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

[Jenkem]

vatniks won.

 

[blessed king of longing]

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.

metro always did this pretty well, the voice acting was wasnt always great but atleast it felt like it belonged. even better, play it in russian - but then you have to pay attention to subtitles all the time

come to think of it, the radio music sucks ass too, i just found this: https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/294

 

[ArchAngel]

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

Stealth is useless, now I learned to hide behind trees when fighting enemies in the open as even with a slim tree they suddenly think you are in full cover and stop shooting :D

 

[baba is you]

It's true stealth, becoming one with nature.

 

[RomanRichter]

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.

metro always did this pretty well, the voice acting was wasnt always great but atleast it felt like it belonged. even better, play it in russian - but then you have to pay attention to subtitles all the time

come to think of it, the radio music sucks ass too, i just found this: https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heartofchornobyl/mods/294

Mod was banned, cuz lern ze ukrainian culture or GTFO you shovinistik swine!

For real, we now have mods purged cauze of music, changing logo with russian subtitle, how degenerate this can go?

EDT: Here is alternative link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D2BrruPNP-cIYPP12LZiDbf3cnfTdncO/view
There are around 5 mods that replace radio, and cause meltdown