WWhen Ukrainian developer GSC Game World released the post-apocalyptic adventure Stalker in 2007, it was considered a highly unlikely mystery novel. Heavily inspired by the cult novel Roadside Picnic, the film follows the story of a 2006 scientific experiment that causes the second Chernobyl disaster, resulting in a vast irradiated zone filled with powerful space-time anomalies, and the inhabitants… I imagined an alternate timeline where it was just mutants and the titular stalker. Men wandering through the wilderness in search of valuable relics.
However, the sequel arrives in a completely different world, and its long development period was affected by both the coronavirus pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Now, Stalker's visions seem less improbable, and his speculations have become more urgent and believable.
As if to illustrate the point, Stalker 2 begins with a massive explosion destroying an apartment building. As a result, the protagonist Skev, now homeless, is drawn into the Zone with a powerful scanning kit that will aid him in his quest for retribution and escape, but he is beaten unconscious by an unknown gang and wakes up with a scanner. notice that it is broken. It was stolen and now he is alone in an irradiated wasteland.
What follows is a relentlessly challenging survival adventure. There, you must navigate monster-infested landscapes and marauding bands of wild warriors, searching for technology and trying to survive. The odds are always against you. Guns frequently break down and require regular repairs, food and ammunition are dangerously scarce, and each building you encounter contains a critical tool, a mad dog, a booby trap, or all of the above. It may be clogged. Scattered across the map are various hideouts populated by stalkers and unscrupulous traders, offering trading opportunities, weapon upgrades, side quests, and other resources. Gather everything you can before heading back into the unknown.
The world of Stalker 2 is very beautiful. A dangerous and ever-changing patchwork of grasslands, swamps, and forests. The natural world is full of remnants of civilization. One moment you're wandering down a rocky path under the bright sun, and the next a storm arrives, howling winds whipping leaves and debris into the dark sky. Everywhere you go there are anomalies, sometimes floating blobs of antimatter, sometimes small exploding volcanoes in your path, all deadly if you don't learn how to spot and avoid them. Like Death Stranding, this is very much a game of solitary exploration. With my backpack overstuffed with loot and my strength weakened, I wandered for many minutes in search of a hut where I could spend some quiet time. It's very tense and realistic, and you can't help but be drawn into it.
This section is a wetland-like landscape in itself. There's so much lore, so many competing factions, religious cults, and militias that your head spins and you lose all sense of all the characters, plots, and loyalties. It's not helped by the horribly wooden voice acting and thudding dialogue, nor is it helped by the fact that this world is populated almost entirely by irritating bald men with identical goatees. I can't. It's like being trapped inside a post-apocalyptic real ale festival. When I finally met a woman after a few hours of playing, I felt like I had wandered into an oasis in the desert.
We also encountered dozens of bugs during the pre-release period, ranging from incomplete character models to sidequests that didn't trigger exit conditions to cinematic sequences that slowed to a near-stop. A major patch has since fixed many of these flaws, but I don't think the game will run completely smoothly for a few more weeks.
But the truth is that I often played them late into the night, glued to this flawed, singular world. There's a palpable sense of hopelessness and underlying tragedy to this game, perhaps more than any other dystopian fiction the industry has produced in the past few years. As you wander through the bush, passing the remains of destroyed villages, crashed helicopters and rusting tanks, you can't help but wonder what the creators of this game have seen and lived through. would be difficult. For those wondering, GSC Game World has produced a documentary. war gamesexplore the process.
Was Stalker 2 an allegory for the Russian invasion? Now, the Wards, one of the main military powers in the game, have invaded the zone and claim to bring stability, but are actually interested in annexing the land to their nation. Interpret that as you like.
At least this game is an exploration of trauma that resonates with the anger of Elem Klimov's Come and See and Michael Herr's Dispatches. As you continue to advance, discovering new weapons, upgrading them, making new allies, and opening new hubs and map areas, the story brings you closer and closer to the heart of the zone and all the horrors that await it. The atmosphere of foreboding, loneliness, and images of humans just hanging on by a thread are dark and surprising.
Stalker 2 is an ode to strange, brave, and sometimes broken resistance in the face of overwhelming odds. Its vision is completely uncompromising and often flawed, enveloping you in a dark spell of science, violence, and chaos. Indeed, if you liked Dragon's Dogma 2, which similarly veered toward self-parody with its quirky systems, quirky characters, and overall jankiness, you'll be fine with this game's technical and narrative inconsistencies. Probably. Sure, like a stalker inhabiting a wounded world, you might just shrug and improvise and keep going. If you thought developers weren't making expansive, quirky, and downright idiosyncratic open-world games anymore, you were wrong. And some of them have gone through hell to do it.
Source: www.theguardian.com
