For those hankering after some of this, perhaps you might want to check out S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly. Saw a streamer playing it the other day and it seems interesting.
Dev team has been moved from Ukraine to Czech Republic and pre-orders have been refunded. But utter respect to GSC for the unimaginable hardships their workers and families have had to endure.
It wasn't until I hit my thirties that I realised you could unlock rewards by exploring the map
Everything seems very Stalkerish, which is great. Anomalies? - check, Mutated menagerie? - check, Idiosyncratic gunplay? - check.
But the one thing that bugs me is the American voiceover for the new protagonist.... There are some things you don't do - it's like giving Gordon Freeman the power of speech.
Just like Freeman, Strelok was a mute too, and all the better for it. Part of this series unique charm was the other-worldliness provided by the Ukrainian-only language used by npcs.
I really don't want to play a Yank lost in The Zone, thanks. This just brings back memories of the awful voicework in Atomic Heart....
It wasn't until I hit my thirties that I realised you could unlock rewards by exploring the map
A Ukrainian doing the English voiceover would be silly, imo. Like those films where the Germans speak English with a German accent when they are supposed to be speaking their own language.
The original game was something of a rough diamond, which is well-documented by now.
The second game introduced the idea of 'faction wars' where various AI controlled groups would battle for strategic points on the map. There was only one problem with this new element - it was utterly broken. The game was essentially a remix of the existing levels minus all the interesting underground bits. It did introduce a whole new swamp map area, inhabited by the new faction called clear skies and also a new artifact search minigame (which was a vast improvement on the original) but apart from that it was a bit of a mess.
Call of Pripyat, third game in the trilogy offered brand new maps and some new mutant types to kill, but compared to the original it was pretty forgettable despite retaining its core components of tough gunplay and other-worldliness.
This is a complete shadowdrop - no one was expecting (or asking?) for this port so I doubt they'll be much in the way of improvements in either graphical fidelity or quality of life stuff, but make no mistake, the original Stalker really was something quite special back in the day.
Might just be tempted to take a trip back into The Zone, for old times sake.
It wasn't until I hit my thirties that I realised you could unlock rewards by exploring the map