Associate
It’s in East Zaton. Google “weird water artifact”. Quite hard to get!
Stalker 2
- Thread starter Tombstone
- Start date
Soldato
Just installed this on Gamepass as well really enjoyed the first one so looking forward to a decent game to play when not working.
Soldato
just had my first playthrough and very much enjoyed it, did a few side quests but stuck to the main story, all in around 60hrs, going back again to get a diffrent ending, so far there are 4 to do. and complete missing achievements 100% a worthwhile pickup and play.
Well I just finished it and found it very enjoyable overall. The ending can drag on it seems, but it is giving a lot of closure for a lot of story arcs.
I went with the Ward ending as it fitted Skif’s reason for being in the zone in the first place.
Some annoying bugs, could use a bit of variety in loot and for example why not have currency held in safes instead of medkits and ammo. Though this kind of randomiser crap happens in almost every game.
For reference I have been playing a bit of the original SoC game unmodded. To say it is janky and a bit of a mess in its presentation and the A.I. is an understatement. Still remember it being a very cult classic on release and it got good but not great reviews. I loved it right from release but every other gamer I knew back then hated it as it was a bug ridden mess and performance was terrible for what even then were very mediocre graphics. Before anyone claims it was good graphically, it was released the same year as Crysis.
I went with the Ward ending as it fitted Skif’s reason for being in the zone in the first place.
Some annoying bugs, could use a bit of variety in loot and for example why not have currency held in safes instead of medkits and ammo. Though this kind of randomiser crap happens in almost every game.
For reference I have been playing a bit of the original SoC game unmodded. To say it is janky and a bit of a mess in its presentation and the A.I. is an understatement. Still remember it being a very cult classic on release and it got good but not great reviews. I loved it right from release but every other gamer I knew back then hated it as it was a bug ridden mess and performance was terrible for what even then were very mediocre graphics. Before anyone claims it was good graphically, it was released the same year as Crysis.
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Crysis was half a decade ahead of everything
But STALKER did look pretty fantastic for its day, especially the shadows, the paralax occlusion mapping on textures and the sky and weather effects
Soldato
Pretty easy when you figure out where to look for it.
Save about 150-200m away at about 2155.
On the edge of the central mound, stationary orb on a low lying rock.
On the edge of the central mound, stationary orb on a low lying rock.
I'm still putting off entering end game. I got as far as Prypiat and just mopping up all the remaining sidequests and unique weapons/armour/artifacts before I finish it off. Its definitely a game I'll play over again which is unusual for me, I'm usually one and done for SP games. Though That will likely be after they have released expansion DLC's.
I started off going down the Ward path, but changed path late game.
I've started working more towards Streloks side of things. Korshunov went off the deep end after the Duga raid and it just didnt sit right with me working for him anymore. The Ward dont like me anymore!
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Stalker was years late and had it been released on time I would agree. But when it did release it was just above average graphically. 2007 saw games like Crysis and Bioshock which both looked far more advanced.
Sorry I don’t wish to digress too much but the point is the original stalker was not some perfect A.I. a-life open world masterpiece on release. It was buggy, received fair to decent reviews due to performance issues and the serious bugs.
I see lots of parallels in the new version. A diamond in the rough that could become a classic.
Soldato
Are you forgetting 'can it run Crysis?' hardware couldn't output Crysis back then compared to how it looked years later, you were lucky to run medium and Stalker launched 10 months before Crysis?
Got to agree with @Paul_cz Stalker was a looker.
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I thought SOC looked ok on release but wasn't spectacular. I loved its atmosphere, audio, the weather, the way other stalkers grouped up and wondered about, the stalkers that sat about talking and playing guitars, being able to pick and choose missions across big maps, not really seen anything like it before. The shooting in it was bad and it was too hard imo. Some of the more recent graphics mods made it look much nicer.
Stalker looked decent but not great and ran as poorly as crysis. Crysis did have options to turn down settings and still look better than most.
The point is that at Stalker on release had many flaws, some game breaking and it took modders and years of patches to fix things like a-life.
I finished Stalker 2 and despite flaws it has nothing game breaking. The zone is not empty, the A.I. is not terrible, spawning enemies were only obvious on a few occasions, the main quest lines work and you can get four different endings.
Some QoL updates, improve spawning, improve a-life (it does exists despite the claims) and it can become a classic like the originals.
Soldato
Oh it ran poorly, I warned earlier in the thread before release that it would be like the OG Stalker-buggy and take patches to work, but it was a looker for it's time, but agree with you on the rest.
Loving it so far myself, no crashes so far-I'm running it on the AMD system.:thumbsup:
Loving it so far myself, no crashes so far-I'm running it on the AMD system.:thumbsup:
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Soldato
Its a stable game now, the early patches went a long way to fixing the vast majority of the game breaking bugs from release. Havnt experienced any crashes or such since the patches were released. Thats not to say its a perfect game. There is still a lot of expected jankyness and AI issues. Its in a perfectly playable state, However there is a ways to go yet before you could call it "properly finished".
Personally its not something that takes away from the experience for me and its the most connected I've been with a video game in years if not decades.
Soldato
Same here, it's a game I actually look forward to play when I get back from a long days work, on my second run but doing things differently, annoyed the ward this time instead of joining them on my first run
I have only had 2 CTD and one was on the latest patch. But yeah, game does seem in a better state now. More than happy playing it as it is.
Soldato
7900xt here at 1440p
Everything epic
TSR quality
Frame gen on
Around 100fps, 60 if you turn off frame gen
Input lag is ok, with the ini file mouse smoothing options enabled, fsr felt laggy for me
TSR feels ok and nice and crisp
I'm running a 7800XT and a 7600X and I can manage everything on High / Epic with FSR Quality and Frame Generation. This is at 3440x1440p too. It does drop in some NPC heavy areas but they tend to be non combat zones so it isn't too bad.
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Soldato
9950x, 4080s, running 4k epic with dlss balanced, was seeing around 80fps, but when I enabled frame gen my FPS jumped to 100fps and minimal lag, I'll happily take that