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

[Drakortha]

So far out of all the enemies I met Controllers are most irritating to fight.
Fought two, first was part of the mission so I had to kill him but 2nd was in a cave with a stash so I picked up the stash and ran away but his psi effect followed me even when I was far away including illusion enemies spawning.
Burer was also irritating until you learn how to "fight" it which is use your starting pistol as he cannot make you drop that as it is considered a quest item.

Like how Oblivion graced us with essential NPC's, Stalker 2 graces us with essential weapons. Thank you GSC!

 

[ADL]

The fact this game released with no A-life is a crime against humanity, as that was one of the most noteworthy features of the OG trilogy. And yea it will probably take them 12 months or more to get anything close to it, if they ever do as the reason it was probably scrapped was due to the engine collapsing when you have to many actors in the vicinity, which happens whenever you go to 'town' locations with many NPCs.

Would be nice if mods can do something but we are never gonna get like the original where you can actually track individual NPCs across the zone. At least they can stop enemies spawning right on your ass, which is currently obnoxious when you are standing in an open field, turn around and 2 seconds later a group of cheeki breeki bandits have appeared out of the ground or a bloodsucker is sticking its tentacles into your butthole.

So basically we traded A-Life for 'open world' and 'kewl UE5 graphics'. I knew they would make it open world, even though ridiculously enough most of the individual zones still have narrow 'entrances' with cliffs or rivers blocking access.

Wasn't large scale AI simulation one of the leading reasons why Warhorse chose CryEngine for Kingdom Come Deliverance? This is going a while back but Unreal 3 was starting to go open back when KCD went into production so that seemed like a conscious choice to stay away from UE. I'm starting to wish we got the 2012 CryEngine/X-Ray 2.0 version of STALKER 2 instead.

Instead Vostok Games pissed on the remnants of X-Ray 2.0 by making a pay2win PvP game while endlessly teasing a online multiplayer freeplay experience and ended up with this.

 

[Gerrard]

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.

Crysis released the same year. By comparison, Stalker was incredibly janky looking. Most of the heavy lifting was done by the lighting and texture work, Sidrovich looking ambiguously human was not some sort of intentional secret sauce that Stalker 2 is now missing, it was just shitty model work. But just like the numerous bugs and other jank didn't bother me, neither did the models. The game could have looked like Deus Ex and I'd still have loved it because of the gameplay.

Crysis was a tech demo, that doesn't count. And SoC was basically a 2004 game with DX9 slapped on top of it.

 

[TheDarkUrge]

Finished the game. I rate it 7.5/10

No random events/squads basically at all makes running between POIs very boring. The characters in this game felt way more interesting than the originals. The consoles removed a lot of features the old games had, but at the same time the bigger budget allowed to do a really thorough job with the map and tons of nice scripted events. I think I would recommend waiting a year to see if mods and patches from the devs can make this game an 8.5/10. There's a solid base but it feels just unfinished.

 

[Jinn]

Finished the game. I rate it 7.5/10

No random events/squads basically at all makes running between POIs very boring. The characters in this game felt way more interesting than the originals. The consoles removed a lot of features the old games had, but at the same time the bigger budget allowed to do a really thorough job with the map and tons of nice scripted events. I think I would recommend waiting a year to see if mods and patches from the devs can make this game an 8.5/10. There's a solid base but it feels just unfinished.

This is a reasonable assessment. My guess is that it'll be up to an 8.5ish area in half a year, whether through mods, or patches, or both combined. Will probably be closer to what everyone remembers SoC being great for sooner than SoC actually was.

 

[jebsmoker]

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.

people don't like Complete because it rebalances the difficulty in a way that makes the game trivially easy

 

[TheDarkUrge]

Finished the game. I rate it 7.5/10

No random events/squads basically at all makes running between POIs very boring. The characters in this game felt way more interesting than the originals. The consoles removed a lot of features the old games had, but at the same time the bigger budget allowed to do a really thorough job with the map and tons of nice scripted events. I think I would recommend waiting a year to see if mods and patches from the devs can make this game an 8.5/10. There's a solid base but it feels just unfinished.

This is a reasonable assessment. My guess is that it'll be up to an 8.5ish area in half a year, whether through mods, or patches, or both combined. Will probably be closer to what everyone remembers SoC being great for sooner than SoC actually was.

Yeah it's been so long since the original releases people have nostalgia goggles on (which is admittedly justified, newer games should have better stuff) but even the originals were pretty unpolished without at least AMK mod on. So I have hope, and they have a bigger team and budget now with the microsoft money. If they do DLC I wonder what they'll add.

 

[Gargaune]

I feel like something's gone wrong with this generation when I stumble across a video called STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl - RELAXING AMBIENT WALKING.



Also, whoever was complaining about the "foliage" earlier had a point. Much of the vegetation, especially in the wilderness areas, looks a bit too detailed and too vibrant. It's kinda like they overshot realistic and landed on idyllic. This is STALKER we're talking about, the point of having greenery overrun man-made infrastructure is to underscore the demise of civilisation, not proclaim the triumph of nature, there's a difference in angle there. Some of these wilderness shots are prettier than KCD's and I ain't talking about pixel count.

P.S. In all fairness, some of them also look proper, like those Generators and Jupiter segments. I won't know what the ratio is until I play it eventually.

 

[Ryzer]

The gameplay was clearly outdated even at the time.

Adjusting for the Ryzer Scale, such a mild sounding criticism is glowing praise coming from you. Your incisive commentary continues to illuminate us all. I await your final and ultimate revelation, probably something along the lines of "life is actually kind of bad".

Did you like opening the inventory each time your character is wounded? Did you like the fact that there no feedback when the foe receives a bullet? I know the codextards have rose tinted glasses but this one takes the cake.

 

[jebsmoker]

The gameplay was clearly outdated even at the time.

Adjusting for the Ryzer Scale, such a mild sounding criticism is glowing praise coming from you. Your incisive commentary continues to illuminate us all. I await your final and ultimate revelation, probably something along the lines of "life is actually kind of bad".

Did you like opening the inventory each time your character is wounded? Did you like the fact that there no feedback when the foe receives a bullet? I know the codextards have rose tinted glasses but this one takes the cake.

lmao wut

there's quick keys for using bandages or medkits in Shadow of Chernobyl, and enemies flinch or swear/yell out in pain/etc when shot/slashed/stabbed

 

[Dark Souls II]

It's kinda like they overshot realistic and landed on idyllic. This is STALKER we're talking about, the point of having greenery overrun man-made infrastructure is to underscore the demise of civilisation, not proclaim the triumph of nature, there's a difference in angle there. Some of these wilderness shots are prettier than KCD's and I ain't talking about pixel count.

This has been a problem with Stalker mods for years. Every mod that's supposed to make the game look better makes it look worse by making it look prettier.

That's why I always play Anomaly on DirectX 8 mode, it makes it still look like a game set in Eastern Europe. If it make the game too pretty, it looks like Western Europe.

 

[Drakortha]

Did you like the fact that there no feedback when the foe receives a bullet? I know the codextards have rose tinted glasses but this one takes the cake.

They need to make STALKER more like Fallout. What I really loved about Fallout 4 is how you always know when you get a kill because there is a "ka-ching!" cash register sound every time you gain some XP.

GSC needs to let go of their outdated design. Shooting guns just isn't enough anymore. I need satisfying damage feedback sounds that slap my eardrums, giving me that dopamine hit every time.

 

[Ryzer]

The gameplay was clearly outdated even at the time.

Adjusting for the Ryzer Scale, such a mild sounding criticism is glowing praise coming from you. Your incisive commentary continues to illuminate us all. I await your final and ultimate revelation, probably something along the lines of "life is actually kind of bad".

Did you like opening the inventory each time your character is wounded? Did you like the fact that there no feedback when the foe receives a bullet? I know the codextards have rose tinted glasses but this one takes the cake.

and enemies flinch or swear/yell out in pain/etc when shot/slashed/stabbed

There's no dismemberment, real wounds when shooting at an enemy. You can shoot a few bullets in the arm and they will be as fine as new.

 

[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.

people don't like Complete because it rebalances the difficulty in a way that makes the game trivially easy

Complete isn't easy if you play it on max difficulty.

 

[Mortmal]

The gameplay was clearly outdated even at the time.

Adjusting for the Ryzer Scale, such a mild sounding criticism is glowing praise coming from you. Your incisive commentary continues to illuminate us all. I await your final and ultimate revelation, probably something along the lines of "life is actually kind of bad".

Is he wrong? It seems FEAR and Half Life were better than this, and Stalker 2 doesn't really improve upon those classic games.

I remember once standing on a concrete building , watching a squad shooting at each other and throwing grenades, all while repeatedly yelling lines like, 'I GOT A SURPRISE FOR YA!' They kept doing it at each other and even at me, though I was completely out of range. Then they started spamming, 'I AM HIDING HERE!'

It was kind of funny—like playing hide and seek with my toddler niece, who hasn’t quite figured out how the game works yet: 'I AM HIDING HERE, UNCLE! UNCLE, I AM HIDING HERE!'

 

[Ryzer]

The gameplay was clearly outdated even at the time.

Adjusting for the Ryzer Scale, such a mild sounding criticism is glowing praise coming from you. Your incisive commentary continues to illuminate us all. I await your final and ultimate revelation, probably something along the lines of "life is actually kind of bad".

Is he wrong? It seems FEAR and Half Life were better than this, and Stalker 2 doesn't really improve upon those classic games.

I remember once standing on a concrete building , watching a squad shooting at each other and throwing grenades, all while repeatedly yelling lines like, 'I GOT A SURPRISE FOR YA!' They kept doing it at each other and even at me, though I was completely out of range. Then they started spamming, 'I AM HIDING HERE!'

It was kind of funny—like playing hide and seek with my toddler niece, who hasn’t quite figured out how the game works yet: 'I AM HIDING HERE, UNCLE! UNCLE, I AM HIDING HERE!'

FEAR is still one decade ahead of all FPS (including recent Stalker 2) released so far. A-Life is downright pathetic compared to FEAR A.I.

 

[Iucounu]

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.

True. You may not like the style of SoC, but it does have style.

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

And it still has great art style, but technically speaking I don't think the game's graphics were at the top of the competition on release. However, Clear Sky (that came out in 2008) is a major increase in technical quality, while still retaining the atmosphere of SoC: https://cs.stalker-game.com/en/?page=screens so it's not like you must sacrifice style just because technical quality increases.

 

[randir14]

Finished the game. I rate it 7.5/10

No random events/squads basically at all makes running between POIs very boring. The characters in this game felt way more interesting than the originals. The consoles removed a lot of features the old games had, but at the same time the bigger budget allowed to do a really thorough job with the map and tons of nice scripted events. I think I would recommend waiting a year to see if mods and patches from the devs can make this game an 8.5/10. There's a solid base but it feels just unfinished.

How did consoles remove features from the originals? The original series is now on consoles - including Switch, the weakest of them all.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

being on console doesn't mean being consolized. morrowind ran on xbox too. before the dark age of dumbing downs.

 

[ArchAngel]

It supports mouse and keyboard on console with same UI as PC. Only thing different on console is lack of modding support atm.

If it was simplified it is because of modern zoomer public, not because of consoles. Consoles seem to be losing platform wars at the moment. PC made a big comeback and mobile platforms found lots of players.

 

[V17]

Wasn't large scale AI simulation one of the leading reasons why Warhorse chose CryEngine for Kingdom Come Deliverance? This is going a while back but Unreal 3 was starting to go open back when KCD went into production so that seemed like a conscious choice to stay away from UE. I'm starting to wish we got the 2012 CryEngine/X-Ray 2.0 version of STALKER 2 instead.

No, and in fact even relatively small scale AI simulation is the reason why KCD suffers from fps drops in Rattay sometimes even on current rigs, or why the game's few battle scenes are so small they feel a bit silly and tank the fps despite that - the engine has issues simulating that many NPCs at once. It doesn't feel like it should be that computationally intensive, but it is. Someone from Warhorse did a lecture explaining why that is years ago, but it was only in czech.

I think it's safe to conclude that it's a difficult problem regardless of engine, and while there's no real excuse for releasing Stalker 2 without A-Life, it may be that it's simply harder to do than in the old games for reasons that are not obvious without seeing under the hood. I just hope it gets there eventually so that I have a reason to actually buy it.

 

[Drakortha]

there's no real excuse for releasing Stalker 2 without A-Life, it may be that it's simply harder to do than in the old games for reasons that are not obvious without seeing under the hood.

Reminder that A-Life was listed as a feature on steam up until the day before release.

Harder to do or not, they still lied and hoped we were too stupid to realize (or care).

 

[Gerrard]

Not being able to replicate a feature from a nearly 20 year old game on a modern engine due to technical limitations is pretty pathetic. I think this is the most palpable example of nothing but graphics tech being improved over time. The question is whether the fault is on the side of devs, or the engine itself.

 

[Melcar]

I would say both. Studios are more than willing to use pre-made do-it-all-for-you engines and doing things outside the box tends to be discouraged. It's always the same. They use nostalgia as bait. Maybe it's genuine at first, but then reality sinks in and they find out that they just can't replicate old shit with modern tools without doing some extra work and with clever work-arounds.

 

[NecroLord]

Not being able to replicate a feature from a nearly 20 year old game on a modern engine due to technical limitations is pretty pathetic. I think this is the most palpable example of nothing but graphics tech being improved over time. The question is whether the fault is on the side of devs, or the engine itself.

It's the cursed Unreal engine used by pretty much everyone and their mothers...