S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

 

[Iucounu]

Seems he has only played for 20 hours.

Says the video uses medium graphics settings (despite an RTX 3070), but it looks way lower than that to me. That could mean there's no point in playing the game just for the graphics unless you have something way better.

When the player character pulls up his PDA it looks like he's pressing it against his face, first time I thought he was donning a gas mask. The actual PDA screen has the same sterile artstyle as CoP, sad decline compared with SoC and CS.

 

[Dark Souls II]

they were adding features until last minute

And all the new features they've added are:

- a weapon wheel
- a woman
- a nigger
- yellow ladders

 

[orcinator]

had no time to do QA

Then don't release the fucking game. Especially if it can be fixed in a week. These are critical bugs preventing progress that are easily discovered if they played it once through. Me and everyone else I talked to who played the game had softlocks midgame (several times) and had to use noclip. There's a person just last page who said the same.
That said, shilling for GSC... belter or paid? Call it.

No shilling, I am just stating two common reasons why games come out buggy. Sure they could have postponed but maybe M$ said no delays or maybe they calculated this was best time to earn most money or they knew if they delayed they would just push more unfinished features and release with even more bugs.

They released it now to avoid getting their data storage blown up by an Iranian Dorito.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Bruh

A-Life Fix And Spawn Overhaul
This cfg edit restores (or at least mimics) the chaotic dynamism of the old stalker games by "unlocking" the range of the director.
It also murders your framerate, so you can enjoy the authentic 30fps 2007 Shadow Of Chernobyl gameplay experience. Note that the spawn Director is very broken in the game, therefore all cfg mods at this juncture are merely band-aids.

• Increases spawn rates and distance of spawns. Extends online a-life range.
• Heavily mitigates (but does not prevent) cases of enemies appearing out of thin air right behind you.
• Significant extension of A-Life range. NPC and NPC interactions can be seen and heard from afar.
• Enables distant gunfights.
• Revamps Director scenarios for more variety of encounters
• Keeps your legs warm in winter with performance impact.
• Prevents quest npcs and towns from spawning normally at times. You have to save and reload the game to get quest npcs to spawn.

This literally just increases the spawn range. It does nothing else. But here's the cool part:

The ALifeGridVisionRadius is set to 80m in vanilla. This is not just the radius of director spawns, this is the radius where all actor models spawn, and it is also the radius where actors are interactable. This 80m radius is the "real world" bubble around the player and nothing else outside of it exists.

Holy fucking shit. And dumb niggers in this thread wonder why binoculars are not in the game. Nigger, it's because nothing happens at >80m, what do you need binoculars for?

Ironically, CoC has the option to create the opposite, no spawn bubble around you. And you can make it to 80 meters too so nothing will spawn this close

 

[Ol' Willy]

had no time to do QA

Then don't release the fucking game. Especially if it can be fixed in a week. These are critical bugs preventing progress that are easily discovered if they played it once through. Me and everyone else I talked to who played the game had softlocks midgame (several times) and had to use noclip. There's a person just last page who said the same.
That said, shilling for GSC... belter or paid? Call it.

No shilling, I am just stating two common reasons why games come out buggy. Sure they could have postponed but maybe M$ said no delays or maybe they calculated this was best time to earn most money or they knew if they delayed they would just push more unfinished features and release with even more bugs.

They released it now to avoid getting their data storage blown up by an Iranian Dorito.

Devs are in Czechia for a long time

 

[Onionguy]

The game was already delayed many times, there has to be a limit to how much you can fuck around.

More interesting thing I heard was that apparently Chernobyl NPP was supposed to feature in this game, but was cut at the last minute. There's still traces of it left in the game.
Kind of goofy when COP didn't feature it either and didn't really have any compelling final area.

they need something for dlc.

 

[Mercatroid]

The disaster of terrible AI, aborted A-Life, random spawn spam and NAFO agendas aside S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is a pretty good showcase of diminishing returns in terms of graphics, games being made today don't look a whole lot better than games made a decade ago, throwing in PBR and very poor approximations of ray-tracing, something they had done for very cheap with passable methods of faking it for a long time, doesn't do as much as you might think for the game. The biggest difference is foliage density.

This video is a really good comparison and is well-chosen for the point you're making, for a lot of reasons. For one thing, look at how much personality Sidorovich lost when he was uprezzed. I have found this to be the case across the board with 3D games from the past decade compared to the great ones of the past: in the old days, human characters were always designed by artists, and therefore the characters felt like works of art, and had the kind of personality which is only present in works that have a genuine human touch. Like look at original Sid there; he is a really weird guy. You have to imagine that he would be, to hold down in his position as a wealthy trader surrounded by a bunch of heavily armed and hungry young men, most of whom are borderline-criminals. Sid is like the archetypal "Fat Man" underworld boss in so many old noir films. And so he looks like kind of a freak. He has big bug eyes and an imposing countenance, and seems like a guy you wouldn't want to mess with. But when you look the "Sid" in Stalker 2, you just see "a guy." It's so lame. It's just some actor whose face was digitized, almost certainly--and even if it isn't, it completely lacks the oddity and personality the original Sidorovich has, because character and imagination and strange creativity have been sacrificed upon the altar of "realism."

I was playing Call of Chernobyl a while back and I played some Autumn Aurora directly after, and I had this same impression even with that comparison. Like the Stalkers you run into in AA, the original SHoC ones, are really freaky-looking guys, skinny and with strange, twisted faces. They look like something out of a dream or a cartoon, and their strange appearance really adds something to your impression of the Zone. Even in Call of Pripyat's assets the creep of "realism" had already started to erode some of the character and personality of the original vision, and the game's world feels notably "dry" and less atmospheric compared to Shadow of Chernobyl, and especially compared to Autumn Aurora, which is a masterpiece mod created by one guy who is clearly a genius. Great atmosphere comes from hours and hours of personal investment like that, not from "adding a bunch of grass in UE5."

You're right about the diminishing returns of graphical improvement too, and the over-reliance on foliage. Stalker 2 has way too much of it. Like look at the comparison with the original Novice Village there with its clean, dry road, which makes sense for a frequently-trafficked area, vs Stalker 2's boggy swamp in the middle of the same area, full of puddles and overgrown with plants. It's pretty unlikely that area would actually be like that, and it just looks stupid and overdone to me. "Look at all the things! Look, water!" Also note at 5:30 the NPC who teleports and then starts doing a running-in-place animation. The animations in this game are also a major downgrade, and every clip I've seen of towns has guys walking around aimlessly in bizarre, fake-looking ways which weren't present in any of the original games. It looks like it's just a bunch of junk animations wholesale imported from some UE5 animation library and incorporated without fine-tuning any of it to make sense, vs the animation in the original games, which was done much more by hand, and therefore feels very natural and real. It's the touch of the individual artist's hand that makes any kind of art any good, and Stalker 2 feels like it has very little of that.

 

[Gerrard]

look at the comparison with the original Novice Village there with its clean, dry road, which makes sense for a frequently-trafficked area, vs Stalker 2's boggy swamp in the middle of the same area, full of puddles and overgrown with plants. It's pretty unlikely that area would actually be like that,

Try going outside sometimes.
"It is unlikely that there would be water standing in the pits on a beaten down dirt road that does not allow water to easily seep through."
You fucking moron.

Spoiler

What is actually unlikely is that the grass would be this low everywhere and not actually 2 meters tall.

 

[kites]

I've had the mission "Visions of Truth" break on me in 3 different ways so far today. Think I'm hardlocked. I took the few mods I had off after the patch; I don't know if it's my save or that the questline just needs patching at this point.

 

[Mercatroid]

Try going outside sometimes.

How does my dick taste in your mouth, Gerrard? You have responded to every single post I have made on this entire forum, mostly by posting gay little whiny emoji, and by now google image searching pictures of puddles. You're like an obsessed homosexual stalker. And flattering as that is, I think it suggests you're probably the one who needs to go outside.

 

[Gerrard]

Try going outside sometimes.

How does my dick taste in your mouth, Gerrard? You have responded to every single post I have made on this entire forum, mostly by posting gay little whiny emoji, and by now google image searching pictures of puddles. You're like an obsessed homosexual stalker. And flattering as that is, I think it suggests you're probably the one who needs to go outside.

You mad? Try not making dumb fucking posts if getting called out upsets you so much.
And don't flatter yourself, you flaming homo.

 

[Harthwain]

Like look at original Sid there; he is a really weird guy. You have to imagine that he would be, to hold down in his position as a wealthy trader surrounded by a bunch of heavily armed and hungry young men, most of whom are borderline-criminals. Sid is like the archetypal "Fat Man" underworld boss in so many old noir films. And so he looks like kind of a freak. He has big bug eyes and an imposing countenance, and seems like a guy you wouldn't want to mess with.

He is "a really weird guy" who is "looks like kind of a freak" because that's best they could do with the engine they had. It is as simple as that. Trying to make an argument out of the appearance is funny when most people in the game "look like kind of a freak". I would say that models in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. were serviceable and not romanticize them beyond that point.

But when you look the "Sid" in Stalker 2, you just see "a guy." It's so lame. It's just some actor whose face was digitized, almost certainly--and even if it isn't, it completely lacks the oddity and personality the original Sidorovich has, because character and imagination and strange creativity have been sacrificed upon the altar of "realism."

You're trying too hard to rationalize why you like the old model more. You should be able to clearly see the similarities between the two models. The only difference being the top of the head. So claiming "it's just some actor whose face was digitized" is delusional. That said, the argument about losing money on graphical fireworks without gaining much function out of it in return (gameplay-wise) still stands.

 

[Mercatroid]

No, you don't "explain what I wrote to me." The things I wrote aren't the things you wrote instead, just because you said so. "It's as simple as that." LOL. This forum has some of the most blatant aspie dungeon trolls I've ever seen on the internet. In an earlier era, the level of mental illness you so obviously display would have gotten you institutionalized. But then again, in an earlier era you simply wouldn't exist. Your mind was destroyed by constant interface with computers from a young age, and probably from heavy metal and industrial chemical exposure. You're just a lost, wastoid subhuman who can never make it in the world of actual adult homo sapiens. Your absurdly fake, laughably condescending, totally empty-of-value conversational style would get you instantly laughed out of any real conversation between adults. And of course, that is why you post here instead, because it's the only place where you can pretend like your cartoon villain drivel amounts to something more than mentally ill noise.

 

[orcinator]

had no time to do QA

Then don't release the fucking game. Especially if it can be fixed in a week. These are critical bugs preventing progress that are easily discovered if they played it once through. Me and everyone else I talked to who played the game had softlocks midgame (several times) and had to use noclip. There's a person just last page who said the same.
That said, shilling for GSC... belter or paid? Call it.

No shilling, I am just stating two common reasons why games come out buggy. Sure they could have postponed but maybe M$ said no delays or maybe they calculated this was best time to earn most money or they knew if they delayed they would just push more unfinished features and release with even more bugs.

They released it now to avoid getting their data storage blown up by an Iranian Dorito.

Devs are in Czechia for a long time

They released it now to avoid getting their data storage blown up in a mysterious accident preceded by a very loud buzzing noise.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

stalker had dogshit face and weapons models. They got away with it with the balaclavas and gasmasks which has now contributed to the legendary stalker 'look'.

 

[None]

It's the touch of the individual artist's hand that makes any kind of art any good, and Stalker 2 feels like it has very little of that.

Behold, good art, made with the touch of the artist's hand!

Some of you have mythologized the OG series to the extent that you've left reality.

 

[United Nations]

It's the touch of the individual artist's hand that makes any kind of art any good, and Stalker 2 feels like it has very little of that.

Behold, good art, made with the touch of the artist's hand!

Some of you have mythologized the OG series to the extent that you've left reality.

STALKER SOC had horrible fucking graphics, even by 2007 standards.

I had to wait for mods to do a complete graphic overhaul before it became playable for me, and I'm not a graphics whore at all.

Seriously, vanilla SOC is an extremely ugly game... The updated 4k textures for the ports don't look too bad though.

 

[PanteraNera]

I had to wait for mods to do a complete graphic overhaul before it became playable for me, and I'm not a graphics whore at all.

Shows how different tastes are, because I was like WTF?! when I read that quote.

I have a highend system (4090 RTX, 7800x3d, 64GB RAM) for a reason. Still I was fucking surprised how good SoC looked vanilla. I tried some graphic mods but to me they looked worse than the originals. Especially as some added shit like some female Stalkers that looked out of place.

Also keep in mind, I am not a Stalker fan, in fact I have never finished one before but I gladly play SoC instead of Stalker 2 as it has to offer more (gameplay).

And while I do like good graphics, hence why I bought that expensive ass rig, I think it is quite amusing that I have more fun playing old games or unoptimized indie games, as most of the AA-AAA games are utter shit.

 

[United Nations]

I had to wait for mods to do a complete graphic overhaul before it became playable for me, and I'm not a graphics whore at all.

Shows how different tastes are, because I was like WTF?! when I read that quote.

I have a highend system (4090 RTX, 7800x3d, 64GB RAM) for a reason. Still I was fucking surprised how good SoC looked vanilla. I tried some graphic mods but to me they looked worse than the originals. Especially as some added shit like some female Stalkers that looked out of place.

Also keep in mind, I am not a Stalker fan, in fact I have never finished one before but I gladly play SoC instead of Stalker 2 as it has to offer more (gameplay).

And while I do like good graphics, hence why I bought that expensive ass rig, I think it is quite amusing that I have more fun playing old games or unoptimized indie games, as most of the AA-AAA games are utter shit.

I don't like most big budget games either.

Almost all of the games that I play are indie titles. Some, like STALKER, become cult favorites years down the road.

For instance, I beat Diablo IV about a year ago and it was extremely mediocre (big fan of Diablo II though)... It was over-polished to the extreme, as is clearly evident by the insanely long credits roll.

Again, not listening to all the dumbasses that hate on Complete, but playing Complete compared to vanilla STALKER was like night and day to me.

Oh... And FYI--Complete is the most downloaded and one of the highest rated SOC mod on moddb.com, so I'm not alone in my positive opinion of it.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

It's the touch of the individual artist's hand that makes any kind of art any good, and Stalker 2 feels like it has very little of that.

Behold, good art, made with the touch of the artist's hand!

Some of you have mythologized the OG series to the extent that you've left reality.

Dial back the revisionism here lads. SHOC was absolutely considered a good-looking game in 2007 and was used to benchmark graphics cards.

I would also point out that, regardless of any technical quality compared to today's graphics, those faces are all distinct and immediately evocative of each character regardless of how minor they are in the overall story. I immediately think of the Agroprom fight on seeing Mole - hallmark of effective visual design.

If graphics-whoring is gaining traction on here we're fucked.

 

[Harthwain]

It's the touch of the individual artist's hand that makes any kind of art any good, and Stalker 2 feels like it has very little of that.

Behold, good art, made with the touch of the artist's hand!

Some of you have mythologized the OG series to the extent that you've left reality.

Dial back the revisionism here lads. SHOC was absolutely considered a good-looking game in 2007 and was used to benchmark graphics cards.

I would also point out that, regardless of any technical quality compared to today's graphics, those faces are all distinct and immediately evocative of each character regardless of how minor they are in the overall story. I immediately think of the Agroprom fight on seeing Mole - hallmark of effective visual design.

If graphics-whoring is gaining traction on here we're fucked.

I think it is possible for both of you to be correct here.

It is true that the game was looking good back then and even today it's holding up pretty well, considering its age. But let's not kid ourselves that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 1 is a visual "work of art", like some idiot tried to preach a page ago or so. People who are unironically saying that are indeed retarded and should take a pill to go back to reality.

The real problem is not the models in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. It is the fact that we got better visuals, but lack the solid mechanical foundation that the previous game had. This is the primary reason for me to not buy the sequel, despite my love for the first game.

 

[Reever]

I had to step back and quit the game after SIIRCA base Not only was that whole section extremely boring, in my opinion, it shows Skif as a complete fucking idiot. His whole motivation for risking his life in the Zone, fighting countless bandits and mutants, having this dumb revenge plot against Dalin, was because his apartment burned down? I thought they would've AT LEAST mentioned some family members dying or something like that but they specifically say that he was a loner with no friends/family. How do you make a protagonist this fucking unrelatable? And it's not like Strelok or Degtyarev were the epitome of character development, but at least they were just boring. Not this aggressively stupid.

 

[ArchAngel]

I had to step back and quit the game after SIIRCA base Not only was that whole section extremely boring, in my opinion, it shows Skif as a complete fucking idiot. His whole motivation for risking his life in the Zone, fighting countless bandits and mutants, having this dumb revenge plot against Dalin, was because his apartment burned down? I thought they would've AT LEAST mentioned some family members dying or something like that but they specifically say that he was a loner with no friends/family. How do you make a protagonist this fucking unrelatable? And it's not like Strelok or Degtyarev were the epitome of character development, but at least they were just boring. Not this aggressively stupid.

Some people burn the world for their dog, some for their hard earned apartment.

 

[ultra loser]

The disaster of terrible AI, aborted A-Life, random spawn spam and NAFO agendas aside S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is a pretty good showcase of diminishing returns in terms of graphics, games being made today don't look a whole lot better than games made a decade ago, throwing in PBR and very poor approximations of ray-tracing, something they had done for very cheap with passable methods of faking it for a long time, doesn't do as much as you might think for the game. The biggest difference is foliage density.

I hate lighting in modern games, every game is so soulless now, all of them look the same, gaytracing and realistic lighting was a mistake