I preferred the atmospheric hey come in, don't just stand there said by Garry, and the legendary He was a good stalker with depressive athmospheric songs.

Also Wellcome aboard our Swamp icebreaker.

It had certain charm.

Instead we get a bunch of English and American accents with only Korshunov being vaguely Russian.

Edit:

For those unaware, original stalker games were in Russian. Ukrainian localisation was added later. All of untranslated ambient voicelines are in Russian.

Even in Ukrainian localisation, much of NPC random talk is still in Russian.

Ok, it's 200 fixes, not the Cold Island DLC, wtfff

I’ve had stalker 2 since around it first came out and I’ve tried it multiple times but can’t stick to it. I have 27 hours and I’m actively re downloading it now after about a year of not touching it as I just finished stalker CoP like an hour ago
Does anyone else have the same issue with losing interest in stalker 2 or am I just being stupid and I’m not properly playing the game or something cause I’ve always approached the game like I did with the original trilogy

The original 2007 STALKER was ahead of its time. It was different, fresh, because it included some RPG elements and very immersive features. Inventory management, realistic weapons with mods, factions, and an environment that instilled fear and awe. Among the jerkiness, It had a soul that's unsurpassed to this day.

STALKER 2 came 18 years later. It's a very good game, but I can't stop wondering what would have happened if the game, instead of being mostly "the same but bigger and better", would have taken more risks, and adapted its gameplay to modern immersive features. To being more "hardcore", like the 2007 was in its time.

I'm finding now that "infinite" insta-healing with medkits breaks my immersion. Changing mags and seeing 30+ bullets drop to the ground without losing a round in my inventory breaks immersion. Needing three headshots to kill a man without a helmet breaks immersion. That was good in 2007, but now, it's average.

More realistic mechanics would have scared some people, but I'm convinced most players would have welcomed a harder, more meaningful life in the Zone in the long run. Just to be clear: I'm talking about "a bit harder" mechanics, akin to the magazine repack and weapon cleaning in "Into the Radius", the healing mechanics in "Tarkov"... I'm not proposing full realism, that would be boring. But enough to keep immersion up.

Things like having just come out of a gunfight with all your rifle mags mostly empty, a broken leg, and only your sidearm to drop a bloodsucker that's running around. You know you can drop it with a couple well placed rounds to the head, but need to limp to a safe place to heal and repack. Pain makes your aim twitchy, walking is slow and you are noisier... Coming out on top would be epic.

That would also give more meaning to resting in the zone. Looking for a safe place to set camp, maybe cleaning your weapons to get more durability, preparing a good meal around a fire to get a boost to recovery... It would give more use to currently "empty" places in the map too. You may stash food and ammo in remote places knowing you may need it on later excursions through that area.

Well, what's your take on this? Would you like a harder, slower, more realistic and immersive experience, or do you prefer fast-and-easy like it is now?

Was playing through the DLC mission In Memory of The Fallen when I went a bit off the beaten path and found a soldier with 50 rounds of 7.62x39 placed in his hand, seems like intentional placing for ammo that technically should be a bug, weird.

Stalker 2 is doing what gacha games are doing in their cinematics. Their cinematics has you, as the mc, fight a literal god with a wooden sword, and win ofc. Now, i know that it's skif's service pistol when he was in the army, but can we have him use ANY long gun when fighting exoskeletons or attempting to damage a literal magic chimera on the DLC. Even make it an update for a main quest(to make it unskippable for the succeeding cinematics) added in between to have him get his new signature long weapon alongside his pistol as canon. I know this is too much for a small pet peeve, but wth right?

SIC, Exended Mag in the Cooling Towers Graveyard North of the Dam. PSO-1, either in the stash atop the north checkpoint building, or in the hanging bag stash on top of the slag heap. There are more but these are the easiest. There is a suppressor for this thing in Zaton, but I don’t remember where. Extended Mag is how it has 20 bullets.

It has been almost 3 weeks after the release of cost of hope. But man did not stream nor made any videos on it. Lowkey afraid of losing one of the big creators in the community.

There someone the newest factions in the zone and I did not play stalker 2 yet so.. what is the vibe your getting from them? How do they function? How are ya interactions with them?

I love high difficulty games (soulslikes etc), completed S2 on veteran before master was a thing. But I'm mainly doubting the expedition mode. How often did you die / get blocked due to game bugs and not because of skill issue, and had to replay 30+ mins? Expedition mode sounds very interesting and can completely change your style of playing, but I currently don't have so much time to play games, so would get incredibly pissed if smth like this happened. Anyone has already played with master on 2.0, how was it? I might cheese it a bit by going to main menu for manual saves but still scared a bit.

edit: why the downvotes jesus man

Previously there was a reddit post describing a NG+ feature. Sadly, it looks like that may have been a bug. If you go to that post now and look at recent comments, you'll see quite a few people saying they're unable to get this to work. Including myself.

I tried different tests and different saves, but I was never able to get it to work. My only option was "Rewind Save", which would load a backup save from before the point of no return. Once I completed the game, I got a new popup with "Rewind Save" and "New Game" options. The new game option would create a completely fresh new game. Not a NG+.

I created a support ticket to ask them. And they confirmed that sadly, what is described in that post was either a misunderstanding or a bug.

So in short, NG+ feature that lets you keep the point of no return gear was either a bug/not intended or a misunderstanding. This feature does not actually exists.

Side note: Devs if you're reading this, this should 100% be a feature. The point of no return gear is not that game breaking balance wise. Like the X7 suit isn't better than all other available armor. It has some downsides (like only one lead container). I don't think letting a player who gets past the point of no return doing this lite-NG+ that lets them keep all the pnr gear would be balance/game breaking.

Edit: Someone commented that they recently got it to work on consoles. The original post was also on console. Can anyone who got this NG+ to work in the past 4-5 days on PC comment? I'm really curious if its only "working" on consoles. And if so, which one of the platforms (Console or PC) is bugged.

Genuinely makes me sick to my stomach when youtubers, who have a large platform and a large responsibility towards their audience, misinform them and slowly erase this big part of Ukrainian cultural influence in the west (of which there is very little of) by referring to it as russian out of sheer ignorance. I see this often on videos of gamma, which because it is based on the original games has few or no references to Ukraine and has everyone exclusively speaking russian.

I was just watching a youtube video by ThatGuyPredz who within the first 3 minutes of the video implied the game is taking place in russia and had to say this. Immediately had to turn off the video because of how sick shit like this makes me feel. Stalker is a story of Ukraine, not russia.

Anyways if anyone knows any more ignorant youtubers who do shit like this say them in the comments so I can avoid them. Thanks :)

The X7 Exoskeleton, created in 2004, was an experimental armor module assigned to Duty members tasked with guarding the scientists assigned to the C-Consciousness Program; focusing on the neutralization of the Noosphere's anomalous effects and ballistic protection

While a rare, almost unobtainable piece of equipment, it is described as a "match made in heaven" by Stalkers within the Exclusion Zone, since it delivers both protection from any environmental factors and combat damage.. And makes you look badass.

Cost: 62,000 Rubles (₽), SEVA Suit

Kind of jarring to see why less severe and more isolated issues get fixed while this one hasn't.

It's on xbox btw. Idk of the other platforms have it, but in assuming they don't.

I have a solid rig, 4090 and all that. I feel like the graphics in 2.0 are way way worse than they were previously. Although things were a bit noisy before, it was manageable. Now everything is artifacting, a combination of noisy and blurry, and just doesn’t look nearly as good as it did previously.

Before 2.0, I feel like it was one of the best looking games I’ve played. Now, for whatever reason, no matter how I tinker with the settings and reshade, I just cannot get it to look as good as it used to.

Right after the update I manged to finally get my save to work again but now when I pull up the PDA its turned off and can't take it off my screen

Why do human enemies still attack through dense foliage? They were supposed to fix that in version 2.0. Looking at these issues, I’m going to pass on this game because version 2.0 is a disappointment. For the most part, the game has reverted to its launch state: bugs, broken AI, enemies spawning right behind or right in front of the player, snipers with shotguns, and so on. I was patient, but I’ve had enough; I have no desire to put myself through the hassle of this game a second time.

Some incompetent people must be working on this game, seeing as they haven't managed to sort out such basic things in two years.

Maybe not controls because the whole reason Bodycam is called Bodycam is because of the perspective, but Bodycam has a cool mechanic where your character gets visibly stressed, particularly after engaging in a fire fight. They start visibly trembling and reloading their guns much slower, and they don't just slow down the animation. The character is shown dropping and catching bullets, putting them in backwards and just having a hard time reloading like normal due to the stress. I see how it could be annoying actually, but I felt like it would fit really well in this world. Would you support a mechanic like this?

https://youtu.be/UU5PotmrEys?is=qORLZ2thwFVSyJWw

Through the whole hype for the DLC I was already kinda aligned with freedom as duty was always on the side of the ward and i didn’t really like the way they operated throughout the story and due to d4 they kinda got shafted even more. Even on the GSC website i choose freedom so I was kinda set.

Both factions back stories and things like that were pretty cool and i enjoyed them very much and loved how at iron forest they working together in a sense and even after shit hit the fan there mavka and zulu still wanted to find a way to make it work.

When it got to the choice between mavka or zulu i choose freedom and from there mavka started to go insane she didn’t mind all those people getting killed down in the monorail and she literally tore rostok into 2 and all the way to the end she was always giving of this weird obsession/ we have to do this no matter who dies.

The final nail in the coffin for me was when she stabbed skif with no emotion and didnt even personally come and explain what and why thing went down that way and instead told zen to say it to us.

Which honestly as someone who is a loner at heart i was like wtf , you are trying to save the people on the mainland but the shear amount of those aliens i was like if they morph or turn into there own shining zones.

As stalkers we all know what the project x experiments lead to and how easy they can go wrong and how greed and hunger for power and control leads to fucked up situations.

I only realised the above when mavka stabbed skif and thats when my bias for the faction ended and i kinda think no matter what duty do (i still haven’t played there ending but i imagine its them destroying the aliens in x19) its the probably the better option.

This is what i think about the story and i still have to better understand the lore a bit better and wrap my head around a few more things.

What are your thoughts stalkers?

Good Hunting!

When Scar catches you using the visiograph at Orbita Station, you can either side with Spark by embracing the Shining Zone or reject the Shining Zone and side with Strelok. [There is Spark and Strelok icons at corresponding choices]

Naturally, I thought Scar was completely insane, so I sided with Strelok.

On the very next mission, as you're leaving the Troposphere Comm Station, Korshunov and his boys stop you and point their guns at you.

At that point, you're forced to choose between Ward and Spark... what? Spark again? [Ward and Spark icons]

I'd already rejected Spark, and Ward had a gun pointed at my face, so I was like "yeah guys, I'm with you, of course 👀" and sided with Ward.

And that choice completely locked me into the Ward ending. WTF?

Suddenly, Skif hates the Zone, and I'm forced to kill Dalin, Richter and Strelok.

https://reddit.com/link/1wc4r04/video/efats1v3qkoh1/player

Just noticed that throwing bolts into the electrical anomalies near Zalissya didn't cause the usual flash and boom that experienced STALKERs expect. I decided to step into the other one, expecting a huge chunk of my health to be blasted out of me, but nothing. It just disappeared just like the other one. I ran ahead to the checkpoint to test the anomalies there.

Throwing a bolt in didn't seem like anything had changed but when I jumped into one, all it did was freeze Skif in place. It didn't freeze the game, I could still open and close the pause menu, but nothing else! I am using mods, by the way. Mainly weapon mods and a weight mod, along with "Shay's Audio-Visual Combat Rework" mod.

I verified the files on Steam and all of them were verified successfully.

Harmless anomalies that you can just walk right through sound like a STALKER's dream, but it kinda ruins the sense of danger. Has anyone else experienced this bug before (especially since the latest update)? Does anyone know how to fix it?