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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s Delay Is Personally Painful Because The Original Games Are So Iconic




You approach the camp at night, alone. It is dark, but you do not want them to know where you are—so your flashlight remains in your bag. You can barely make out the enemies’ positions, your only referent being the lights cast from beneath the barrels of their guns. You move to the side of the place, some remnant of a village—four houses, stone, broken, and a campfire reaching up through the shattered roof of the northwestern-most building.


You find a hole in a nearby wall and lean to your right, giving your weapon the room it needs to breathe. Your geiger counter clicks, cutting through the night, and a nearby bandit quickly turns his flashlight in your direction. You squeeze the trigger. Violence happens. The man’s flashlight breaks, and soon the night is only lit by a dying campfire and the quick flashes of muzzle flare. It is a long night, STALKER—by its end, four men are dead. And you hear the blind dogs howl, perpetually hungry, a few miles away. You search the bodies. One of the men carries identification.


His name was Sanek Hedgehog.


This story is probably the clearest pitch I can give you for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. The series, like many cult classics from the early- and mid-2000s, defies easy descriptions. It’s a series of first-person shooters, loosely based off of the 1979 Andrei Tarkovsky film, Stalker, and the book upon which that same movie is based, Roadside Picnic. Both properties feature significantly less gunfire than their video game adaptations, but that’s not really the heart of what connects these works. Stalker-related pieces of art aren’t about plot or action—they’re about ~vibes~. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games have vibes in spades, which is why I am so excited about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, the sequel which was recently delayed to December 2022.


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