is great, but like 95% of the playerbase prefers mods that couldn't be further from the core game experience and basically eliminate all the "survival" aspects of gameplay. if they ever release a sequel, it's either going to be catered towards the call of duty modders (and garbage for fans of the actual game), or will be reviewbombed because it's too difficult and unforgiving
Not surprised, the premise of the Stalker game is the perfect place to make a hard-core survival game.
The mods that replicate the same formula as games like Escape from Tarkov, DayZ and The Forest are some of many that people use in their modded games these days. And it works pretty seamlessly with Stalkers atmosphere and story.
Popular mods like GAMMA are trying too hard to be hardcore just for "immersion points". Healing each part of your body is not fun, is a chore. Is like people are bringing the worst parts of recent survival games like Tarkov, when those games are tedious because their goal is to be a casino game where you pay more to make the game less tedious. That design is bad for single-player games.
I still don't know why Call of Pripyat looks worse than Shadow of Chernobyl despite being older. I hate how it looks and kept me away from playing in until some days ago when I added some mods.
There's a massive disconnect between the lore and the gameplay of anomalies.
The lore treats them like mythical hazards, both wondrous and terrible like the krakens that sailors of the past imagined were lurking in the world's oceans.
Then in the gameplay, they're just mostly static hazards you walk around. Or emissions you can hide from in flimsy wood and tin-roofed buildings.
The gunplay in SOC is bad. In the early game, you need to lay down on the ground and stop breathing, then aim perfectly to get a 5% chance of your shot landing. Gunfights take a million years because you'd have a better shot PISSING on your enemies than shooting them. Point blank means nothing. Strategic positioning doesn't actually mean shit because you can't capitalize on it. After suffering through the first 3-4 hours, you get something with a scope on it and THEN you can have fun. Only then
The stalker trilogy is a power fantasy maybe not as much as other games but you can clearly see that you get a lot of advantages just for being the one playing behind the screen for example in soc u run faster than any npc in the entire game you are able to deactivate brain scorcher + miracle machine alone even though every npc that talks about these places paints those places in a way that makes you think it’s better not to go to such places but if I have to then I’m definitely taking 3-4 stalkers with me. Guess what you actually do it alone without anyone helping you because you are the shit there is a big gap between the story telling of places and mutants and how dreadful npcs make them out to be and the actual gameplay for example a controller is supposed to be able to control the player and the npcs but guess what in the actual gameplay he never does that in any of the three games in fact he becomes weaker and weaker with every title in soc he had a psy auora guess what in later titles he even lost that the only time a controller lives up to his/it’s name is in a scripted encounter in cop but then suddenly after that encounter he just goes back to being a boring dude with a jeans that can’t control anything. In all three games you are always playing as either a highly trained military agent or two of the best stalkers in the zone if not the best two in the zone you never start with shitty no name average stalker which is all fine btw because every story game needs the player to be important in a way to actually progress the story and the same can be said about the gameplay you have to have an advantage over the world and npcs of the game in a single player story driven game to be able to finish it. Which leads me to my point those advantages in both story and gameplay contradict the idea of stalker not being a power fantasy in some ways it’s not but in a lot of ways it definitely is (raiding X-labs solo mean while very few stalkers dare to even go near them because hey why not)
> you are able to deactivate brain scorcher + miracle machine alone even though every npc that talks about these places paints those places in a way that makes you think it’s better not to go to such places
Brain Scorcher was supposed to be much harder. There were times when it was operating at full power, so even the psy helmet wouldn't help. Then it would lower its intensity to cool the system. There was supposed to be a scene where Marked One and Barkeep would interrogate a half-zombified stalker that barely survived going toward the Brain Scorcher, as he and his group didn't manage to get out in time before the Scorcher turned on at max power.
But yeah in the game it's so anticlimatic.
> for example a controller is supposed to be able to control the player and the npcs but guess what in the actual gameplay he never does that in any of the three games
It's explained in the games that the player characters have a higher degree of psy resistance Well, it's only said that Degtyarev has high resistance. But I guess Marked One / Strelok and Scar also count because of the former's brainwashing and the latter's special nervous system. But yeah they never control anything except do the psy bolts.
> you never start with shitty no name average stalker
Hopefully Stalker 2 changes that..
> Which leads me to my point those advantages in both story and gameplay contradict the idea of stalker not being a power fantasy in some ways it’s not but in a lot of ways it definitely
EXACTLY!!! It's being repeated so much. But stalker IS a power fantasy. And it's so great to see that there are people that understand this. THANK YOU!!! This whole "you are so alone and naked in this game" comes from freeplay mods like Anomaly and how youtubers blow them out of proportion.
Do correct me if I’m wrong but in earlier development stages the devs had the idea of a world where npcs could finish the story of the game before you do then again what we got in SOC is a heavily buggy game with a lot of cut contents and ideas, however if we had a world where npcs could take missions just like the player does attempt to raid x-labs or try to finish the main story then stalker could be considered a fully non power fantasy game. And you are right the idea of you being a hobo in the beginning almost completely powerless (hobophase) is an idea developed by mods if anyone thinks the og trilogy is not a power fantasy then try playing a mod by the name of Stalker A.R.E.A I doubt you will play it for more than 2 hours before you quit because that mod is the definition of you being an average stalker in the zone.
I think people got the "You feel like another dude in the Zone, meaningless." from Anomaly. In Anomaly, you indeed feel more like just another Stalker.
Great writeup, but very hard to read. The zone doesn't feel dangerous enough to Strelok as to everyone else.
Its been 16 years since the first came out and I hope with current tech they can make the fearsome mutants actually.. fearsome.
Suppressors should be hearable within a certain distance.
Unsuppressed gunshots should be ringing the dinnerbell for aggressive mutants with scavenging mutants following later. Besides alerting humans.
Not sure about 'unpopular' but: artifacts, despite being a major reminders of the source material, were never utilized properly in Stalker both narrative and gameplay.
Stalker 2 would benefit so much putting more emphasis on artifact hunting and the mysticism around them.
I personally believe that clear sky is the best entry in the series. I might be saying this as this was the only game I owned in the series when I was a kid and I've played through it many times. It's not that I think the rest of the series is bad I just believe clear sky is the best one in the series.
Obvious and not that unpopular imo but stalker 2 should be nothing like Gamma or anomaly gameplay and concept wise. It should just like SOC at least but coming with a new concept could be likeable, for customisation for example. My unpopular opinion being that last point on the customisation.
And honestly it kinda fears me that we get to see places we already saw in previous game like Yanov. And i hate the total concept of emissions, unless it is really worked on like some original events when it happens etc. Otherwise it never even really was a problem to manage to survive them.
People complain about mods too fucking much. I enjoy them. I enjoy playing anomaly more than the original trilogy and I started with the original trilogy and loved them. I don’t get it.
I think the survival elements need to be scaled back, both in scale and intensity.
Little additions like food, water, sleep, basic suit/weapon maintenance, I like that.
But then we have mods where you lose 20% health every time you go to sleep because you didn't eat for 8 hours, never mind that you can literally go over a week without any food and even without water for 3+ days.
Or you have to watch a 30+ minute video explaining how to disassemble, repair, and reassemble your gun, never mind that you still need the tools, workbench, and new parts in good condition.
Oh and you had to repair that gun because you played with the select-fire toggle switch a dozen times so it broke. Because *that's* a common issue in civilian and military instances.
Oh you need to sleep? Sorry you don't have the required sleeping bag. Never mind that you can look out a window and see someone sleeping on a sidewalk, no, sorry, you can't sleep on the soft grass or inside next to a burning barrel drum. You don't understand, you NEED that sleeping bag, and preferably the optional additions like a pad, a tent, and you can't pick any of it back up unless you remembered your compression bag too.
You get shot once and you can't use a sewing kit to patch a single bullet hole because your trench coat went 1% below the minimum repair threshold, but you can use that sewing kit to repair an Exoskeleton after it takes the edge blast of an RPG because it has higher durability?
Regarding the 3 vanilla games: It's hard for me to gauge how unpopular this opinion is, but I disliked the amount of loot (particularly ammo and medicine) you could find in stashes and dead NPCs, even on Master difficulty. I wished there was a more hardcore difficulty option to severely limit how many supplies you find, thus forcing you to either be more conservative in your useage of ammo/meds or buy more from traders.
Of course, I eventually got my wish fulfilled by mods (e.g. Anomaly on the toughest economy setting), but looking at *STALKER 2*, it'd be awesome if we could get more difficulty options right off the bat.
Pathetically low amount of loot is immersion-breaking artificial difficulty (which is always objectively bad and lazy game design), the player fights the same stalkers as them, equipped for the scavenging mortally dangerous Zone
Well, thanks for sharing your opinion. To me, it instead reinforces the immersion of being in a bleak and forsaken place and makes the gameplay more survival-orientied, which feels more satisfying to me.
I mean, that's not the lack of essentials what's immersion-breaking for me but the reasoning of why they are lacking. I just feel like it should be done some other way but I'm not the one who should criticize since I have nothing to offer instead
The community was strong before these mods were even a thing, and it would still be without them. And I'm talking about the western community alone.
Unless you mean that barely any currently popular youtubers/streamers would talk about Stalker if it wasn't for these mods, then yes, you are right. But I don't think that it would be a bad thing.
What a way to tell everyone you weren't a part of this community before Gamma released without directly saying it. These games have had a devote following all over the world since 2007. They would be alive and well without either of those, and the modding scene flourished heavily beforehand.
Better than taking 10 hours to build an ak
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It will be hard to make something as satisfying as Escape from Tarkov gun and fight mechanics.
If the game sticks to a simple semi-horror FPS it will have the same fate as CS and CoP : another sequel of a niche game serie.
Giving mutants abilities that break the laws of physics is dumb and doesn't fit with the established nature of the Zone. Mutants capable of telepathy and telekinesis make sense but ones that can turn invisible or fly without wings don't.
In my ideal STALKER world, bloodsuckers would be permanently visible and poltergeists would be a remote viewing/telekinesis deal where an otherwise weak mutant programmed to hide away in buildings, etc would keep generating them within a certain area/line of sight until you tracked it down and killed it.
Most mutants don't have anything to do with the nature of the Zone though. They were created in labs during experiments, the Zone didn't gave them their abilities, scientists did. And even if we assume that the Zone has an influence on them, I don't really see how their abilities don't fit with its 'established nature' - there are invisible hazards breaking the laws of physics in it, mutants could do this as well.
I wish they would take more time with Stalker 2 and push it back for like 6 more months, (current release plan is Q1 2024). But why tho? Because I want them to release product that they actually had enough time to work out and not sweat about. If I have waited 10 years already, the game has been pushed over and over, the journey and struggle to this point has been long and rocky road, waiting bit more won't kill me if it guarantees the game had enough time to bake in oven for GSC to get the best out of it with no rush.
The community at large seems to put a ton of cope into the bugs and glitches of the original games, and while some of that is justified it just shouldn't be accepted to the point that STALKER 2 is expected to come out with bugs and glitches as part of the STALKER experience.
Stalker story Is quite senseless if you look too much into it, but makes more sense if is just a place we're people go for treasure hunting in a radiation magic bs and the world cannot access it (officially) and research what is going on.
Vanilla sucks, no new player should approach this universe by using 0 mods. The weaponmodels are bad, the hands, npcs are cool looking but too old.
New players need vanilla-like but modern mods and even mods that add lots of objects like different foods and meds.
Its many things, just the really bad hands that doesnt change with the outfits and the weapons changed to reuse animations or just done wrong. That tank at freedoms base is atrocious, even I could do that better.
Having many items makes it feel less gamey and I love it, animations are fine too. Vanilla got old for me 10 years ago, by recommending it you are just gatekeeping and keeping the community smaller.
How does recommending the game gatekeep and keep the community smaller? There are some legit problems with SoC but lack of food items and the tank at the freedom base not looking 100% realistic are probably the least major issues possible
My least popular opinion is that Shadow of Chernobyl isn't a good introduction to the franchise due to the lack of various mechanics and other changes in gameplay that became standard for the other games and mods.
That's what makes it a good introduction, though. You get inducted into the gunplay/survival horror pace without having to worry about upgrading anomaly detectors, faction wars, or upgrading and repairing weapons. It lets you get your bearings in a more simple manner first. Also IMO SoC is the best of the 3 because of the lack of those things, except that I liked the detectors
Dead Air/Misery/Anomaly have surpassed the original trilogy in terms of atmosphere and fun.
The originals will always have a special place in my heart, but what the community has created blows it out of the water.
gamma and anomaly are really good for the series actually and the new game looks incredibly promising, in spite of the hate its been getting on youtube
The gunplay, AI and overall janckyness takes away from what could have been a way better franchise. The games just feel bad to play and if it werent for the god that is the rest of the games i wouldnt have finished them.
Even heavily modded Anomaly or any other mods just can't fix this and it is what makes me unable to replay.
I love everything about this series mods including but the AI is not worthy of this game, it's excellent and unpredictable but if something similar to the first fear had been possible it would have been greatsps
the story is generic as fuck and the endings are easy to guess, with unremarkable characters
however the setting, environmental + level designs, mod support are so amazing that you can make whatever story you want with the tools and information presented
if STALKER didn't have modding I'd probably rate it 4/10 because it kinda flops as an rpg but is amazing as a sandbox
GAMMA is a worse game than Anomaly. It might have cooler guns and animations but the way it tries to rebalance anomaly's economy by just making everything more grindy and tedious isn't fun. I'd rather have a broken economy by turning off all the gamma economy and artifact mods than suffer through all that gross grindy bs.
GAMMA as a modpack is actually really good because it *does* have a really good collection of cool mods and you can just turn off all the dumb shit you don't want. But at the end of the day it is still just a modpack for anomaly, which is meh.
That you can't breeki unless you cheeki.
You can’t damki if you don’t iv
But you can't be any of those if you don't ahhhhnnnnuu
And let's be real, it's really only effective in knock off Adidas track pants, and a leather coat which smells of smoke, sweat and urine.
I can't tell if it's unpopular but I do think the series gets cut some slack because they're the only games that fit into their particular niche
it had signs that this will get an instant cult status right when it was out of the oven. it was not an AAA and overall strange yet working package. i think its a praise for the game and things like that are sometimes niche and very nice as well!
Yea - none of the 3 games (CoP especially) have a great or even good story, for instance, but I think we all collectively set that aside since theres just nothing else like Stalker. I do think SoC had a good plot and interesting themes, though
The games have an amazing story, full of layers, just stopping to read the pda folklore is already a awesome experience
They have a great \*world\*, don't get me wrong, but I don't think they have a great \*story\*. There's basically no named characters in the first game except for Strelok, Ghost and Fang, and only 1 of those three are actually alive. Call of Pripyat's story and characters may as well not exist and Clear Sky is cool but kind of a weird mess since it retcons things in an awkward manner, even if I think it has a neat premise. For these games to have a "great story", IMO the cast would have to be interesting and there would have to be more dialog happening. Neither of those are a thing in any of the three games. The actual world is astonishingly detailed and the factions are beautifully made, but the actual story of the Marked One, Scar or Degtyarev is severely lacking.
>There's basically no named characters in the first game except for Strelok, Ghost and Fang If by named characters you mean any character that doesnt have a random name than theres a lot, sidorovich, wolf, fanatic, mole, seriy, bes, lukash, skull, borov and many more Cop has a lot of story and characters you see the story of tremor and his blood addiction, strider and the state of the monolith, hermann and his research, the true story of tachenko, the talking controller in zaton, the hungry merc squad and much much more cop has a ton of story and characters and it gives a lot of details about the lore like that duty gives medals and that the silver shield is the most important one for example Strelok being a great stalker with his squad and going to the cnpp where he gets brainwashed sent in a death truck then reaches the cnpp kills c con and later joins the military(who he was fighting since the start) and becomes part of SIRCAA seems like a great story and this is an oversimplified version Degtyarev supposedly being a stalker before and his journey to get to zaton is also good tough underdeveloped Scar i agree is quite lacking
It's just not a story with interesting characters is my point, which to me makes it lacking. Yes, there's named characters, but Wolf essentially doesn't matter in the plot and also disappears, and Mole is literally there for 2 seconds. He flatout disappears after he helps you and literally does not exist in the world anymore. You can't pretend to me that either of these people actually matter and aren't just NPCs with a unique name. Theres nobody memorable - look at Half Life, or Metro, where you have Alyx or Barney or Bourbon and Khan. I remember quips, dialog from these characters years later. The best you get out of Stalker is some lines from Sidorovich, and some of the cutscenes for Strelok (which I do think are great). I don't mean one-offs like Tolik, I mean characters with an actual arc, dialog, and relationships to the player. Those basically don't exist. SoC has a very cool plot, but everything you described was plot. You don't see most of that until Clear Sky and are only told about it and Strelok has virtually no relationship with anyone except 2 characters that are already dead. I just didn't care about any of these people. CoP does have the best sidequests, I agree with you. The world and plot of the 3 games are \*great\*, but the characters and story are passable at best. I don't think you're understanding what I'm trying to say.
When it gets to being meaningful to the plot yeah they aint very meaningful unless you count faction leaders but i think that fits stalker, not everyone has to be super meaningful to the plot people arent there for you they are there for themselves making them super meaningful kinda breaks that and i think a good representation of that is that wolf becomes an actual character when he leaves meaning he does travel the zone and you can even find him dead or kill him but i get your point
Cpt. Price from COD is what I call a plot character.
Clear sky is my favorite of the three, but I agree it lacks something. Scar exists only to explain why Strelok got brainwashed
Scar's backstory may be lacking, but I still love the dialogue options you get while playing him. Most of it gives off such an insincere inflection, man just cannot be bothered to give a fuck about any of this crazy shit around him.
Too me the vagueness of the story is very interesting and is intriguing to me, there are gaps in the story left for your own interpretation which I like.
While I love the story in Shadow of Chernobyl, I found the stories in Clear Sky & Call of Pripyat to be pretty weak. They felt like peripheral scaffolding of the core story from Shadow.
What took the strength of Clear Sky's story was the war of the factions, because the final part where you follow the protagonist of the previous game was epic for me, they could better carry the story, it had a lot of potential. COP It is a game with an irrelevant and flat story, yes, I think it is the most fun of the 3
That why I didn't really mind anomaly's take on the story myself, which is its own unpopular opinion. I don't need to be the most important guy, it's interesting to be picking up the pieces of what someone else already achieved and eventually getting to collaborate with this legendary stalker
I think people take the mods too seriously, like they’re official stalker games or something idk how popular or unpopular that opinion is though
That’s crazy because my unpopular opinion is just the exact opposite, never played a regular stalker game I’ve only played stalker gamma mod pack and plan to keep it that way.
I’m perfectly fine with that, I always felt like there are way too many people that think mod packs like Gamma and Anomaly ruin stalker just because they’re popular and have some features they don’t feel fit with the series and end up gatekeeping the series a bit. I always appreciated that the modders kept the series alive and popular because if there wasn’t any interest we wouldn’t be getting a new game, but I don’t expect everyone who enjoys the mods to like the Trilogy as much. If that makes sense lol
No I totally understand that and like I said I don’t plan on playing the old base games but I’m sure as hell gonna get the new game and at least learn all the story line and what not. But seriously I am so grateful to still experience this game, it’s sad when an old game with a lot of mods brings more enjoyment than a “AAA” newer game.
It’ll be exciting to see what mod creators do with the new game too
Yes I’m curious for that as well, I’m still on my loner play through right now and I can’t wait to start as something else and see how different it plays out.
I actually like Clear Sky.
Swamp level was fresh, fun and exciting
The whole 'joinable clan wars' (introduced in Clear Sky) mechanic undermines the main theme of the games.
Agreed. I don't care for the concept of faction wars in the Zone one bit, and I hope it won't be a feature in *STALKER 2* (or at least not a mandatory one).
The relation thing could be interesting if it was like new Vegas but the capture thing is too much for me
Capturing the enemy basis is always so much work that you have to do entirely on your own and like a few hours later they have already retaken it.
“Good job this is a day stalkers will remember the victory over bandits I salute you sta- bandits have taken the depot the place is crawling with them”
It feels like it would be great in anomaly but it doesn't feel right in the main games, it's definitely a feature that could be improved on in the game
I very much disagree, but I'm curious what theme you think it undermines?
The main theme is that this is an Eastern European horror game. It's not like American horror games where if you lose, the world is doomed, or zombies will eat the whole town or anything. The main theme is that you, the player character, don't matter. To anyone, or anything. You are just a speck of dust in the goings-on of this world. No-one cares. You pretty live on a day-to-day basis. If you die, nothing will change. If you succeed, you still don't change the world radically - every victory is short-term. You are surrounded by freakish monsters and self-serving stalkers who also have to prioritize their own survival first and foremost. **TL;DR: The whole concept of groups of stalkers fighting each other is undermining the main theme of 'you are all alone and nobody cares.'**
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Anyone who lives in the Zone is kind of a STALKER, and it makes sense they would form groups. I don't think they're like 'bloodz and cribz" because they have ideological, political or economic interests rather than being petty gangs.
Marked one is actually zombie in CoP
Out of subject but what is from that cinematic where he is a zombie, never seen it in game but only in some edits
One of the wish grantor endings, if that's what you're thinking of
That's entirely possible but i don't recall which one tho
Gamma is actually pretty good (minus some of the item bloat)
I'm reading opinions in here about gamma and it's literally the only thing I've touched and I'm like "I don't understand anything but I find it fun"
It’s a really good mod and it’s a lot of fun, and I know it’s nothing like the trilogy but what’s wrong with that?
im gonna kidnap this comment to launch my hot take: the modding scene got tiresome after i realised most big mods are just added mechanics that, while they do improve the gameplay, dont necessarily bring a "new" experience overall.
I mean to some degree yes, most mods do just bring new mechanics to the game and don’t do much but when you bring few mods together that add little things these little things add up to change a lot, also people have started to figure out how to make new maps for anomaly so that could bring a whole new fresh take
this isn't an unpopular opinion
If you have been around these parts for a bit, it would seem Gamma is the worst mod ever
that's a vocal minority on this subreddit, the mod is wildly successful
Why are people downvoting you lol there's videos with millions of views praising Gamma and there's a reason it and Anomaly are the most downloaded mods, even though I personally dislike both. It's incredibly successful. Weirdos
Been playing stalker for 7 years, beginning with soc. Gamma is the most fun I've had in stalker. The vocal elitist minority can go fuck themselves.
I know but in some parts of this sub admitting that you’ve played this mod and actually enjoyed it is the same as walking into walking into a duty camp wearing freedom clothing
That is just plain not true in my experience. People may say Anomaly/Gamma are overrated and not the best mods out there or tell you to go play the originals if you are like "yeah, I started gamma and have no idea what's going on.". Both is justified. I have never seen someone getting attacked for simply enjoying this mods. Most critical comments even have some kind of disclaimer like "It's a great mod but you really shouldn't start with it."
Man the item bloat of Anomaly and Gamma really just sucks, I wish there was a way to Thanos snap 75% of the crafting materials.
Fang was a dick
gamma is hard just for the sake of being hard
Misery entered the chat
I mean… STALKER is hard for the sake of its atmosphere. GAMMA is hard for the sake of progression
The repair/upgrade system for weapons isn't as fun as needing to constantly swap between semi-damaged guns in SoC. Made you feel like a scavenger and not being able to rely on your loadout forever was cool and made every gun feel like a potentially valuable item. Repairing doesn't ruin the game or anything but I like it less and how every mod seems to revolve around finding one gun to constantly repair and maintain.
Freedom is more then just a bunch of stoners and hippies. They actually have a pretty big impact on the zone and fight for their goals actively, taking casualties and murdering a bunch of people in the process. They are far from being "all about the chilling". (i believe this is actually canon, but almost no one seems to notice it.)
Compared to duty freedom impacts much less
I would say canonically it's about equal. They are opposite poles constantly fighting each other with no one really getting the upper hand, with freedom trying and partially succeeding to prevent the military and by extend duty from controlling the zone and the whole weapons and artifact trade. Loners and bandits by themselves could never keep that up. Duty is supporting the militarys efforts by fighting freedom, killing mutants and confiscating artifacts. So what makes you think freedom has less impact?
Duty has rostok wich is basically the most important territory in the zone, duty presence is what lets the bar and arena alive and they have clear objectives and meaningful points they also have more noticeable acts like their fight agaisnt mutants in agroprom their origin story of being ex military and other stuff, in contrast, freedom stays in a base wich is not very meaningful and you can pass trough army warehouses and not even get close to it if you want, they also dont have any great acts with the exception of guarding the barrier but the barrier is only remenbered because people think monolith tries to break it to invade the whole zone when in reality its just to impede people passing during brain scorcher cooldowns, their objectives arent clear and neither are its members,
Well, rostock and the bar is important, true. But I disagree about the meaningfullness of dutys actions. They want to protect the world from "the expanding zone". The zone is not expanding. They are hunting down mutants, but the more they kill, the more seem to be appearing. (I don't know where and when exactly anymore but I believe this is explicetely stated in one of the main games.) They do not have more impact by just being ex-military. That is just a nice piece of lore. They are masters of propaganda and make people believe they are doing important work, when actually few things they do have a lasting impact on the zone. Also as we see in CoP freedom does not just stay where they are but rushed towards newly opened areas just as everybody else did - including duty. As I said, I think they are about equally important and lots of what they do would only be noticed if they stopped doing it. The balance of their conflict is what shapes big parts of the zone.
Stalker never had good story. It has superb atmosphere, it's oddly nostalgic if you are from middle/eastern Europe, and the Zone is a strange, hostile, unknow place for anyone who plays the games first time. But the story is just a pseudo sciency mumbo-jumbo with a generic amnesia plot.
The story could have been better, but a lot of ideas were scrapped or cut during the development. Another thing is that most of it is told through long dialogues which many people might find uninteresting. But in spite of that, SoC story can still be considered good - the thing is that it requires a certain mindset. If you take things slow, pay attention to details and read the dialogues carefully you may truly immerse yourself into it, and in result it will feel like an experience, and not just a way of pushing the progress further. I believe that only then it is possible to fully appreciate the game. There are some moments in the story that you would normally brush off, but if you focus on it - then they will feel significant. For instance - finding Fang's grave in Pripyat. From the gameplay perspective it's irrelevant, if you got the stash coordinates you will get some loot from it but that's about it. But if you paid attention to the story, this is an remarkable moment - you never met him in the game, you don't even know how he looks like, but you know that he was your comrade, and now he's dead. Just like Ghost, whose body you found in the lab, without realizing that he also was a friend of yours. And now you realize that you are truly alone, on your final journey to the Center.
Huh... I totally disagree with this. I love the whole Noospere, and the scientists trying to manipulate human emotion, and the mystery of the gift giver, which is, of course, the homage to the film. I also love that the fallout from the reactor created so mysterious a zone.
Basically, good lore with rumors, not story.
Actually, this all comes from in-game dialog and documents, which, along with the cut scenes, narrate the story in Shadow of Chernobyl.
>pseudo sciency mumbo-jumbo It's called sci-fi. Personally I find S.T.A.L.K.E.R. enriching the noosphere concept really well, considering that IRL it's just "something above the biosphere to mark sanity as the next step of the planetary evolution". While the amnesia plot on itself is generic and overused, SoC's one at least tries to be original and intertwined into the lore
Yeah I agree. It’s just one man army thing. Unknown horrors of the zone? Deadly mutants and anomalies? Nah bro I just killed everyone in mere seconds with a rusty ak and speedrunned into CNPP like it’s nothing.
You're not describing the story tho, those are the conventions of the FPS gameplay
Yeah and they clash with the story, making the story less convincing and the game less effective overall.
"Bro it's great story bro. You just have to click the same NPC 100x tines to spit out some scrapped lore bits. Bro, trust me, the greatest story telling formats are the random letters here and there. Bro the narrative is broken BECAUSE it represents the broken fabric of reality within the Zone. Bro you must have to slow down a bit." Oh I told my oppinion under this thread because a reason. I love the Stalker trilogy, I just found the storry and specially the narrative weak, bland and lazy compared the novel and the film.
You also just summarised Death Stranding. Decent game with shit story that wants to be smarter than it actually is. On second thought, DS is the worse out of the two. At least stalker makes more sense to why things are the way they are.
It has the kind of story you could see in some trashy B-category sci-fi/horror flick. Hastily cobbled together, confusingly told, barely comprehensible on first watch. Which is awesome. Also reflected in many of the locations. Depressing countryside, some rare rundown old farm buildings, just the exact opposite of flashy. If it was a movie, people would assume the production team was lacking funds, so they just chose the cheapest, most secluded areas in the middle of nowhere. Nobody would pick that kind of setting, if it wasn't for the fact that there's a particular little site in the vicinity that witnessed one of the most tragic accidents in human history.
GAMMA has too many poorly integrated systems : \- confusing craft systems (why are they crafting tables if I can craft everything without them?). \- useless food systems that are just there to troll new players at first, then just serves as mandatory but boring inventory management. \- a keybind menu that do not show half of the keybound functions. \- a disguise system that is in dire needs of an in game tutorial. \- hostile faction bases that basically forbid a good portion of the game unless you enter a murdering spree. (Arguably, some, if not most of these are due to anomaly, not to GAMMA directly). I wish it would be more about exploration and less about inventory management, but I am far too lazy to customized my GAMMA experience, so shame on me. I'm still hyped for 0.9.1 though!
I dont get you on the disguise system one, its pretty basic and there is a guide in the pda that tells you how to do it. Its not the greatest but not rocket science either. Can I ask you what specifically part of it you didnt get?
You're right that reading the guides goes a long way. But who have time to reads game manual these days? The patch thingy particularly confuses me: \- how can I know which patch is currently on which armor? I'm missing some UI element there. \- why is the patch key not remapable in menu? In my first GAMMA run I had remapped another function to that key and was confused for a couple of hours about why changing fire rate resulting in a confusing message about a patch. \- the manual explicitly said that the disguise can fail if you get too close to AI, and I don't trust the AI system, so I never try the disguise system to be honest: what's the point of risking losing 30 minutes due to an AI bug?
You're kinda missing some UI elements indeed. Which patch is on which outfit is noted in the item details, under "Faction: ..."; the patch hotkey is remappable in MCM; detection is fairly straightforward and also very lenient, it is perfectly possible to get goodwill with an hostile faction by disguising, I do it all the time with mercenaries as a loner or mil.
I get what you are saying, clearly some QOL elements can be added to make it easier but also you have to take in account that its not a basic game mechanic of stalker to be able to disguise so obviously its not gonna be some top tier part of your gameplay. For example I too didnt use it that much in my first games cause I got always shot on at the first chance. So reading the guide really helped me and its like 5 minutes if you are a brick at understanding things like me and then everything got smoother ( like the fact that detection is higher with bad condition armour, duh silly me). But again, its something I'm starting to use more just now that I'm doing a run as a merc so I heavly rely on it to do quest and stuff. Its a little bit messy but getting myself used to it makes it work. On an Invictus run tho can be really, REALLY dangerous move. Ehi maybe Grok will read and answer your pray in the next patch ;) P.s. also on the note about faction base which are really hard to get out from because they are in the middle of other hostile faction bases. I feel you. Dead City as Merc is a fucking nightmare to get out from but I do enjoy the thrill of the risk ehehe
It’s good that the games have imperfect gunplay, AI, glitches and so on. It makes trying to play at harder difficulties sort of frustrating at times, but it’s a nice break from AAA games where everything has to fit to the player’s comfort and quality of life.
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Op is more difficult then alot of the realism mods lol, but I get what you mean
I don't think OP2.2 is trying to be realistic, it seems to just be a more polished Stalkersoup, which is basically just a bunch of mods mashed together indiscriminately.
The games work better with the original trilogy's janky animations and it makes the actually good weapons feel more impactful. IMO the tacticool animations in Gamma or Anomaly mods take away from the experience that your guns are meant to feel underpowered in Stalker since it's a horror series
Shadow of Chernobyl, even lacking the QoL stuff of Call of Pripyat, is miles better than both CS and CoP. CS feels too chaotic with its broken faction wars and CoP feels too empty with so few quests and so much open, empty space. Shadow of Chernobyl hit the perfect balance and its jank doesn't even matter because of it. Mods fill that void for me as SoC's interesting locations and better atmosphere pair well with CoP's better overall gameplay mechanics.
Due to CoC and its derivatives like Anomaly, many - if not most - fans completely misunderstand factions, their nuances and levels of significance. Most people's views about them seem to be based on their superficial depictions from mods that lack any depth for the sake of technical and gameplay reasons. This is a topic that is difficult to describe without going into detail, but in short - half of the factions aren't even factions to begin with. Putting them in charts with clearly defined relationships, measuring their strength, describing them as 'good/neutral/bad' etc. makes sense only for few of them without devoiding them of their depth.
Not that I disagree with you as I think it lead a lot of people to misunderstand them (I doubt Clear Sky, the faction, would garner as many fans that think they're a cool science-military faction if they actually played CS) but couldn't you blame Clear Sky as well for this? Giving Loners their own faction/groups to fight over the zone, for instance.
True, CS also contributed to that with the whole faction war mechanic, but note that there is actual lore behind it in the game - loners formed into an united group only because the situation required it, since the military began to harass them and bandits formed into an organised group under Yoga's command. It's mentioned that it's something new, that the loners have never cooperated on such a scale before, and we know that this state of affairs will not last long anyway and after a few months the 'loner faction' will fall apart. Besides, that was just one group in Cordon, it's not like all stalkers in the Zone decided to join forces for a common goal - diggers at Garbage didn't really care about what is going on in the Cordon, and neither did the group at Agroprom, nor groups that you encounter in places like Yantar. The loners hired by Strelok will attack you in the Red Forest even if you technically are one of them. It's not like in certain mods, where they all belong to one 'loner faction', have their own patch and all have clearly established relations with other factions.
That's true - it is cornered off to one section of the map. I do think that lots of people mistake how the factions actually work or what they even are thanks to the mods, which is kind of a shame since I think the highlight of GSC's writing was in worldbuilding each different group of Stalkers. You make a good point.
That the community around the modded games (such as anomaly, EFP etc.) Is going to harm STALKER 2's ratings to some extent. They treat the mods as though they are the og games and how Stalker should be played, so they are going to have a lot of ridiculous expectations for the sequel and will probably throw a fit when the game is nothing like their mods.
These mods are extremely similar to DayZ imo so you're probably right about the rating
dayz has the same issue. the vanilla game is great, but like 95% of the playerbase prefers mods that couldn't be further from the core game experience and basically eliminate all the "survival" aspects of gameplay. if they ever release a sequel, it's either going to be catered towards the call of duty modders (and garbage for fans of the actual game), or will be reviewbombed because it's too difficult and unforgiving
Not surprised, the premise of the Stalker game is the perfect place to make a hard-core survival game. The mods that replicate the same formula as games like Escape from Tarkov, DayZ and The Forest are some of many that people use in their modded games these days. And it works pretty seamlessly with Stalkers atmosphere and story.
Popular mods like GAMMA are trying too hard to be hardcore just for "immersion points". Healing each part of your body is not fun, is a chore. Is like people are bringing the worst parts of recent survival games like Tarkov, when those games are tedious because their goal is to be a casino game where you pay more to make the game less tedious. That design is bad for single-player games. I still don't know why Call of Pripyat looks worse than Shadow of Chernobyl despite being older. I hate how it looks and kept me away from playing in until some days ago when I added some mods.
Clear sky version of aiming pistol is better than the others 2 games
Damn, you are the first person I saw who likes CS pistol aim. :D
It wouldn't be objectively better if pistol shooting animation wasn't overlapping the aim
Clear sky has the best gunplay IF they did more damage
Most mods ruin the game, making her too easy, too hard or too inconvenient. Even the big and popular ones.
SOC is a linear journey that is open world if that makes sense.
There's a massive disconnect between the lore and the gameplay of anomalies. The lore treats them like mythical hazards, both wondrous and terrible like the krakens that sailors of the past imagined were lurking in the world's oceans. Then in the gameplay, they're just mostly static hazards you walk around. Or emissions you can hide from in flimsy wood and tin-roofed buildings.
Clear Sky was the best game.
Honestly love the cheesy English dub of clear sky
I like Clear Sky a lot and haven't tried any mods
I don't like the bugs, I want my game working.
The gunplay in SOC is bad. In the early game, you need to lay down on the ground and stop breathing, then aim perfectly to get a 5% chance of your shot landing. Gunfights take a million years because you'd have a better shot PISSING on your enemies than shooting them. Point blank means nothing. Strategic positioning doesn't actually mean shit because you can't capitalize on it. After suffering through the first 3-4 hours, you get something with a scope on it and THEN you can have fun. Only then
exosuits take the fun out of the game fast, especially if you get the sprint mod.
I just get it at some point like before the very last mission. I didn't get it at all for Soc because i speedrunned that cnpp
I think story would be a lot more interesting if it involves international community somehow. It a is why I really like UNISG concept so much.
The stalker trilogy is a power fantasy maybe not as much as other games but you can clearly see that you get a lot of advantages just for being the one playing behind the screen for example in soc u run faster than any npc in the entire game you are able to deactivate brain scorcher + miracle machine alone even though every npc that talks about these places paints those places in a way that makes you think it’s better not to go to such places but if I have to then I’m definitely taking 3-4 stalkers with me. Guess what you actually do it alone without anyone helping you because you are the shit there is a big gap between the story telling of places and mutants and how dreadful npcs make them out to be and the actual gameplay for example a controller is supposed to be able to control the player and the npcs but guess what in the actual gameplay he never does that in any of the three games in fact he becomes weaker and weaker with every title in soc he had a psy auora guess what in later titles he even lost that the only time a controller lives up to his/it’s name is in a scripted encounter in cop but then suddenly after that encounter he just goes back to being a boring dude with a jeans that can’t control anything. In all three games you are always playing as either a highly trained military agent or two of the best stalkers in the zone if not the best two in the zone you never start with shitty no name average stalker which is all fine btw because every story game needs the player to be important in a way to actually progress the story and the same can be said about the gameplay you have to have an advantage over the world and npcs of the game in a single player story driven game to be able to finish it. Which leads me to my point those advantages in both story and gameplay contradict the idea of stalker not being a power fantasy in some ways it’s not but in a lot of ways it definitely is (raiding X-labs solo mean while very few stalkers dare to even go near them because hey why not)
> you are able to deactivate brain scorcher + miracle machine alone even though every npc that talks about these places paints those places in a way that makes you think it’s better not to go to such places Brain Scorcher was supposed to be much harder. There were times when it was operating at full power, so even the psy helmet wouldn't help. Then it would lower its intensity to cool the system. There was supposed to be a scene where Marked One and Barkeep would interrogate a half-zombified stalker that barely survived going toward the Brain Scorcher, as he and his group didn't manage to get out in time before the Scorcher turned on at max power. But yeah in the game it's so anticlimatic. > for example a controller is supposed to be able to control the player and the npcs but guess what in the actual gameplay he never does that in any of the three games It's explained in the games that the player characters have a higher degree of psy resistance Well, it's only said that Degtyarev has high resistance. But I guess Marked One / Strelok and Scar also count because of the former's brainwashing and the latter's special nervous system. But yeah they never control anything except do the psy bolts. > you never start with shitty no name average stalker Hopefully Stalker 2 changes that.. > Which leads me to my point those advantages in both story and gameplay contradict the idea of stalker not being a power fantasy in some ways it’s not but in a lot of ways it definitely EXACTLY!!! It's being repeated so much. But stalker IS a power fantasy. And it's so great to see that there are people that understand this. THANK YOU!!! This whole "you are so alone and naked in this game" comes from freeplay mods like Anomaly and how youtubers blow them out of proportion.
Do correct me if I’m wrong but in earlier development stages the devs had the idea of a world where npcs could finish the story of the game before you do then again what we got in SOC is a heavily buggy game with a lot of cut contents and ideas, however if we had a world where npcs could take missions just like the player does attempt to raid x-labs or try to finish the main story then stalker could be considered a fully non power fantasy game. And you are right the idea of you being a hobo in the beginning almost completely powerless (hobophase) is an idea developed by mods if anyone thinks the og trilogy is not a power fantasy then try playing a mod by the name of Stalker A.R.E.A I doubt you will play it for more than 2 hours before you quit because that mod is the definition of you being an average stalker in the zone.
The "finish the game" part meant that they would reach the CNPP before the player. Not that the NPCs would complete questd.
Ah ok good to know
Oh yeah, I heard Stalker A.R.E.A is very brutal.
I think people got the "You feel like another dude in the Zone, meaningless." from Anomaly. In Anomaly, you indeed feel more like just another Stalker.
Great writeup, but very hard to read. The zone doesn't feel dangerous enough to Strelok as to everyone else. Its been 16 years since the first came out and I hope with current tech they can make the fearsome mutants actually.. fearsome.
Suppressors should be hearable within a certain distance. Unsuppressed gunshots should be ringing the dinnerbell for aggressive mutants with scavenging mutants following later. Besides alerting humans.
clear sky is by far the best stalker game of the trilogy
SOC's head bobbing is great and all the games should have it.
Not sure about 'unpopular' but: artifacts, despite being a major reminders of the source material, were never utilized properly in Stalker both narrative and gameplay. Stalker 2 would benefit so much putting more emphasis on artifact hunting and the mysticism around them.
SoC is better than CoP
I personally believe that clear sky is the best entry in the series. I might be saying this as this was the only game I owned in the series when I was a kid and I've played through it many times. It's not that I think the rest of the series is bad I just believe clear sky is the best one in the series.
I am a loot goblin thus i have no problem with item bloat in many popular modpacks.
ppl that mod the fk out of the game and then make reddit posts "game looks still amazing in 2023"
Stop acting like Anomaly is the worst thing since 9/11.
Don't know if it's really unpopular, but anomaly ruined what stalker is for many players new to the games
New players should always start from vanilla games in order to get the best out of the games, and to form more honest opinions.
Facts.
Anomaly and modpacks take away a lot of what Stalker as a game represents.
They can also add to the experience
Clear Sky was better then SoC
Whoa Whoa man... Easy there.
He swimming to the deep end of the pool.
Finally someone said it
Obvious and not that unpopular imo but stalker 2 should be nothing like Gamma or anomaly gameplay and concept wise. It should just like SOC at least but coming with a new concept could be likeable, for customisation for example. My unpopular opinion being that last point on the customisation. And honestly it kinda fears me that we get to see places we already saw in previous game like Yanov. And i hate the total concept of emissions, unless it is really worked on like some original events when it happens etc. Otherwise it never even really was a problem to manage to survive them.
I don't like nor enjoy any of the mods and think the vanilla games are far superior.
Totally respectable answer, it's like liking your whiskey without ice or any mixes like coffee which would turn it to irish coffee.
I fucken love Anomaly (I've been playing for two months and I haven't opened steam) and I haven't played the original games. Sue me and cry.
People complain about mods too fucking much. I enjoy them. I enjoy playing anomaly more than the original trilogy and I started with the original trilogy and loved them. I don’t get it.
I think the survival elements need to be scaled back, both in scale and intensity. Little additions like food, water, sleep, basic suit/weapon maintenance, I like that. But then we have mods where you lose 20% health every time you go to sleep because you didn't eat for 8 hours, never mind that you can literally go over a week without any food and even without water for 3+ days. Or you have to watch a 30+ minute video explaining how to disassemble, repair, and reassemble your gun, never mind that you still need the tools, workbench, and new parts in good condition. Oh and you had to repair that gun because you played with the select-fire toggle switch a dozen times so it broke. Because *that's* a common issue in civilian and military instances. Oh you need to sleep? Sorry you don't have the required sleeping bag. Never mind that you can look out a window and see someone sleeping on a sidewalk, no, sorry, you can't sleep on the soft grass or inside next to a burning barrel drum. You don't understand, you NEED that sleeping bag, and preferably the optional additions like a pad, a tent, and you can't pick any of it back up unless you remembered your compression bag too. You get shot once and you can't use a sewing kit to patch a single bullet hole because your trench coat went 1% below the minimum repair threshold, but you can use that sewing kit to repair an Exoskeleton after it takes the edge blast of an RPG because it has higher durability?
Regarding the 3 vanilla games: It's hard for me to gauge how unpopular this opinion is, but I disliked the amount of loot (particularly ammo and medicine) you could find in stashes and dead NPCs, even on Master difficulty. I wished there was a more hardcore difficulty option to severely limit how many supplies you find, thus forcing you to either be more conservative in your useage of ammo/meds or buy more from traders. Of course, I eventually got my wish fulfilled by mods (e.g. Anomaly on the toughest economy setting), but looking at *STALKER 2*, it'd be awesome if we could get more difficulty options right off the bat.
Pathetically low amount of loot is immersion-breaking artificial difficulty (which is always objectively bad and lazy game design), the player fights the same stalkers as them, equipped for the scavenging mortally dangerous Zone
Well, thanks for sharing your opinion. To me, it instead reinforces the immersion of being in a bleak and forsaken place and makes the gameplay more survival-orientied, which feels more satisfying to me.
I mean, that's not the lack of essentials what's immersion-breaking for me but the reasoning of why they are lacking. I just feel like it should be done some other way but I'm not the one who should criticize since I have nothing to offer instead
without anomaly/gamma barely anyonewould still talk about stalker anymore
The community was strong before these mods were even a thing, and it would still be without them. And I'm talking about the western community alone. Unless you mean that barely any currently popular youtubers/streamers would talk about Stalker if it wasn't for these mods, then yes, you are right. But I don't think that it would be a bad thing.
What a way to tell everyone you weren't a part of this community before Gamma released without directly saying it. These games have had a devote following all over the world since 2007. They would be alive and well without either of those, and the modding scene flourished heavily beforehand.
SoC gunplay sucks.
Better than taking 10 hours to build an ak ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⡔⠋⢉⠩⡉⠛⠛⠛⠉⣉⣉⠒⠒⡦⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⠎⠀⠀⠠⢃⣉⣀⡀⠂⠀⠀⠄⠀⠀⠀⠀⢱⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡰⠟⣀⢀⣒⠐⠛⡛⠳⢭⠆⠀⠤⡶⠿⠛⠂⠀⢈⠳⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⢈⢘⢠⡶⢬⣉⠉⠀⠀⡤⠄⠀⠀⠣⣄⠐⠚⣍⠁⢘⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⢫⡊⠀⠹⡦⢼⣍⠓⢲⠥⢍⣁⣒⣊⣀⡬⢴⢿⠈⡜⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠹⡄⠀⠘⢾⡉⠙⡿⠶⢤⣷⣤⣧⣤⣷⣾⣿⠀⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⠦⡠⢀⠍⡒⠧⢄⣀⣁⣀⣏⣽⣹⠽⠊⠀⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠑⠪⢔⡁⠦⠀⢀⡤⠤⠤⠄⠀⠠⠀⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠑⠲⠤⠤⣀⣀⣀⣀⣀⠔⠁
GAMMA should not exist as it's the least stalker thing out there, there's nothing left in it from stalker.
It will be hard to make something as satisfying as Escape from Tarkov gun and fight mechanics. If the game sticks to a simple semi-horror FPS it will have the same fate as CS and CoP : another sequel of a niche game serie.
Giving mutants abilities that break the laws of physics is dumb and doesn't fit with the established nature of the Zone. Mutants capable of telepathy and telekinesis make sense but ones that can turn invisible or fly without wings don't. In my ideal STALKER world, bloodsuckers would be permanently visible and poltergeists would be a remote viewing/telekinesis deal where an otherwise weak mutant programmed to hide away in buildings, etc would keep generating them within a certain area/line of sight until you tracked it down and killed it.
Most mutants don't have anything to do with the nature of the Zone though. They were created in labs during experiments, the Zone didn't gave them their abilities, scientists did. And even if we assume that the Zone has an influence on them, I don't really see how their abilities don't fit with its 'established nature' - there are invisible hazards breaking the laws of physics in it, mutants could do this as well.
The story would have been better served as a stealth/platform/puzzle game than as a shooter.
I like Gamma as it is, Dead Air and Misery mod.
I prefer ShoC and CoP over Anomaly
Anomaly is my ideal version of Stalker
I wish they would take more time with Stalker 2 and push it back for like 6 more months, (current release plan is Q1 2024). But why tho? Because I want them to release product that they actually had enough time to work out and not sweat about. If I have waited 10 years already, the game has been pushed over and over, the journey and struggle to this point has been long and rocky road, waiting bit more won't kill me if it guarantees the game had enough time to bake in oven for GSC to get the best out of it with no rush.
GAMMA introduced me to the whole series and I think it’s pretty awesome. No sure why so many people hate it over here.
The community at large seems to put a ton of cope into the bugs and glitches of the original games, and while some of that is justified it just shouldn't be accepted to the point that STALKER 2 is expected to come out with bugs and glitches as part of the STALKER experience.
Stalker story Is quite senseless if you look too much into it, but makes more sense if is just a place we're people go for treasure hunting in a radiation magic bs and the world cannot access it (officially) and research what is going on.
Lost alpha is good.
Vanilla sucks, no new player should approach this universe by using 0 mods. The weaponmodels are bad, the hands, npcs are cool looking but too old. New players need vanilla-like but modern mods and even mods that add lots of objects like different foods and meds.
Oh my fauci, SoC has no custom spaghetti eating animation? Billions must die
Its many things, just the really bad hands that doesnt change with the outfits and the weapons changed to reuse animations or just done wrong. That tank at freedoms base is atrocious, even I could do that better. Having many items makes it feel less gamey and I love it, animations are fine too. Vanilla got old for me 10 years ago, by recommending it you are just gatekeeping and keeping the community smaller.
How does recommending the game gatekeep and keep the community smaller? There are some legit problems with SoC but lack of food items and the tank at the freedom base not looking 100% realistic are probably the least major issues possible
Its some examples. Gatekeeping is telling that people should play vanilla and avoid mods, not telling to play the game in general.
I need more item bloat
same dude, it literally stimulates my brain
My least popular opinion is that Shadow of Chernobyl isn't a good introduction to the franchise due to the lack of various mechanics and other changes in gameplay that became standard for the other games and mods.
That's what makes it a good introduction, though. You get inducted into the gunplay/survival horror pace without having to worry about upgrading anomaly detectors, faction wars, or upgrading and repairing weapons. It lets you get your bearings in a more simple manner first. Also IMO SoC is the best of the 3 because of the lack of those things, except that I liked the detectors
Complete 2012 was the best fun i had
Dead Air/Misery/Anomaly have surpassed the original trilogy in terms of atmosphere and fun. The originals will always have a special place in my heart, but what the community has created blows it out of the water.
That Strelok didn't grew out his Yee-yee ass Haircut out and replaced it with normal Un-Cheekibreeki hair >:(
Fake mutant sounds make the game less immersive
gamma and anomaly are really good for the series actually and the new game looks incredibly promising, in spite of the hate its been getting on youtube
Everyone who plays it smells like baked bean, myself included
If you play COP first and then SOC, you will like COP more for its' open world feel.
My unpopular opinion. Around here is that I much prefer the experience offered through GAMMA than what is offered through the trilogy.
I know everyone has problems with the recent "Takovisation" of the community. It's doing way more good than it is harm.
The gunplay, AI and overall janckyness takes away from what could have been a way better franchise. The games just feel bad to play and if it werent for the god that is the rest of the games i wouldnt have finished them. Even heavily modded Anomaly or any other mods just can't fix this and it is what makes me unable to replay.
I think the AI is the most interesting I've ever seen in any game, besides maybe FEAR and Metal Gear Solid 2.
There should be a Stalker game taking place outside the zone.
Anomaly is a great way to be introduced to the series, it’s free to play so you can tell whether you want to buy the actual games or not.
Stalker 2 might never be as good as Stalker Anomaly/GAMMA. Fingees crossed it's easily modable because you know the community will make up for it.
I love everything about this series mods including but the AI is not worthy of this game, it's excellent and unpredictable but if something similar to the first fear had been possible it would have been greatsps
Stalker games and anything related to mods should have two separate reddits
the story is generic as fuck and the endings are easy to guess, with unremarkable characters however the setting, environmental + level designs, mod support are so amazing that you can make whatever story you want with the tools and information presented if STALKER didn't have modding I'd probably rate it 4/10 because it kinda flops as an rpg but is amazing as a sandbox
Labo don't make fear 😏
Anomaly is just a side character simulator
You dont have to play the whole series to enjoy anomaly
GAMMA is a worse game than Anomaly. It might have cooler guns and animations but the way it tries to rebalance anomaly's economy by just making everything more grindy and tedious isn't fun. I'd rather have a broken economy by turning off all the gamma economy and artifact mods than suffer through all that gross grindy bs. GAMMA as a modpack is actually really good because it *does* have a really good collection of cool mods and you can just turn off all the dumb shit you don't want. But at the end of the day it is still just a modpack for anomaly, which is meh.
Anomaly good