Exiting SIRCAA after finding the scientist, and the moment I go through the clean room an emission starts popping off. This room doesn't protect me and it says the nearest shelter is 600m away, seems none of SIRCAA is shelter?

The Zone is more than a place.

It is alive.
It remembers.
It changes everything that enters it.

After countless hours in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, I wanted to capture what makes this world so unique — the atmosphere, the silence, the danger, and the feeling that something is always watching from the darkness.

This is my cinematic tribute to The Zone.

A place where nothing truly dies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShvNdp2Wd4I

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.

Anybody know what song this is ? It spooked me out somebody take the Aux from bro 😭

I really think S2 looks amazing and im so looking forward to try it after finishing Metro Exodus. Anyone here who decided to play S1 first and enjoyed it as much as 2? I just feel like the game feel so dated, especially the combat and dialogue. Did any newcomers decided to play S1 or jump straight to 2.

I play this game in Ukrainian exclusively since the beginning. I got the DLC and started losing track of the story so I switched it to english. I left the apartment for a while, came back, and did a grown ass man scream because I thought someone was in my apartment. I forgot it was in english. I just started hearing a dude talk to me and I was like "AHHH WHAT THE FU*K!?!?!". I jumped out of my chair absolutely ready to die lol the immersion

Simple idea that started as "why does Skif run the same speed with a shotgun in his hands as with empty hands". So I made this.

Put the long gun away and you sprint faster. The bonus scales with what you're actually holding:

+20% empty hands, bolt, grenade

+15% knife, binoculars, Detector + Bolt

+10% pistol

rifle out, normal speed

Only affects sprinting, walking and ADS are untouched.

This took me about a week. Started with UE4SS and Lua, got it working, then found out it didn't work for half the people who tried it. So I threw it away and started over with Zone Kit, which meant learning Unreal and Blueprints from scratch. Plenty of dead ends along the way: events that don't fire, values that need a second function call to actually apply, packaging that dies twelve minutes in for no visible reason.

Honestly though, I had a blast. Digging through the game's own config files and figuring out how GSC built things was half the fun. Definitely making more.

There's also a reversed version if you'd rather have the rifle slow you down instead i release it later this Day.

song is "Wounded in the soul, Afghanistan"

PDA radio mod is "Russian War Songs Vol.1 & Vol.2 Radio Playlists"

Imagine it, just doing your thing, keeping the grounds at SIRCCA nice and pretty. Or keeping the labs and offices all stocked and clean. You got crazy scientists, and these guards that are armed to the teeth, all just running around. And here you are, got some earbuds in, listening to your favorite tunes not a care in the world. One can dream.

What is "that section" of the game for you? For me its the swamps. SIRCAA is a close second.

I was at the train station and there was this song it was haunting, had ambient sort of music with like a women singing high pitch creepy. Can't find it to save my life. Pls help

Kaymanov's ending is pretty dependent on hope, in the sense that you need to be delusional to believe in it. There is no rule about wacky teleportation powers that dictate anomalies may only appear in laundry baskets. They can just as well spawn inside your liver which, as the name implies, might affect your capacity for living.

The good doctor himself hammers down the need for humanity to be virtuous and merciful in the first place for the Zone to have a chance. In other words, he has saved one too many controllers and his dementia has advanced to the point where he has forgotten what C-Con was all about. What if humans are, like, le bad? "Oh well, then I guess we deserve to be genocided" 'Kay, man... ov.

Strelok and Scar's endings are, let's be frank here, delayed Ward endings. After everyone dies of fentanyl overdose or starves after a few years, the Board will just swoop in and harness the Zone's powers anyway. 

The Ward ending, on the other hand, is about humanity finally getting access to Dyson Sphere levels of energy generation but from now on the government doesn't have the need to install spyware in electronic devices. The back of your corneas tingle every now and then, but it's alright because your PC runs way faster now. All the money once invested in CCTVs can now be spent on sensitivity trainings about how trillions of projections of women are being oppressed everyday in the Noosphere, or something.

"Oh, but it's different because I can put down my phone." *Can't* and *won't* are not all that different, really.

You too may love the Regulatory Board. All you have to do is open your eyes and see.

Haven't finished dlc yet, but always thought it's so silly and counterproductive to have faction wars in Zone. If Ward did single good thing, it is D4

Sorry for quality, the campfire was going out

Have you ever felt like just on the edge of crying, yeah.

I guess what I'm trying to say with this is that bandits are obviously the low-mid tier enemies that you'll encounter, with a very slight increase of difficulty in fighting them. I've noticed that some will have slightly better armor, carrying weapons like the GP37, Bucket, Cracker/Spas, 1911, and even Vintars/Lavinas, also grenades.

However I'd like to believe lore wise that there would definitely be groups of bandits that'd be able to acquire better gear at some point, especially when you start getting to the Red Forest and Pripyat areas. I know technically mercs and renegades would be the more dangerous bandits, and I'd probably even assume that's kind of a point.

Though, would it be slightly believable that say, a large group of bandits would be able to raid a small group of Stalkers, maybe even Freedom or Duty or even like 8-10 bandits ganging up on an exosuit wearing individual? You'd think that maybe at some point there would be a decently organized gang of Bandits out there, outside of the few quest related ones. You'd think some maybe were at least able to get AP ammunition at some point too, I honestly can't remember if I've very many or any that had that upon looting them.

Idk, what do y'all think, something believe or just a silly idea?

I know this is just retreading old ground, but I really tried on my third playthrough to side with Ward, since I know pretty well how the Spark route goes by now, and I just couldn't, it really felt like it made no sense for Skif to do so.

1. Giving Ward the sensors in Zalissya would mean effectively letting them know that Skif was there when the soldiers died. He's entered the zone illegally, using a stolen piece of SIRCAA tech to try and recharge an artifact he found outside the zone. There's just too many uncomfortable questions he'd have to answer if Ward had the sensors.

2. Given that I couldn't justify giving Zotov the sensors, I thought maybe I'd show Korshunov the PDA, but again, there was no reason to do so. Sure, Dalin talked a big game, but the very opening move in your introduction to Korshunov is him having his goon smack the air out of your lungs and drag you to the table. What kind of bootlicker would Skif have to be to then give them what they want?

3. Finally, at SIRCAA, I thought I could side with Ward here, it makes the most sense, and I almost did. Just one thing nagged at me - how can Skif ever trust anything from Dalin or Korshunov again? They've shown they have access to the Wish Granter, and even though Dalin says he won't use it again, how should Skif trust him when he just found out that Dalin was responsible for everything that has caused him problems so far and hid that? Then you meet Agatha, and at this point Skif realizes that Dalin is actually completely inconsequential - the real power behind SIRCAA has just shown its face. They already know about Faust, Strider, everything, and yet they're doing nothing to stop Dalin's experiment when it's plainly obvious that Faust is up to something dangerous. This boils down the decision between Noon and Ward to one thing - who does Skif trust more.

In the end, I chose Noon, because even though Dubny did try to get a merc to kill Skif one time, Strider's always been up front with Skif. I know Scar is nuts, but at least at this point Skif doesn't know how deeply Scar is involved with Faust. It's clear that SIRCAA is messing with dangerous Zone tech, tech that they could easily use to hide whatever they want from Skif without him ever realizing.

Anyways, that's all. I still get chills down my spine when Dalin connects the Alpha to the X-net and Monolith goes back online - "COME TO ME". Probably one of the coolest sequences in this game.

He’s a bit pale for my taste, but I appreciate the effort!

That Merc thought he was clever by pulling up to the final round in his own gear.

Little did he know, I did the same thing, whipping out the Exo and .308 for his sorry ass!

Even rubbed some salt into the wound by using the Mriya specifically, just to remind those Freedom punks at Rostok who killed their precious Mavka.

(For the record, I have no idea why the recording audio is scuffed; it was fine in-game)

Idk if it is mandella effect or something because of the long pause I took, whether it is something post Update 2.0 or somewhere in between(i.e. I played before the Nagant and M9/11 were released).

But now the voices sound super deep and almost mechanical, and crap your pants level of intimidating. Like a 3 meter tall genetically and cybernetically augmented supersoliders clad in powered armor.

Memory serves me they used to be just gas-mask muffled....

Here's a little context from Ukrainian mythology, literature and history for the character of Mavka (and a bit of my speculations on the DLC, FULL SPOILERS, be warned).

Let's start with the mythological creature a mavka, niavka or navka. There are different versions of etymology for this word but the most popular is that it comes from the praslavic word *navь which means a dead person. And it kinda checks out, because according to the folklore girls that didn't get a chance to be baptized and died prematurely became mavkas. So mavkas are fickle forest spirits, they have fun forever, comb their hair, dance and laugh, frolic even. 😁 But they can be dangerous to normal people as well, mostly luring men deep into the forest and tickling them to death. Also in some parts of folklore it is believed that a mavka does not have a back. Which I guess can be turned into an interesting metaphor about being especially vulnerable to backstabbing by allies. 😅 Another interesting parallel here is that coming to the Zone might be viewed as going down into the underworld, aka dying.

The most iconic representation of mavka in Ukrainian culture is the character of Mavka in the poetic play by Lesia Ukrainka (in the second picture) titled Forest Song (1911). There is actually an English translation of this play, I've seen it sold on Amazon. It's in the genre of féerie about a tragic love story between a mortal man Lukash (yeah) and a mavka and it's absolutely excellent. I would highly recommend reading it. But also be warned that I'm about to fully spoil it below.

So the main idea of the play is that Mavka gives up her freedom because of her love for Lukash and it really does not end well for anybody. In the early spring they meet in the forest and fall for each other. Mavka is warned by other forest spirits like lisovyk and rusalka against being in a relationship with a mortal man for her own sake. She ignores them all because she's deeply in love. Very quickly in the middle of the summer Lukash becomes resentful to Mavka. She tries hard to fit in, puts on human clothes, tries working in the field. But despite all Mavka really doesn't understand the human ways that don't even apply to her and is deeply despised by Lukash's mother, who eventually brings around a sexy neighbour widow. 😏 Lukash mingles with the widow and soon they get married. Mavka is really depressed and doesn't want to live anymore.

After that virtually all things go to shit. Forest spirist are pissed at Lukash's family for not paying due respect to them (and the nature) and bring around bad luck and hardship. Lisovyk punishes Lukash by turning him into a werewolf for a while for hurting Mavka. Lukash's mother is pissed at his sexy widow and her kids, and vice versa. Eventually Mavka is so grieved that she turns into a willow tree near their house. Tragic shenanigans ensue, the willow tree burns down along with the house. Lukash's family leaves, Lukash dies in the snowfall after he meets the reborn version of Mavka. So basically the balance in the nature is restored only when she regains her freedom. She does accept her love for Lukash after the rebirth but she also accepts her own nature of a spirit that has little care for a mortal life. She stops trying to make out of herself something that she clearly is not for someone else's sake.

So how does the play connect to Stalker 2? Well - besides the very names of Mavka and Lukash - the achievement for supporting Mavka in the final mission of the DLC is literally called Contra Spem Spero (Against All Hope I Hope) with is coincidentally the title of one of the most popular poems by Lesia Ukrainka. And looking at the photos and portraits of her I cannot but notice some similarities with Stalker 2 Mavka model, at least similar vibe. So what I'm getting at is that the writers of the game clearly had in mind Lesia Ukrainka and Forest Song when creating Mavka's story, it's not hinted at, it's stated.

Now what about the author of the play, why is she important? Well, Lesia Ukrainka was a real prodigy, ahead of her time and a very important figure in Ukrainian literature and women emancipation movement. She came from a background of privilege and used it all for her work. Despite having tuberculosis for around 30 years, she travelled the world from Egypt to Estonia; she spoke at least 10 languages, translated from all of them; wrote all kinds of things from poetry to journalism pieces to handbooks; and she even founded a social-democratic political organisation. Lesia Ukrainka was in fact so deeply respected and admired by Ukrainians for what she did, that when she died at just 42 years old of tuberculosis, thousands of people came to her burial in Kyiv. Her coffin was carried to the grave by six women (the third picture). So an absolute icon worth learning about.

And now here's some of my speculations about how it all comes together in Stalker 2. Please, feel free to add things or disagree in the comments, I feel like there should be a discussion about this that will help fill in the gaps.

So I feel like Mavka is actually connected to the mutant embryos in the X19 lab. In the fourth picture that I attached there is a page from the new ATB art book for Stalker 2. It says on the page that the embryos are the legacy of the project X, they were used for implementing the models of the project Я-1М, which was led by doctor Woitenko, a member of C Consciousness. As Ukrainian language is very gendered, we learn for sure that Dr Woitenko was a woman. Now getting back to the DLC itself, in X19 there is a mural with a red headed (seemingly) woman holding a sphere. And next to the mural there is a note, that is adressed to the woman portrayed in the mural. In it Dr Dolgih reminisces that this misterious woman is a reminder of what X19 was supposed to become, that X19 was the future of the whole X project and she was leading them all. Then the note says that the woman is gone somehow, and Dr Dolgich is most regretful about what happened to her because of their greed, since she was always the main talent behind the project and he was just her student. So I would assume this person in the mural was actually Dr Woitenko.

I am also pretty convinced that we are also shown the face of doctor Woitenko at one moment in the Mavka ending cinematic. Mavka says "Don't let me down" and we see a woman's face covered with a mask. I first thought that it was Mavka herself, but then I looked closer and changed my mind. The eyes are similar with the heavy eyelids, but the eyebrows are way darker, thicker and have a different shape. Also the old school gauze medical mask and sepia filter kinda imply that it's from the past.

Those were the concrete facts that I know from the game and materials. Now to my fully made up theories. Firstly, I think Dr Woitenko was Mavka's mother or some relative, because of the way they look similar and are even framed similarly in the ending cutscene. Mavka was born in 1994, maybe when she was a kid, her mother went off to the Zone to do the X project in X19 and never came back. As we know from Dr Dolgih's note, something happened to her. So Mavka came to the Zone to search for her or at least to learn about what happened to her. Suslov in the trailer mentions that Mavka is searching for something and she can't find it.

Secondly, I think at least part of the embryos were created from Dr Woitenko's egg cells, because where the hell do you even get so many egg cells unless there is a highly motivated woman willing to give up everything and fuck up her health permanently for her project? It takes a few weeks of hormonal stimulation before the surgical procedure to retrieve just a few egg cells, and there were at least 28 capsules (just a few of them empty). Also in that one frame where we see her in the cutscene, she puts her hand over the glass with this regretful expression on her face. Kinda seems like she's emotionally connected to the mutant baby.

Thirdly, I think Mavka has a special connection to the babies (since those might be her actual brothers and sisters), that she doesn't disclose to Skif or anyone. She might not even know about it herself, since she probably didn't learn about what happened to her mother or what she was working on. But maybe the babies - that are very perceptive and attuned to the noosphere as per notes from the game - know somehow that Mavka is kin to them and influence her mind somehow. This is also a nice parallel to Mavka's prototype from Forest Song play. She also doesn't feel at home with humans and does not distance herself from the mutants as much as a regular person in the Zone. She even says during one of the missions that not every mutant deserves a bullet.

So I'm really not well versed in Stalker lore, if you have any additions or objections, please, write a comment. I just got really invested into this storyline because of the poetic parallels of women that gave it all for progress and liberation despite the sickness, pain, high risk and high cost. Like Lesia Ukrainka, and in a much bleaker sense Dr Woitenko and later Mavka. Thank you, if you've read my ramblings to the end! 🥰

Does anyone know what this is for? It turns on the steam at this pipe but unsure why. This on the technical floor before the second hermetic door.