The Bug infested mess that is Stalker and the fans that adore it.

Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl is a cult classic. Shadow of Chernobyl did not have a smooth release. However, it was able to find an audience, and IGN called it brave and ambitious while GameSpot compared it to Deus Ex and System Shock. Stalker: SoC released later than originally planned. Announced by GSC Game World in November 2001 under a different name, the game had a rocky development cycle to the point where it was often referred to as vaporware. In late 2003, an alpha build was leaked. After the leak, the game missed its release date that year. The leak made it clear that Stalker: SoC was deep in development hell. Their publisher put together a crack team to help cut down the game's scope and meet some sort of release window. THQ wanted Stalker to release in the fiscal year 2005-2006, but that slipped into late 2007, when it finally released.

Stalker: SoC did not release well; it was criticized for bugs and design issues. Their in-house engine did not perform well on many computers. The game had massive stuttering issues and problems with crashing. Yet, it was praised for its atmosphere and visuals. Modders adopted the game and fixed the performance issues that still plague the original release to this day. There were two follow-up standalone expansion packs: Stalker: Clear Sky and Stalker: Call of Pripyat. The follow-ups fixed many of the problems that the original suffered from, with Call of Pripyat being praised as "the most stable Stalker game out of the box." By Gamespot.

Let's backtrack for a bit; there is a point to this. In the original release from 2007, the game's main antagonist faction is The Monolith, referred to as Monolithians, who are portrayed as a religious cult. They follow the nuclear artifact in the center of the Zone, called the Wish Granter, which is rumored to be hiding in the center of the Zone. This object is the crux of the player's quest. The Zone, a post-nuclear disaster fallout zone full of strange objects of immense value, is a dangerous place that Monolith calls home. No matter how inhospitable or futile their goals, these dark, zealous fools love this place. Locked in a trance under the mind control of the Wish Granter, their artifact idol.

Fifteen years after the release of the last standalone Stalker game, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl released on November 20th, 2024. The open-world, survival-apocalyptic successor and sequel to the original Stalker games. With a twist: Monolith is long destroyed, but they remain scattered and lost in the Zone. In an early quest, you encounter "Ninth," an ex-Monolith fighter who explains that he remains in the Zone even though he lacks the memory of what he did while under the control of the Wish Granter. He knows he did wrong in those days and expresses regret. The Zone is his home, and he can see the beauty here amidst its danger and destruction.

To me, this is an analogy for the Stalker fandom. Every game has had issues. They've been praised for their ambitions and criticized for their problems. Delayed and dropped as vaporware, builds have been leaked, and features have been cut. Critics rightfully call out Stalker for its obvious performance problems, while fans praise it for its uniqueness. Just as Monolith remains in the Zone after their god was killed, Stalker fans feast on the unique, ambitious endeavors of GSC Game World.

So, how is it? This is largely my first impression. I have about 10 hours of playtime in the game so far. Stalker 2 has a lot of issues, not dissimilar to the first game. Running on UE5, the game takes a lot to run. Sitting at one hundred and sixty gigabytes, it is not a small install either. Initial load times are slow, and it takes a good ninety seconds to process shaders. When I initially launched the game, I got a GPU overload error while loading it. I noticed that if I interacted with this error, the game would crash instantly. However, if I waited and ignored the error, the game loaded fine. After that initial load, this error went away, and I have not seen it since.

I went in expecting problems. There are issues with the game's open-world roaming feature, A-Life. This system allows persistence in the entities wandering the zone. Currently, this system breaks and resets once per day in-game. If you are caught in the wrong spot when it resets, you are suddenly surrounded by hostiles. This issue and more have been acknowledged by GSC Game World in their recent post-release post. There are also issues with guns and objects being absurdly expensive to buy and fix, especially if they have attachments, making repairing items prohibitively expensive. All of these issues will be addressed in a patch due to release sometime this week, with the exception of the A-Life issue. That will be fixed at a later date.

Issues aside, I have been thoroughly enjoying my experience with the game so far. The gun-feel is absolutely Stalker. It’s quick and twitchy. Foot soldiers go down with a single bullet from any gun if you hit them in the right spot. Mutants are just as mean as always. Early-game weapons hardly even scratch them, so when you encounter one, it’s often smart to run. In past games, this was always the case until you reached the late game. Once you had heavily upgraded, high-quality gear, the mutants became less of a threat. I expect this to be the case in Stalker 2, but it will take me time to get there.

It is not the most visually impressive thing in a lot of ways. Human models are oddly Bethesda-like, with chunky animations and often odd movements. However, Stalker shines in its environment design. The anomaly sites are captivating, and the wasteland is desolate and oddly beautiful. The lighting storms and weather effects are fantastic, and as long as the game runs well, the towns feel lived-in and natural.

As with the originals, Stalker is an odd duck. It’s a mix of incredible interlocking systems. When they work, there is nothing else like it. When they break, it’s somewhere between extreme frustration and absolute slapstick comedy. It is a quick-save game for more than one reason. It can be brutally difficult and weirdly easy at times. It’s rough and strange, but just like the Monolith, I feast on this piece of unique game design.

Get out of here, Stalker.

This week I plan to stream Tuesday - Friday. We'll get some good time into the current Fortress. Along side of that we'll be playing Stalker 2. Caves of Qud will return around launch week.