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

[cretin]

So there's no a-life

and areas respawn enemies you've already killed after you leave and come back

It's literally what we feared -- Far Cry: Ukraine.

 

[Gerrard]

areas respawn enemies you've already killed after you leave and come back

So exactly like SoC.

 

[cretin]

areas respawn enemies you've already killed after you leave and come back

So exactly like SoC.

yeah, squads move back into locations after 24-48 hours. Not as soon as you leave the PoI "bubble" and then come back. The latter is exactly what far cry games do.

 

[Gerrard]

areas respawn enemies you've already killed after you leave and come back

So exactly like SoC.

yeah, squads move back into locations after 24-48 hours. Not as soon as you leave the PoI "bubble" and then come back. The latter is exactly what far cry games do.

In SoC enemies respawn the moment you trigger certain level changers.

 

[Mercatroid]

So there's no a-life

and areas respawn enemies you've already killed after you leave and come back

It's literally what we feared -- Far Cry: Ukraine.

Seriously? Man... It's just like a AAA version of the shit-ass "True Stalker" then, which is exactly what it feels like to me in the first half hour.

New poster here... I've lurked the Shadow of Chernobyl Mod Thread for over half a year, and thanks to gaining a bunch of insight from you guys I've had a wonderful experience with the old Stalker games, primarily playing Autumn Aurora and CoC. Thanks to Ol' Willy's suggestion I've played CoC EOC with the STCoP Weapon Pack for probably 300 hours, trying various settings and other addons over time. I've lived it. And thanks a lot to you guys for that! Your suggestions and comments have been a gold mine to me.

That being said, I tried True Stalker when it came out and I felt the way you guys did, especially about the lack of a-life and the AAA game design bullshit. Playing Stalker 2 today I was immediately put off by the same kinds of decisions, such as: endless hand-holding during the first half-hour. NPCs constantly talking to you. A terrible non-silent protagonist (why?) who sounds like a junior high kid's idea of a "cool, tough guy." Skiff's English voice actor is so lame he sounds like he's from some bad 90s cartoon. Fucking barf, seriously. And then they immediately throw free assault rifles at you, before you even have to use your pistol. It's such a stupid start for babies, especially compared to SHoC or any of the other original games.

But even more than all that, the issue I'm having the most is this: https://www.reddit.com/r/stalker/comments/1gvwkpv/im_sorry_but_the_game_feels_like_garbage/

Not my thread there, but the guy captured exactly the problem I have with it. The game feels like shit. It's like the devs thought because it's a "modern game" it needs to feel like fucking Gears of War or something. The aiming and movement feel so crippled and lousy. It's so clunky and heavy, with so little precision, and it takes me out of the experience as much as the 6th grader non-silent protagonist does. After a jillion hours of playing CoC, which basically moves and aims like Quake, just like all the other Stalker games did, just like Half Life 2 did, just like every good intelligent FPS game ever has, I feel like I'm playing some kind of stupid AAA trash like Call of Duty here. It feels like it's made for retards. Durrr the movement is heavy!!! That's "real!"

And also, why can't you hit "F" to get out of the looting screen, and instead now have to hit "I" or "Escape"??? I mean, really. That's probably the stupidest, clunkiest arbitrary change I have ever seen.

 

[SixDead]

https://ria.ru/20241120/stalker-1984904937.html

Russophobic content has not been found yet, but there are many bugs.

Anton Gorelkin, State Duma deputy

 

[Odoryuk]

areas respawn enemies you've already killed after you leave and come back

So exactly like SoC.

It is exactly like SotC and it's baffling to me that people here refuse to accept this and still bitch about it.
No A-Life, stupid NPCs, respawning enemies and shit - all of this was in the first game and it became a cult classic still. Bitching about lack of A-Life is also a classic pastime on gaming forums

 

[Drakortha]

It is exactly like SotC and it's baffling to me that people here refuse to accept this and still bitch about it.
No A-Life, stupid NPCs, respawning enemies and shit - all of this was in the first game and it became a cult classic still. Bitching about lack of A-Life is also a classic pastime on gaming forums

So essentially almost 20 years later gaming still hasn't progressed. More demanding graphics and effects but besides that nothing has improved. I cannot understand why anyone would bitch about that, either!

You're also conveniently forgetting that A-Life was a listed feature up until the FINAL day before release. They blatantly lied to everyone.

 

[Mercatroid]

areas respawn enemies you've already killed after you leave and come back

So exactly like SoC.

It is exactly like SotC and it's baffling to me that people here refuse to accept this and still bitch about it.
No A-Life, stupid NPCs, respawning enemies and shit - all of this was in the first game and it became a cult classic still. Bitching about lack of A-Life is also a classic pastime on gaming forums

I've played Autumn Aurora a couple times recently and you are definitely full of shit on this one. SHoC is full of real a-life. Every time you leave areas and come back there are enemies respawned, but they aren't the same ones. Things change over time, new guys show up, and they absolutely loot bodies and engage in non-scripted conflicts with other NPCs, based on where they wander and who they encounter. That is what a-life is. The fact that zones repopulate with new guys when you leave doesn't make it "not a-life."

Do you seriously think leaving the Cordon or the Garbage and coming back wouldn't lead to new guys showing up there while you were gone? You think that's not "a-life"? Like for some reason every part of the Zone you've cleared should just stay dead forever? What kind of reasoning is that? The thing that defines "a-life" is not respawns or the lack thereof, but rather the emergent, unscripted events that occur between the NPCs in any given area. You go back into Agroprom and military guys are fighting random bandits and bloodsuckers, packs of dogs are running around, and all kinds of completely-unscripted shit is going on. That is a-life! One time I was fighting some bandits there and right as I killed them this Flesh ran up, and probably because he had aggro'd on them but then they died just as he arrived, he just ran up and stood there like he was saying hello to me. Hilarious! That is the kind of magic that genuine unscripted NPC AI interaction provides, which makes every replay interesting because things almost never play out in the same way, and instead all kinds of wild unexpected things happen. SHoC is like that. Stalker 2, on the other hand, apparently just loads groups of NPCs participating in pre-scripted events, which is not real a-life, and is so boring and lazy it makes you wonder why they didn't just clone the extremely simple-but-functional AI SHoC has. Was that too hard for them?

Or, you know, they could have made much more sophisticated roaming AI, like CoC and Anomaly have. Why didn't GSC do that? Is it because they actually suck that much at programming now?

 

[mediocrepoet]

It is exactly like SotC and it's baffling to me that people here refuse to accept this and still bitch about it.
No A-Life, stupid NPCs, respawning enemies and shit - all of this was in the first game and it became a cult classic still. Bitching about lack of A-Life is also a classic pastime on gaming forums

So essentially almost 20 years later gaming still hasn't progressed. More demanding graphics and effects but besides that nothing has improved. I cannot understand why anyone would bitch about that, either!

Keep shifting the goalposts. You'll score a point eventually. I believe in you.

 

[Hace El Oso]

It is exactly like SotC and it's baffling to me that people here refuse to accept this and still bitch about it.
No A-Life, stupid NPCs, respawning enemies and shit - all of this was in the first game and it became a cult classic still. Bitching about lack of A-Life is also a classic pastime on gaming forums

So essentially almost 20 years later gaming still hasn't progressed. More demanding graphics and effects but besides that nothing has improved. I cannot understand why anyone would bitch about that, either!

You shouldn’t cede the ground. The AI by all indication is worse than in the originals, especially in combat.

 

[Drakortha]

Keep shifting the goalposts. You'll score a point eventually. I believe in you.

What are you talking about? GSC removed A-Life from their steam page, not me. Who's moving goalposts?

I called this game shit months ago. It's the fanboys in here who are moving posts by blaming everyone except GSC themselves, because they are both in lockstep in their damage control, fresh out of the Discord factory.

 

[Odoryuk]

So essentially almost 20 years later gaming still hasn't progressed. More demanding graphics and effects but besides that nothing has improved. I cannot understand why anyone would bitch about that, either!

The thing is, so far it feels like Stalker, and this is what fans wanted. I can't play it right now, because my time budget was totally spent with Shadow of the Erdtree, but I will gladly play a patched version later in the future

You're also conveniently forgetting that A-Life was a listed feature up until the FINAL day before release. They blatantly lied to everyone.

History repeats itself, they were selling A-Life right before the release as well, and all printed gaming magazines (remember those?) were telling us impressionable lads about this totally awesome system. Later I learned that it's not in the game from the internet, only after I actually beat the game by myself

 

[mediocrepoet]

Keep shifting the goalposts. You'll score a point eventually. I believe in you.

What are you talking about? GSC removed A-Life from their steam page, not me. Who's moving goalposts?

I called this game shit months ago. It's the fanboys in here who are moving posts by blaming everyone except GSC themselves.

The specific reasons why you assert it's shit shift. Hence, shifting the goal posts. Seriously now.

 

[Drakortha]

The specific reasons why you assert it's shit shift. Hence, shifting the goal posts. Seriously now.

The game is specifically shit because it's shit. How about that?

 

[mediocrepoet]

The specific reasons why you assert it's shit shift. Hence, shifting the goal posts. Seriously now.

The game is specifically shit because it's shit. How about that?

Well, it's a tautological expression and manages to be less retarded than most of what you type, so... keep going buddy. You'll get there some day!

 

[baba is you]

I've played this game for over 5 hours. In my opinion, it's more like an improved version of CoP. Among the stalker series, CoP had the best quest design.

If they improved the encounter design and made resource management tighter, this game would come out.

So... is it a bad game? Hmm... I think if only the optimization and bugs were fixed, the Metacritic and YouTuber reviews would have been better.

I think gamers who like the Stalker series will like it now. I'm not sure about others.

 

[None]

Reminder that Drakortha became so enamored by Fallout 3 that his dream job became to work at Bethesda.

 

[None]

I've played this game for over 5 hours. In my opinion, it's more like an improved version of CoP.

How is the delivery of quests? From what little I've seen, I was worried they'd be presented in a very "cinematic" and showy style instead of the usual "hey go over here and do something for me, okay?".

 

[Odoryuk]

Reminder that Drakortha became so enamored by Fallout 3 that his dream job became to work at Bethesda.

Let's not pretend Fallout 3 was not a major milestone in modern gaming

 

[baba is you]

I've played this game for over 5 hours. In my opinion, it's more like an improved version of CoP.

How is the delivery of quests? From what little I've seen, I was worried they'd be presented in a very "cinematic" and showy style instead of the usual "hey go over here and do something for me, okay?".

CoP's quests had choices and consequences, right? GSC improved that a bit. For example, if you don't kill an NPC you meet during a quest and help him, it leads to another quest. And there's also a responsiveness to that.
It does have a bit of a cinematic style, but it's not a major drawback.

I was worried that Stalker 2 also had repeatable quests, but they handled it better than Fallout 4. The reason is that we have taken measures to prevent you from receiving repeat quests consecutively.

 

[None]

Let's not pretend Fallout 3 was not a major milestone in modern gaming

 

[Konjad]

 

[kites]

Runs better than I thought it would (3060 8GB, 32GB RAM, i5-10600K @ medium/high settings - 1440p). DLSS enabled. It's been a steady locked 60fps so far, though I'm sure later maps that aren't so small will humble me. Only about ~75mins in and feel like I'm finally getting out of the tutorial; so far I'm not really feeling it, but I'm optimistic..

 

[Konjad]

Community fixes are already popping out https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/2

So I guess it's good to just wait for patches before getting the game.