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I hope it's somewhat like the metro games, those are some of my all time favorites and absolutely would love more of something with that atmosphere and immersion.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is an open world game whereas Metro is linear. As such, there are many differences between the two:
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Open, outside maps vs literal underground metro tubes.
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Almost no stealth (bonked) vs split into stealth/combat gameplay.
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Regular, duplicates and misc and survival inventory management with wide variety vs limited choice and specialized upgrades.
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Wonky but unrestrictive vs fine-tuned but channeled.
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Simple but great story (rather small scale and non-heroic, like the inspiring book "Roadside Picnic") where you wake up and try to find an #1NPC called Strelok to kill him vs journey of a hero through the gutters in a post-apocalyptic world.
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Anomalies crancked up to 11 and are a core part of the gameplay vs anomalies are rather world-building elements.
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Extensive modding (Oblivion-era game still keeping its modding community alive and theiving with tens of complete overhauls and completely new games, few-click-install modpacks and complete modding frameworks) vs out-of-the-box and as-is experience.
The similarities are:
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Great storytelling. Both do good storytelling that hooks the player, although with different types of stories.
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Good character writing. Metro has memorable characters with names and actions attached, while S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has no name loners and misers that will leave you with great campfire/guitar memories and novel-like stories.
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Excellent environment design. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. are older games so graphics are rather worn out compared to Metro, but the environment design is so good that places hook you up anyway.
I have simply glossed over the Metro parts because you already know about them. So don't think I'm thinking less of them. On the contrary, as someone who played all Metro games on their authentic experience difficulty first, played Exodus when it was released, then later a couple years ago struggled to start playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. due to how old and what a slog it was unmodded. Even though I am still fond of the games from my childhood and can play them despite (actually sometimes thanks to) their old graphics and rough mechanics, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. took me 3 attempts and finding OGSE/OGSR (Old Good Stalker Evolution/Remastered) overhaul to enjoy them in 2021. And boy, what an enjoyment that was, taking up about 300-400 across all 3 games.
Thank you for such a detailed comparison!
It seems that they are largely different in many aspects, but probably similar in the ways I most enjoy of a game. I actually tried to play STALKER once a long time ago and never really clicked for me, in part because of the same reason you mention, it was very wonky and didn't run well at all, but I am willing to give this one a chance given that the same happened to me with the Metro series. One of my favorite parts of metro was the Caspian desert in exodus, which I would say is kind of an open world map, so maybe I can hope that this one captures me in the same way.
Thanks for the response, and let's hope this will be a great one!
Yeah, I think Exodus made quite a unique blend of linear and half-open world gameplay. It is still very much different from the openness of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but a Metro game with that much of a different atmosphere could only be done in that way while being as good as it is. Hacking through the vanilla S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl was quite hard after that, and not having the time to try to manually mod such an old game on core mechanics was something I didn't have time for then. Finding OGSR was right at the breaking point for me about the series, but I'm glad I've found it even if it took 3 tries.
Link is what I remember downloading back then (should be a "standalone" file meaning it has all the game files, exes etc and won't need any vanilla installs at all). For the other 2 games, Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat, I went with the big community bugfix mod called SRP only iirc. For Clear Sky and Gunslinger for Call of Pripyat, both of which being smaller in scope but good enough for the latter games than needing OGSR-equivalent for them.
There is also a whole lotta different "game" called Anomaly that is basically a tremendous engine upgrade by the community and an open mod ecosystem, which you keep adding to build something yourself. It is a hassle, as much as modding Skyrim with 200 mods, but Anomaly is quite the technical improvement on the base games. It is rather storyless and with bits of "go here, meet this person, go here and fetch this", kind of thing making the whole progression. And yes, it, too, has curated modpacks, one of the biggest ones being G.A.M.M.A with its own setup of mods on a tidy Mod Organizer profile, with the options to add or remove mods yourself.
I apologize if this turned out to be an overhaul/modpack advertisement. There surely were many more overhauls I tried briefly before settling on these, so when you have the time, go ahead and try. Hope you'll have quite the nice experience to overcome the difficulty in adjusting to such an old gem's quirks.
Hey thanks, no apology needed. In fact, I think you are making me think about giving the original another go now that I know about those mods.
btw i didn't know that it was based on Roadside Picnic, haven't read it, but I have in my reading list since I saw it mentioned in HyperNormalisation. Thanks.
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