Stalker 2

LeSabre

LeSabre
Tried to play it, as a multiple time completionist of both 'Shadow of Chernobyl' and 'Call of Pripyat' I really wanted Stalker 2 to be like a more modern version of those. There's just something I can't put my finger on, but I didn't find it fun or engaging at all to play, several things felt off like there being far too many anomalies in any direction, the random spawning of enemies behind and beside the player, and a few gripes with the archaic inventory + PDA system that feels 20 years old.

Each thing on it's own isn't a big deal, but what sealed it's fate from my Steam library was one situation in particular, I was walking up a road literally 50ft from the starting camp scanning the shrubbery/treeline while trying to keep away from the 5 or 6 obviously deadly anomalies scattered along/beside it, saw the threat indicator at the top of the screen go slightly red, so backed up a bit and dipped off one side of the road. Crouched myself down to scan ahead, oh wait, a bark noise! There's 4 dogs out of nowhere attacking my butt and my health is instantly now 2/3, so I panic run to the left, a gunshot hits me from somewhere, health is now 1/3 and bleeding, I pop an accidental vodka for no real reason and accidentaly fumble straight into an anomaly that I couldn't see because of the rainforest level of low foliage blowing around mixed with the suddenly violently foggy weather and get "freshly squeezed" back to a save point.

I mean, it was darn funny, but just too random, too much, and too fast, or I'm just getting too old and too slow :D
 
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PiLhEaD

PiLhEaD
LeSabre said:
Tried to play it, as a multiple time completionist of both 'Shadow of Chernobyl' and 'Call of Pripyat' I really wanted Stalker 2 to be like a more modern version of those. There's just something I can't put my finger on, but I didn't find it fun or engaging at all to play, several things felt off like there being far too many anomalies in any direction, the random spawning of enemies behind and beside the player, and a few gripes with the archaic inventory + PDA system that feels 20 years old....
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Sorry to hear that. I've also played through ShoC, CoP, serveral times, and have always enjoyed the atmosphere. Similarly numerous mods and 'total converions' - such as Anomaly and Lost Alpha, along with plenty more. Overall, I am really enjoying S2 as it feels to me to be a good spiritual successor to ShoC. It's not perfect of course, and some aspects I find baffling/annoying: EG why can't we decide how long we sleep for; why enforce such a long night cycle if there's no night-vision available (yet)!?

I know what you mean about there feeling to be too many anomalies in various parts, and the random spawning is a real pain - although some mods seem to do a decent job of sorting that out. Fingers crossed they can sort that all out when they get A-Life working. The accidental vodka can be sorted by remapping the (Q and) E hotkeys well away from WASD - I was popping vodka more often than an alcoholic on a busy Saturday!

The seemingly 'random' (or unexpected) deaths have always been a part of STALKER for me, although some of them in S2 do seem way too inexplicable to be enjoyable in the moment - thank god for F5! I also find kicking the cat* helps!

Have a look on Nexus Mods (if you haven't already), there's plenty of (possible) 'help' available there.

Slava Ukraine!

* Not really!! Mrs PiLhEaD would kill me...
 
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LeSabre

LeSabre
Yeah I'll be keeping my eye on it's progress as various patches get applied as I really want to like and enjoy S2, I try not to use mods so soon after a games release in case new patches break the mods too frequently to play, I'll let it settle for a while and see how it goes.

The other Stalkers walking like robots to camp entrances and not even flinching when lightning bolts were hitting near their feet was a bit jarring too, definitely needs some A-life work. :D
 

Chevy66

C
I'm enjoying it a lot despite the bugs. I've only come across one main quest breaking bug (a major NPC not where he was supposed to be), and that was fixed with a console command to restart the quest.

It is a bit disappointing that the A-Life isn't working properly. But if, like me, you bought the first one on release day you might remember the a-life wasn't working as intended in the initial release of that either. I'm sure in time it will get better. Bullet sponge mutants are a bit annoying, but they've already been nerfed a bit in a patch.

I'm playing with most of the hud turned off including the compass at the top, it's way more immersive without icons nagging at the top of the screen and looks a lot less "far Cry" ish. I just need to look at the map a lot more.

I also added a mod to lengthen the day night cycle as it was a bit ridiculous
 

PiLhEaD

PiLhEaD
At around 15 hours in (as best I recall) I paused following/playing the main story-line at "The Price Goes Up" mission.

In part because I wanted to allow time for a few patches to arrive, but mostly because I am havng a whale of a time stalking around and exploring wherever my nose led/leads (around 40 hours played now). I'm very much getting the same feeling that I had with ShoC, being in the middle of a living/breathing* place that is brutally, unforgivingly harsh and dangerous. Oddly it feels a little bit like Elite, where you're not the chosen-one, merely another grubby ne'er-do-well scraping a living.

Thankfully a few mods have resolved/reduced most of the (some very) significant issues - not least being the stupidly bullet-spongey critters.

* The a-life was what made the zone feel this way, as if you were a passenger in a living organism. No matter how many times I played ShoC it would always catch me out and make me jump. So hopefully they get this up and working as a priority.

Overall, I'm very happy to continue plodding around, exploring and sometimes stumbling over some very tasty loot, and the main quest can wait a while yet.
 

PiLhEaD

PiLhEaD
Mole HD said:
Being a Stalker newbie and not having played Call of Prypiat or the original, I'm still trying to work out what the much mentioned A-Life is without appearing too stupid :D
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If you fancy it, I'd strongly suggest Shadow of Chernobyl*. CoP is a much better polished game, but ShoC is brutal, gritty and utterly unforgiving... ...not unlike Mrs PiLhEaD when I've forgotten something that she may have mentioned more than once....... (the bruises don't last much more than a week... normally...)

* Just patch it with (at least) 'Complete' - it doesn't change the game, but really smooths off some rough edges.
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
PiLhEaD said:
If you fancy it, I'd strongly suggest Shadow of Chernobyl*. CoP is a much better polished game, but ShoC is brutal, gritty and utterly unforgiving... ...not unlike Mrs PiLhEaD when I've forgotten something that she may have mentioned more than once....... (the bruises don't last much more than a week... normally...)

* Just patch it with (at least) 'Complete' - it doesn't change the game, but really smooths off some rough edges.
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I've got ShoC and CoP in my Steam library...had them for years but just never played them. It wasn't until I bought Stalker 2 that I realised they were in there...But you never revealed what the hell A-Life is...I've absolutely no idea even though I keep seeing it mentioned by fans of the first games 🤷‍♂️
 

LeSabre

LeSabre
Mole HD said:
I've got ShoC and CoP in my Steam library...had them for years but just never played them. It wasn't until I bought Stalker 2 that I realised they were in there...But you never revealed what the hell A-Life is...I've absolutely no idea even though I keep seeing it mentioned by fans of the first games 🤷‍♂️
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Fantastic games, definitely play Shoc first, it's Stalker at it's purest and the atmosphere is just 'chefs kiss' perfect. :)

A-life is basically GSC's own brand of artificial intelligence applied to all npc's, mutant and human alike, it regulates and controls spawn types/location and how the npc's react and behave to the environment, other npc's, and the player. That's my very basic take on it anyway. :)
 

Chevy66

C
Mole HD said:
I've got ShoC and CoP in my Steam library...had them for years but just never played them. It wasn't until I bought Stalker 2 that I realised they were in there...But you never revealed what the hell A-Life is...I've absolutely no idea even though I keep seeing it mentioned by fans of the first games 🤷‍♂️
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A-Life tracks all the NPCs even when they are nowhere near you. They go about their business, travelling around, getting into fights etc. even when they are off screen. You would get radio messages coming up on your PDA that actually corresponded to what that NPC was doing. There was a kind of leaderboard in the PDA of the most experienced stalkers, you could go and find them and follow them around if you wanted. You could watch fights going on in the distance with binoculars that were nothing to do with you.

At least that's how it supposed to work. apparently it's disabled in stalker 2, I think they will get it working. I suspect they disabled it and went with a simpler spawning system to hit the release date
 
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Morbad

Morbad
Have been waiting for STALKER 2 for quite some time, but the bugs, and the regression mentioned in the NPC persistence/AI have blunted a lot of my enthusiasm. Will probably take another look at it after a few more patches.
 

PiLhEaD

PiLhEaD
Mole HD said:
Strange that the same patch was only 19.3Gb on Steam...but it's reassuring that they're firing out the patches and bug fixes in quick order :)
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Agreed. It makes me feel quite optimistic about the game's future. Let's hope that the feeling is justified.

It's also good that both platforms are getting the patches at the same time. This is not always the case.
 
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PiLhEaD

PiLhEaD
I came for the artifacts, but stayed for the views...

s2 view.jpg
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
I'm just wandering around randomly...since I've no idea what I'm supposed to be doing apart from walking from one end of the map to t'other following the main missions.

Enjoying it all the same now that I've mod-banished the bullet sponge mutant dogs and pigs...and the AI humans don't spam me with frags every 3 seconds :)
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
Mole HD said:
Being a Stalker newbie and not having played Call of Prypiat or the original, I'm still trying to work out what the much mentioned A-Life is without appearing too stupid :D
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I've played the original and have no clue what that is supposed to mean either. The only thing I remember was a buggy shop in which the inventory never seemed to renew and ammo was scarce af. I had to cycle through weapons to finish the game.
 

PiLhEaD

PiLhEaD
I've got tired of dropped weapons always being in bad condition, so have built on a pre-existing mod, to correct this. The pre-existing mod adds the possibility of finding armor on corpses - which again feels reasonable.

I've tweaked the numbers such that weapons and gear can be in better condition. This is random, in a range, such that sometimes you get good gear, other times less-so. (I think the quality is decided when the NPC spawns, so re-loading won't help). One of the side effects is that the armor will overload you quite quickly, another is that selling better quality gear will help your bank-balance.

Should you fancy, here it is.

I may hack it around further to allow for artifacts to be found on NPCs too... <shrugs> ...we'll see.
 
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