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

[ArchAngel]

View attachment 57971
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1643320/discussions/0/4626981087516615102/

Oh dear, Russians are new wokesters.

 

[Iucounu]

Fuck that voice is horrible.

You don't play Stalker to hear Brits speak.

"Stalkers come from all over the world, it's realism."

 

[Elttharion]

 

[Morgoth]

Of course he's correct, but in the Stalker 2 case it's a bit of a stretch to describe a dumpsterfire as "a bit rough on the edges".

 

[Ol' Willy]

Just to give examples of how a-life in vanilla SoC works, some excerpts from my knife-start run:

At Garbage, don't trigger the shakedown scene - the trio of pseudo-bandits won't turn hostile. In fact, if Yurik is killed, the trio splits and they just wander around the map. I had one of these guys fighting actual bandits at car cemetery.

These bandits are coded as regular loners so if you don't trigger the shakedown script and Yurik gets killed, they will acts as regular loners too. Actually a coding oversight but still interesting

Dark Valley could be hard as it has no traders and plenty of bandits around. In my run A-life helped me and spawned two bandits and dogs right as I entered it - they killed the Dolg guy and wandered off, so I got myself a nice AN-94 to go. I cleaned the smaller factory first to stock on looted ammo and then went to the Borov HQ, you can also find another merc armor in the armory there.

The game rarely spawns any actors inside locations, it usually spawns them at level transitions and then they had to go to their destinations on foot. When you are not around, the game usually autoresolves most of emergent situations, like it allows bandits and stolkers to safely go through under the bridge with soldiers on Cordon. But if you around, all bets are off. If you stick around at Cordon and don't kill the soldiers under the bridge, it is most likely that they will get into firefight with some newcomers who try to get to their camps

Now, usually as you enter Dark Valley the game doesn't need to spawn anyone as all camps are fully crewed. But in my case, I guess some bandits were killed by some monsters in the background so reinforcement was needed

This time I turn right, the regular route. Game spawns two Dolg guys in exoskeletons, together, we kill two Monolith guys in the kindergarten. One Dolg guy decides to die in the anomaly - because why not? The other goes down to the parking and solo (!) cleans it from Monolith. Then goes up and dies from gauss sniper. The emergent situations in the game are still hilarious.

Pripyat is the most scripted location in the game, designed to be the kind of "cinematic" breakthrough scene, although only on the first visit. Usually, you go underground with stolker masters from initial firefight and fight monolith peps in there. In my case, stolkers were all dead and dolg guy went there because his route demanded it. As he is master in exoskeleton and monolith dudes there are bums with AKS-74s, he had no problems clearing them solo. Stolker masters - if alive - set up camp underground, Dolg guys have to go further per their route. Usually, they go after you, but as I wasn't in a hurry so this time I trailed behind one of them.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Kodex Kensus is a bit unclear on this one, some think it's stalker some think its not. Too hard to judge.

 

[Ryzer]

Kodex Kensus is a bit unclear on this one, some think it's stalker some think its not. Too hard to judge.

Because it's a buggy mess of a game.

 

[whydoibother]

Kodex Kensus is a bit unclear on this one, some think it's stalker some think its not. Too hard to judge.

Its a game that will eventually be good.

 

[anvi]

That voice over though... I am shocked. Whose desicison was it to have people play Stalker as this fucker?

 

[PanteraNera]

Kodex Kensus is a bit unclear on this one, some think it's stalker some think its not. Too hard to judge.

The problem is, it doesn't suck, quite the contrary it is in parts, world design, factions, characters, quests faithful to the originals.
The graphics also look good, but not good enough for the performance.
The real elephant in the room is if either they canned A-Life 2.0 for good or they just deactivated it because of performance reasons.
There is a lot of coping going on ITT were people are in denial, I would say. Which doesn't mean they are wrong. No one can look into the future.

But from playing S2 for 12 hours and shelfing it, mostly because of the stupid spawn system and playing S1 right after it I can say that S1 feels way way more alive, I fear that in fact it was a design choice to can the simulation aspect of the series. Just the first section of S1 has so much more interactivity and simulation going on than the starter region of S2. And from what I have heard it only gets worse from there. Can't tell.

So I would not recommend buying it right now, I downloaded the GoG version from somewhere to see if I will buy it or not. I will wait for at least a couple of months, probably more. I really hope they come around, but somehow I doubt it.

 

[ArchAngel]

Kodex Kensus is a bit unclear on this one, some think it's stalker some think its not. Too hard to judge.

The problem is, it doesn't suck, quite the contrary it is in parts, world design, factions, characters, quests faithful to the originals.
The graphics also look good, but not good enough for the performance.
The real elephant in the room is if either they canned A-Life 2.0 for good or they just deactivated it because of performance reasons.
There is a lot of coping going on ITT were people are in denial, I would say. Which doesn't mean they are wrong. No one can look into the future.

But from playing S2 for 12 hours and shelfing it, mostly because of the stupid spawn system and playing S1 right after it I can say that S1 feels way way more alive, I fear that in fact it was a design choice to can the simulation aspect of the series. Just the first section of S1 has so much more interactivity and simulation going on than the starter region of S2. And from what I have heard it only gets worse from there. Can't tell.

So I would not recommend buying it right now, I downloaded the GoG version from somewhere to see if I will buy it or not. I will wait for at least a couple of months, probably more. I really hope they come around, but somehow I doubt it.

I wish I could shelve it but what I play before PoE2 comes out is what I am going to play for a long while. So I am going to suffer for 2 more weeks and maybe try it again in 6+ months

 

[Drakortha]

Kodex Kensus is a bit unclear on this one, some think it's stalker some think its not. Too hard to judge.

The problem is, it doesn't suck, quite the contrary it is in parts, world design, factions, characters, quests faithful to the originals.
The graphics also look good, but not good enough for the performance.
The real elephant in the room is if either they canned A-Life 2.0 for good or they just deactivated it because of performance reasons.
There is a lot of coping going on ITT were people are in denial, I would say. Which doesn't mean they are wrong. No one can look into the future.

But from playing S2 for 12 hours and shelfing it, mostly because of the stupid spawn system and playing S1 right after it I can say that S1 feels way way more alive, I fear that in fact it was a design choice to can the simulation aspect of the series. Just the first section of S1 has so much more interactivity and simulation going on than the starter region of S2. And from what I have heard it only gets worse from there. Can't tell.

So I would not recommend buying it right now, I downloaded the GoG version from somewhere to see if I will buy it or not. I will wait for at least a couple of months, probably more. I really hope they come around, but somehow I doubt it.

They'll memory hole the simulation aspects of the OG trilogy while attaining a new fanbase, whom of which are already hard at work with the gaslighting and all. We saw the same thing happen with Baldur's Gate 3.

Hoping for GSC to bring A-Life back is like hoping Larian would patch BG3 to be not gay. It's never going to happen.

 

[Gargaune]

Fuck that voice is horrible.

You don't play Stalker to hear Brits speak.

Yeah, I wish GSC hadn't gone "native" English VO for this one. I liked the heavy Eastern Euro accents in the original, I felt like it added to the Zone's character, gave it a better sense of place. Now I'm watching these STALKER 2 clips and the Zone sounds like a night out in London. I suspect they maybe didn't want the international audience to interpret accented VO as a budget constraint, but I think it backfired.

 

[Gerrard]

https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/273

I've been using this mod for a couple of hours and haven't had a group of boars spawn up my anus so far, so I'd say it works.

 

[Echo Mirage]

Has anyone seen a PP-19 Bizon for sale anywhere? This game seems to love the hobo phase so much that the starter stuff is all that I've seen so far. Strider gave me a good gun and Quiet sells some nice weapons, But still I'm limited on SMG's.

 

[anvi]

https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/273

I've been using this mod for a couple of hours and haven't had a group of boars spawn up my anus so far, so I'd say it works.

Is there a mod for the voice yet?

 

[Crispy]

Interesting. Mods will fix it.

 

[Crispy]

I'm actually re-downloading the Game Pass version to try out all these mods. Apparently, as long as you have the GP version installed into a folder with full read/write/admin access, they're all usable as long as they rely on .paks or whatever.

 

[Gerrard]

Has anyone seen a PP-19 Bizon for sale anywhere? This game seems to love the hobo phase so much that the starter stuff is all that I've seen so far. Strider gave me a good gun and Quiet sells some nice weapons, But still I'm limited on SMG's.

I've seen some random bandits with GP37s already in the Garbage while traders offer fuck all. Also my game keeps crashing when there's a lot of NPCs around (basically in any hub).

https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/273

I've been using this mod for a couple of hours and haven't had a group of boars spawn up my anus so far, so I'd say it works.

Is there a mod for the voice yet?

A mod for what?

 

[normie]

Fuck that voice is horrible.

You don't play Stalker to hear Brits speak.

"Stalkers come from all over the world, it's realism."

CHICKEN CHASER

 

[Crispy]

FFS frame generation is disabled during cutscenes for some reason.

WHY IN THE HELL WOULD THEY DISABLE FRAME GENERATION IN CUT SCENES?

 

[Modron]

WHY IN THE HELL WOULD THEY DISABLE FRAME GENERATION IN CUT SCENES?

THEY PROBABLY THINK 24FPS IS CINEMATIC KINO.

 

[blessed king of longing]

Hard-locked the MQ ~17 hours in; judging by the mission list I'm nearly halfway through the story. I liked a lot about it, but it's a tough pill to swallow when there's so much lacking and underdeveloped. Going to shelve it for now.

The world feels dead, which is a problem when it's so large and there's very limited fast travel (might be story reasons or a bug, but the only travel option I have atm is to the Slag Heap, and even if you could pay neutral stalkers in the field to guide you it wouldn't be a fix because I've seen next to none wandering around). Feels like you're just running from one quest location to another. Missions are often far away, and you may go 5-10+ minutes running around without seeing any humans or mutants. Nothing is ever in the distance; I don't know why they even included snipers when everything spawns next to you. Makes sense they got rid of the binoculars.

Gear degradation feels a little too taxing. Weight limit/fatigue is also punishing when you have to go kilometers to stuff away or sell your junk. Loot is much too plentiful and the economy makes zero sense. Human AI is decent at times and impressively stupid in others. AI is completely incompetent at fighting itself but pinpoint when it comes to you. Stealth feels broken. No reward for wasting time/money on mutants (they could also use a 10-20% hp debuff to make them slightly less tedious). Radiation on-screen effect is overwhelming. Constant bleeding. Long animations I frequently interrupted at the last frame (like bandaging). If there is a complex faction/reputation system I didn't notice it. People don't acknowledge that you revived them. Can't control length of sleep. No NVG and the flashlight sucks for how dark the game is; days should be a little longer if they're going to be gloomy half the time anyways. No ranking systems or chatter. Placeholder descriptions that somehow made it through QA. Have to edit the .ini to get rid of mouse smoothing and other visual effects. Experienced small annoying bugs, but at least they would go away on reload (a few times I got stuck doing the corner peak when I left the wall, couldn't run, had weird objects floating off my gun, wall textures breaking, etc). I feel like I could go on and on. I'd suggest waiting at least a year or two to see if they fix it.

i recommend the following mods:

longer day cycle
longer sprinting
reduced repair cost
some mod that reduces weapon degradation

seems like common sense shit that should have been in at launch. i tried a stealth mod that seemed to do nothing, npc's have x-ray vision and see you through everything inexplicably. makes it very lame or even non-viable to sneak around

 

[Azdul]

Kodex Kensus is a bit unclear on this one, some think it's stalker some think its not. Too hard to judge.

Its a game that will eventually be good.

If it will sell shitton it will become good in 2-3 years either through official or unofficial patches. If not, developers will just cut the losses and work on something else.

One million would not be so amazing for US developers,

but costs of living are significantly lower in Eastern Europe:

so GSC developers are understandably enthusiastic:

 

[Drakortha]

It's always cringe when a developer does this. You sold a product, congratulations! Why should anyone care?

The reason they do it is because they know that gamers are pathetic losers who crave to feel 'included', and don't actually have a genuine interest in games themselves, but instead only exist to join whatever collective hive-mind of drooling imbeciles that are reciting memes and huffing the copium that their Chosen Developer of the month is pushing out. Like parasites they will jump to another 'fandom' next month. These mongrels are devoid of any independent thought. They're fucking insects. Feeding on anything and everything that was once good.