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

[Fargus]

https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkx_-ytuiQaQlu_1_juJIwXPDAmwxD-VfFB

Some GSC clownery with belarusians. (Google translated)

GSC Game World showed itself

Yesterday GSC Game World blocked some of our videos and our channel got a strike. The reason was that we used the official STALKER 2 trailers in our news clips.

On the one hand, the reason could be that we fell under the distribution. After the 200 GB build of STALKER 2 hit the net, the game's developers removed leaked gameplay footage from everywhere they could reach. We did not use these frames, but since we discussed this topic, the strike could have arrived by accident.

On the other hand, it could be a petty revenge of the company for the fact that we regularly remind it of the chaos of the development of the first part of STALKER and share our fears that the situation with STALKER 2 is repeating itself. We love sharing memory pills, so we commemorate the famous initiative to sell NFT tags and a metahuman at a failed auction. Nobody likes uncomfortable stories.

On the third hand, the developers could be pricked by what we constantly remind: users from Russia and Belarus, despite the GSC Game World ban, will be able to play STALKER 2 or in the Xbox Game Pass service, or simply by downloading the GOG distribution in the xatab store !" on the day of release. The game is sold on GOG, and there are no security systems.

To understand the situation, I wrote to the representative of GSC Game World, who threw us a strike. I asked about the reasons for blocking the content and wished the GSC team the best of luck in completing STALKER 2. The answer I received was as follows [in the attached screenshot].

That is, these ardent patriots, who were the first to flee Ukraine after the start of the SVO, eating away Microsoft budgets in Prague, registering a company in Cyprus in order not to pay taxes in their homeland, decided to play politics. I will note again. THIS IS THE OFFICIAL RESPONSE OF THE OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE COMPANY. An answer to two Belarusian, which is ironic, bloggers. Answer in Ukrainian. So impudent that it becomes clear that there is nothing to agree on.

I have only one question left for the fiery Cypriot patriots. If you banned the distribution of the game in Russia and Belarus, if you remove the ready-made Russian localization from STALKER 2, if it is so unpleasant for you to communicate in Russian, why are you climbing into the Russian-language information field and go to shit when your game company is fair and being criticized? Oh yes. Because that's where the core of your fan community is.

I hope now people who, despite everything, are waiting for the release of STALKER 2, will understand who they are dealing with and will not actually buy this game. Just. Out of principle.

We re-uploaded the deleted video to VK: https://vk.com/video-192534154_456244662

The rest of the videos in the archive were not preserved, alas. But this is science for us. Now we will upload all the videos to other resources. Thanks GSC for the lesson. To demonstrate STALKER 2, we will use STALCRAFT videos.

P.S. Question for knowledgeable people. Is it possible to fight off a strike based on nationality?

 

[Gerrard]

GSC continues to behave like the petulant children that they are? What a surprise.

 

[NecroLord]

Honestly, they really shot themselves in the foot with this one.
The majority of their fanbase (who probably played all three S.T.A.L.K.E.R games, hell, perhaps even Firestarter and American Conquest) is from Russia and Eastern/Southeastern Europe.
GSC trying really, REALLY hard to score those points with the West...

 

[Baron Dupek]

Seems like Pepsi rots not just teeth but grey matter too...

 

[Sukhāvatī]

The majority of their fanbase (who probably played all three S.T.A.L.K.E.R games, hell, perhaps even Firestarter and American Conquest) is from Russia and Eastern/Southeastern Europe.

Still remember playing Codename: Outbreak as a teen.

 

[Baron Dupek]

The majority of their fanbase (who probably played all three S.T.A.L.K.E.R games, hell, perhaps even Firestarter and American Conquest) is from Russia and Eastern/Southeastern Europe.

Still remember playing Codename: Outbreak as a teen.

Played it recently with GOG copy - still had AI partner freeze in one lab (or whatever that was) in the early missions. Just like my copy from old gaming mag.
Then one mission in the airbase that crashed if you try to save/load.
Then oil rig where you could not interact with anything for some reasons (bug?).
Then had to solo final mission because pardner just died somewhere in the process of dungeon crawling.

 

[Fargus]

Venom was a cool game with badass soundtrack but i never finished it. More budget and polish and it could have been a great tactical shooter. And i played their more obscure games like Hover Ace or Firestarter. Never liked Cossacs, but my step brother did.

But you all forget their ultimate masterpiece Warcraft 2000 Nuclear Epidemic where humans and orcs can just nuke each other. Played that shit too lmao.

 

[cretin]

Honestly, they really shot themselves in the foot with this one.
The majority of their fanbase (who probably played all three S.T.A.L.K.E.R games, hell, perhaps even Firestarter and American Conquest) is from Russia and Eastern/Southeastern Europe.
GSC trying really, REALLY hard to score those points with the West...

Never seen a company more deftly self immolate than GSC is doing. Russians are going to play STALKER 2 regardless, there will just be 15 million downloads instead of 10 million sales.

Reddit won't pick up the tab.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Nah they'll be fine

 

[Baron Dupek]

Is Firestarter any good? Does it even contain any form of singleplayer campain? Something like Unreal Tournament / Quake 3 series of arenas? No plot?

 

[Angthoron]

Heh, this reminds me of recently talking to a bunch of american co-workers that all consider themselves in the know when it comes to PC gaming, talked about various game recommendations.

"Oh and there's STALKER, too, worth giving that a shot"
"Oh yeah, I've played those before, you mean games where you stalk and kill your friends in multiplayer, like Dead by Daylight, right?"
"No, that's literally the game's name"
"Oh. Never heard of it!"

And now they're skipping game shows. This is gonna end well.

 

[jebsmoker]

Is Firestarter any good? Does it even contain any form of singleplayer campain? Something like Unreal Tournament / Quake 3 series of arenas? No plot?

the plot in Firestarter is threadbare: basically you're in a computer simulation that has gone wrong - if you die in the game, you die in real life, and you gotta fix it by killing everything in sight.

you'll probably like Firestarter if you like shit like Serious Sam or Painkiller

 

[NecroLord]

Is Firestarter any good? Does it even contain any form of singleplayer campain? Something like Unreal Tournament / Quake 3 series of arenas? No plot?

It's really similar to Quake 3. Has pretty cool monsters and guns.
Give it a shot if you like Quake 3, but do not expect anything groundbreaking.

 

[NecroLord]

American Conquest is really good.
Also has an expansion focusing on the American Civil War - Divided Nation.

 

[Iucounu]

It is no longer the year 2003 laddies. This new game costs many times what the original Stalker cost back then. They're not making a game for you, they are trying to make an edgy "Russian biohazard sign mutants gas masks" shooter for everyone, because that baby will need to sell a lot more copies than there are old Stalker fans to be even close to successful.

Agreed, but the enthusiasm of old Stalker fans is still very much needed for free viral marketing, so it's important that GSC at least keeps hopes and illusions up until release.

The only positive takeaway I got from the store page is the map size - they're listing 64 sq km, which is the size of the Hunter Call of the Wild reserves and those maps are HUGE to traverse on foot, like, REALLY HUGE, probably bigger than the Call of Chernobyl All-3-Games-Maps-Mashup together.

From my experience, 3x the size not means 3x the content, more like 3x the size of one game with the same content of one game and while that sounds cool, walking for miles on empty maps gets old pretty quickly. Unless they plan to use procedural generation to fill those areas with something to do, maybe placing rare anomalies that you need to hunt on really dangerous areas with high probability of spawning more dangerous mutants would be cool but I dont have my hopes up for that.

I think it's too much, even if filled with proper A-Life and other quality content. One of the best things in the previous Stalker games is seeing how the A-Life changes a given location over time, but with too large areas in Stalker2 you've likely forgotten many places even if you do manage to revisit them later.

A-Life could easily fill a map of any size though. ARK: Survival Evolved uses something similar to A-Life that works very well populating its huge maps, despite that game's complete lack of quests. OTOH I recall there's over a hundred animal species in ARK...

 

[Iucounu]

the conflict, whether we like it or not, will inevitably affect the depiction of ukrainian military presence in the zone, they won't be as much morally grey as they were in the past any more.

Not necessarily, as a rule Eastern Europeans tend to be p cynical about institutions of their respective countries. I imagine that the Army will still be depicted as prone to corruption, smuggling, bullying...

Unless Ukrainian authorities pressure GSC for the sake of national war morale. I would be surprised if they didn't.

 

[ciox]

Firestarter soundtrack is quite cool, MoozE (peace be upon him) always delivers.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAF8A9FC44275773D

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

Kinda awkward and based that I've been shooting (on sight!) at the Ukrainian military for over 10 years now.

Anyways, I can't wait to try this new one when/if it comes out.

 

[cretin]

Kinda awkward and based that I've been shooting (on sight!) at the Ukrainian military for over 10 years now.

Anyways, I can't wait to try this new one when/if it comes out.

Didn't even think about that until now, lol. Ukr army in the stalker games: corrupt faggots who sit like a rock in the protagonist's shoes.

Somehow I doubt this depiction will persist

 

[ciox]

Agreed. Wait what's this....... Rus bros.. it may be over..

 

[ciox]

If I had to guess, for this game they are probably going to go for the ultra epic final act and ending, where literally every faction in existence cooperates, including the army and the cheeki breekis, all in order to destroy C-Consciousness but actually for real this time and no cap.
Sorry if I ruined it.

 

[jebsmoker]

mooze is in a league of his own like paul ruskay and mark morgan

it's not a stalker game if mooze doesn't make the music

 

[Harthwain]

Agreed. Wait what's this....... Rus bros.. it may be over..

You guys just now realized that in Call of Pripyat (2009) the player is a government agent? You even meet with the military troops later on.

 

[Tacgnol]

You guys just now realized that in Call of Pripyat (2009) the player is a government agent? You even meet with the military troops later on.

The protagonist even introduces himself with his military rank in multiple sections of the game.

 

[Iucounu]

You guys just now realized that in Call of Pripyat (2009) the player is a government agent? You even meet with the military troops later on.

But even in CoP, the military is unpopular among stalkers. For example, I recall Lieutenant Sokolov needs to hide from them in the ecologist bunker.

The protagonist even introduces himself with his military rank in multiple sections of the game.

Only in select situations, in one such case Zulu leaves in disgust. The protagonist is an undercover agent, it's not like he's openly Military and everybody leave him alone.