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If I had a bottle cap for every time a post-apocalyptic game started with the player being left for dead, I'd be a very clinky boy. In hindsight, I should have known Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl immediately handing out ammo and sturdy assault rifles was a red flag. It's all snatched away within 30 minutes, when a group of mysterious stalkers ambush you and take everything of value – besides, somewhat thoughtfully, a single pistol.
In the aftermath of their robbery, my most pressing concern was to stay alive with the little I had left, picking through rotting wooden houses and bandits' pockets to scrape together food and ammunition. But behind my survival instinct lurked a curious case of déjà vu. The Zone's lush Ukrainian countryside is a million miles away from the dusty desert town of Nevada's Goodsprings, but my stalker's experience felt eerily similar to The Courier's own 18-carat run of bad luck at the start of Fallout: New Vegas. It's proven far from a fluke since then, and in the 40-odd hours I've crammed into Stalker 2, its similarities to Obsidian's own legendary RPG have only piled higher.
Ring-a-ding-ding, stalker
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl review: "The best but most broken game I've played all year"
In the 14 years since New Vegas launched, few games have come close to matching the faction-based squabbling that brought the Mojave Wasteland to life. Your original mission – to track down your smooth-talking assailant Benny for revenge – turns Courier Six into an unwitting kingmaker, the deciding factor in a desert-wide game of chess. The key players are the bureaucratic New California Republic (NCR), militaristic Roman cosplayers Caesar's Legion, and Mr. House, the enigmatic ruler of New Vegas who commands an army of robots.
But beneath the big three are a variety of groups who can be wooed or wrecked as you see fit – which include the Great Khans desert gang, a local Brotherhood of Steel chapter, and aviator-loving Bombers to name a few. You're also free to backstab the lot of them to put yourself in charge of New Vegas, buddying up with as many of the desert's smaller factions as you like before putting the boot in House, Caesar's Legion, or the NCR. Merely typing this leaves me itching to play the Battle of Hoover Dam once again – an absolute all-timer as far as game finales go, as it's here that you see the consequences of your diplomacy come to fruition.
Stalker's protagonist Skif walks a similar path to Courier Six. On his first trip to The Zone, he's ambushed and left for dead by attackers who knew where he'd be. Just as The Courier was robbed of the package they were delivering – the army-enhancing Platinum Chip – Skif's unique scanner is stolen. While The Courier is saved by robot-cowboy Victor, who digs them out of a shallow grave and not-so-subtly follows them across the Mojave under the pretense of turning up to say boy-howdy, Skif is rescued by a stalker called Richter, who has a similar habit of turning up like a bad penny in The Zone's many bars.
A tale of two wastelands
As Skif, you're quickly set loose to find out who attacked you and why, encouraged to enact vengeance on those who've wronged you. But just as New Vegas plays out, his search for answers quickly bogs him down into the area's regional politics. Brutal military outfit The Ward seek to impose order on The Zone – and ultimately remove its scientific anomalies – from the world, whilst stalker faction Spark fight to preserve the area's "miracles". A colony of former brainwashed Monolith cultists seek to carve out a new life on Wild Island, and scientists from beyond The Zone want to take advantage of the area's impossibilities at all costs.
Skif is the key to breaking their various stalemates, and throughout Stalker 2's main quest, you're often forced to choose between them. Besides having a huge influence on the story, these decisions shape The Zone's open world. After irreparably sinking my relations with The Ward – who I'd managed to stay on amicable terms with for 20+ hours – I found myself a persona non grata with the fickle fascists, barred from entering certain settlements and shot at on sight by their wandering patrols. With some regions even changing ownership depending on who you've buddied up with, Stalker 2 is one of very few games since New Vegas that has made me feel like my big-picture decisions have tangible consequences in the here and now, not just the usual hands-off epilogues we've come to expect from branching RPGs.
It's a level of interaction we rarely see in open-world games, presumably because they must be a nightmare to get working. Both Stalker 2 and New Vegas have experienced their fair share of jank at launch, but based on their respective 'Very Positive' and 'Overwhelmingly Positive' Steam reviews, the general consensus seems to be that people can overlook their scuffed edges in light of their brilliance. There's a reason we're still in love with Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines even if it needs a community patch to run properly, or why everyone sank tens of hours into Baldur's Gate 3's third act while it was still receiving much-needed polish. Authentic, tangible ambition shines through games like stardust – as radioactive as it may be – and very little is capable of eclipsing that.
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