S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (series): Difference between revisions

* [[After the End]]: Although the post-apocalyptic nature of the game world is restricted to the Zone itself, with life on the outside world proceeding as normal.

** Arguably better than normal. It's implied that artifacts taken from the zone, while rare, are being used to advance science and medicine - and attempts to militarize them (such as gauss gun usage) are roadblocked constantly due to ammunition rarity and expense.

** The punctuated title ''S.T.A.L.K.E.R''. was chosen because there was already a video game called "Stalker".

** Amusingly, the "correct" names in the files have typos, making it hell for the more grammar sensitive modders. Notably the Winchester is w_wincheaster.ltx.

*** Or inexplicably decide that the current safe building about five meters away isn't safe enough after just starting a patrol to have it interrupted by a storm, and run off in a random direction instead.

** As discussed below, one of the biggest AI bugs in the original ''STALKER'' was the AI's tendency to end up mysteriously dead around fireplaces. Community research discovered that the AI kept spawning inside the fireplaces and killing themselves; it wasn't uncommon to find entire camps bereft of life. Although later sequels avoided this issue, it was never fixed in the original and mod makers were forced to compensate by rendering the AI immune to fire damage, or force spawnpoints to keep them away from the firepits.

* [[Nuclear Physics Goof]]: Radiation is treated as evil mud that will kill you if you forget to wash it off, either with magical anti-radiation pills or drinking enough Vodka. Obviously, gameplay-wise, this beats dying a slow, hideous death for going the wrong way.

* [[Art Shift]]: The characters in the ending [[Cutscene]] of ''Call of Pripyat'' are played by actual humans (the same people who their in-game faces are modeled on) instead of computer-drawn characters like in ''Shadow of Chernobyl''. This is most glaring when comparing all the new characters to Strelok, who (being based on his ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' appearance) is computer-drawn instead of played by a live person.

* [[Blind Idiot Translation]]: The original game had some serious translation errors in mission descriptions; the most serious was all instances of "Attic" were translated as "Basement," leading to players scouring for non-existent basement entrances to stashes that were actually above them, and translating "shotgun" as "rifle" in quests. "Find the family rifle" was made particularly perplexing by the latter.

* [[Boom Town]]: Even hardened artifact hunters need a safe place to sleep, eat, drink, trade, and the like, and as a result several well-fortified, well-defended permanent settlements spring up from the ruins over the course of the series to cater to the artifact-hunting trade, in a sort of inversion of [[Dying Town]] - rather than a thriving town becoming a ghost town, the ghost towns are resettled.

** This was actually a popular folk medicine for preventing radiation poisoning in the Soviet bloc. And, yes there was a lot of drinking at [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/09/dyi-dirty-bomb-remedies-and-off-the-shelf-measures/ Chernobyl.]

* [[Boring but Practical]]: One of the main tools for detecting anomalies is a simple bolt, which can be tossed into suspicious-looking areas to trigger any anomalies present.

** Don't forget most of the early-mid game weapons, like the [[Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better|MP5, AK-74, AN-94, Walther P99, Browning HiPower, Colt 1911, and TOZ-34.]] None of them are flashy in any way, but all use common ammo types and perform well enough to get the job done.

* [[Brain In A Jar]]: During the quest to disable the Miracle Maker in the {{spoiler|Lake Yantar's Lab}}, you might be a little too busy fighting zombies to look at the device you're trying to disable - a ''giant'' computer-controlled brain.

** However a exploit allows you to use artifacts to become immune to a certain kind of damage, which then heals you and repairs your armour when you receive that damage. This exploit proved so popular that [[Ascended Glitch|it was actually deliberately left unfixed]], and is in fact commonly considered to be a valid tactic by the community (what with there being no other way to repair armor in the first game).

** Of course, it has since been modded. Expect to pay a daily fee to the few merchants to repair your stuff, or find some rare and limited repairing kits on the battlefield.

** Story-wise, he ''does'' survive several emissions that wiped out every other person not in cover, so it's more a case of [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]].

* [[Church Militant]]/[[Cult]] : The Monolith faction, who ''worship'' the Wish Granter and by extension the Zone itself, and are viewed as dangerous psychotic fanatics by everyone else, ''Call of Pripyat'' expands on this, introducing elite members called preachers, who wield gauss rifles and give ''sermons'' before and ''during'' battles. {{spoiler|Monolith soldiers are all [[Brainwashed and Crazy]], so.}}

* [[Continuity Cameo]]: The guy who saves Marked One at the start of ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' fits the description of Redrick from ''[[Roadside Picnic (Literature)|Roadside Picnic]]''.

* [[Convenient Questing]]: Especially obvious in ''Clear Sky''. Largely avoided in ''Shadow of Chernobyl''.

* [[Cthulhumanoid]]: Bloodsuckers.

* [[Cutting Off the Branches]]: As mentioned above, {{spoiler|''Call of Pripyat'' takes the good ending of ''Shadow of Chernobyl'' as canon.}}

* [[Dark World]] : What the Zone of the games is, especially when compared to the [[Real Life]] Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

* [[Death or Glory Attack]]: In-universe, going into the Zone at all is this. An aspiring artifact hunter will either end up rich beyond his wildest dreams, or killed horrifically. Or [[Fate Worse Than Death|worse]].

** To be more specific, Barin's Tunder 5.45mm is sold by Sidorovich in the early game (before you speak to Wolf and after you've rescued Nimble) for 20,000 RU. Needless to say, it's highly unlikely you'll get this amount in time. You'd need to gather all of the loot in the first map and maybe some of the second to amass the amount needed. However, it's a '''very''' useful gun in the early game, as it is an mid to endgame gun chambered for an ammo type common in the early game.

** In ''Call Of Pripyat'', one can find the recurring NPC Nimble on board Skadovsk, the first real hub of the game. You can special order rare/upgraded weapons and armor, including the vaunted Exoskeleton. The prices are somewhat steep, but judicious artifact hunting quickly makes cash a non-issue.

** In ''Call of Pripyat'' you can find a Vintar (VSS) in perfect condition right after the beginning of the game, provided you know where to look. {{spoiler|It's on top of one of the burnt-out houses in the fire anomaly location.}} There's also an SVD up for grabs: {{spoiler|it's leaning against one of the trees on the edge of the map.}}

* [[Dirty Coward]]: Professor Semenov, who throws a hissy fit when he's asked to go get samples and refuses to go until Marked One comes along to change his mind. When a blowout knocks Marked One out, he argues with Sakharov over leaving him.

* [[Drunken Master]]: Cardan, the mechanic at Skavodsk, is only competent when he's completely wasted - in fact, he can only perform high-level weapon modifications after downing at least two bottles of vodka. {{spoiler|Showing him the Gauss Rifle, however, shocks him into sobriety.}}

* [[Dwindling Party]]: In ''Call of Pripyat'', once you finally reach Pripyat, you'll rendevous with a platoon-sized group of allied military Spetznaz soldiers, who serve as your allies for the 3rd and final act. Over the course of the Pripyat missions, this force of a few dozen special forces soldiers will gradually be whittled down by Monolith ambushes and mutant attacks to just 3 to 6 soldiers, plus you, Strelok, and the last member of your 4-man party (the other 3 members having left on their own to pursue their own agendas).

* [[Elite Mooks]]: The military Spetznaz units. Also, the rarely encountered Military Stalkers, who are sort of the Elite of the Elites. These guys are equipped with extremely good armor, and the Military Stalkers are armed with Russian Special Forces AS Val assault rifles.

* [[Enemy Chatter]]: Although not much use in ''Shadow of Chernobyl'', as it's all in Russian. At least "[[Grenade Tropes|granáta]]" isn't hard to figure out.

** The infamous "permanent radiation sickness" in ''Shadow of Chernobyl'': in places like the Garbage or Army Warehouses if one ventures too far up the hills or tries to leave the general "playing area" the radiation counter almost instantly jumps to [[Up to Eleven|eleven]] in order to provide "incentive" for the player to turn back. Now, there are a couple of places in the Zone where the engine detects you as being out of the intended playing area, even though you are not, and afflicts you with the aforementioned permanently increasing rad-sickness that '''never goes away'''. If you save the game after getting it you're pretty much screwed. The only known solution is to reload an earlier save. Take note, people who save each game on top of the last one. Also - be extremely paranoid about this when venturing into the train tunnel at the Garbage.

* [[Game Mod]]: A lot of cut content can be restored by tweaking the configuration files, and many mods use this to rebalance the game and fix various issues.

* [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]]: Completing Trapper's mutant-hunting quests in ''Call Of Pripyat'' [[Multiple Endings|unlocks an ending]] describing how Yanov has become a safer place for Stalkers thanks to your efforts. In-game, however, [[The Farmer and The Viper|Yanov becomes even more dangerous]] as completing all the hunting missions causes [[Demonic Spiders|Chimeras, Burers and Pseudogiants]] to spawn randomly throughout the area. [[Sarcasm Mode|Yay.]]

* [[Gas Mask Mooks]]: Most of the mid-to-high rank characters wear gas masks, although it's justified due to the many environmental hazards present in the Zone. Also, snorks.

* [[Genius Loci]]: The Zone is revealed to be one of these {{spoiler|controlled by C-Consciousness}}, and actively fights back against Stalkers that try to fight against it using mutants and emissions.

* [[Ghost Town]]: Pripyat, naturally. Also Limansk.

** As of ''Call of Pripyat'' NATO guns are somewhat more accurate, pack more power per hit and tend to come with a wider range of accessories while Warsaw Pact weapons are more durable, less prone to jamming and easier to find ammo for.

* [[Grey and Grey Morality]]: The Duty and Freedom factions, neither of which are particularly good ''or'' particularly bad despite being diametrically opposed to each other.

* [[It's Up to You]]: Subverted in ''Clear Sky''. On the first level, if you don't accomplish the mission objectives, your allies will eventually finish them for you. Also, in Yantar, Lefty's group is perfectly capable of assaulting the factory without your help.

** Also mostly averted in ''Shadow of Chernobyl''. The friendly AI is good enough that, depending on their equipment and experience level (and that of their enemies), they can win many firefights entirely without your assistance (though they'll usually take increased casualties). Occasionally, they'll even call you up to [[What the Hell, Hero?|mock your uselessness]] if you can't or don't help them fight off an attack.

* [[Invulnerable Civilians]]: Majorly averted. Other than the two traders (who sit deep inside neutral bunkers that force you to holster your weapon when you enter), every character in the game world, including major characters, can be killed. Because mutants, bandits, mercenaries, and the military randomly attack Stalker settlements. Luckily for you, you can scavenge their PDA for quests and loot.

** You can actually kill all but one of the traders, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tGvj4B9_00 you just have to wait...]

*** Actually, contrary to what some games might tell you, FMJ, or full metal jacket rounds are almost always standard. The 5.45 BP ammunition is the type that chews through the Spetsnaz Berill-5M armor.

** ''F1'' frag grenades have absolutely devastating fragmentation, and you'll most likely die if you use them like in a generic FPS game. At best, you'll have to waste a bandage. You ''always'' need to find solid cover if you're gonna use these.

** As well as a few scripted events in ''Shadow of Chernobyl''. If they were once dynamic, then they were one of many features culled from the final product - dynamic blowouts are restored in Oblivion Lost, along with other mods.

* [[Required Secondary Powers]]: All of the protagonists appear to have limited [[Super Strength]]; fifty kilograms is well over a hundred pounds, and although it's definitely possible to carry that much nobody's going to be able to sprint for any significant distance while packing that much gear - ''especially'' not the Marked One, who judging from his appearance in cutscenes is absolutely rail-thin and poorly muscled. At the very least, Scar has the excuse of "blowouts empower him".

* [[Respawning Enemies]]

* [[Ruins of the Modern Age]]/[[And Man Grew Proud]] : ''And how !'' Obviously, the area around the Chernobyl power plant is really [[Truth in Television]]. And it does have a greatly haunting vibe to it, even without the presence of bizzare mutated monsters and paranormal activity like in the game.

* [[Saharan Shipwreck]]: The barges and ships in the Zaton area.

* [[Shiny New Australia|Shiny New Ukraine]]: {{spoiler|the people behind the C-Conciousness experiment chose the Chernobyl area for the experiment because it had recently been evacuated and abandoned, following the explosion of reactor 4. This allowed the researchers great freedom and easy secrecy. The Chernobyl region also had a number of large antennas, necessary for the experiment's goal, the controlled manipulation of the noosphere.}}

* [[Shooting Gallery]]: In the novel ''Lead Sunset'', a flashback of Major Kupriyanov is him and his military academy mates being taken for an exam that involved this. He got the lowest points, because he shot every target he saw with unerring accuracy. Including the kids. When the instructor asked him why, he said something on the lines of "The order was to shoot every target, not every enemy target. I see no difference between a cardboard hostile and a cardboard civilian". Then he was asked if he would still shoot if those were real people. He replied with a hearty "yes", because the command probably had a reason for him to kill these people. He was accepted.

** The rare and dangerous mutant type known as 'Controllers' use literally the exact same sound files as Half-Life 2's headcrab zombies, although it's not clear whether this is a shout-out or just plain laziness.

*** The developer had licenced a number of assets from Valve so it may be more just a [[Stock Sound Effects|stock sound effect]].

** The Gauss Gun looks like ''[[Fallout 2]]'''s M72 Gauss rifle exactly except that the ''Fallout'' one has a wooden stock and handle. This is reinforced by their ammo, which looks even more similar and is called 2mm EC in the game files, same as ''Fallout''.

*** [[Dummied Out]] content for ''Clear Sky'' shows that .223 Pistol and Bozar LMG were supposed to be implemented at some point. Both are fan favorites in ''Fallout 2''

* [[Shown Their Work]]: At this point, the good folks in GSC Game World probably know more about the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone than the people that used to ''live there''. They took numerous trips there in order to make the gameworld as close to reality as possible, with the only significant changes being that places of interest are put closer together, as trekking through the empty countryside for 5 hours in real time would be boring. The actual town of Pripyat and NPP are also amazingly detailed, from building exteriors to small things like old Soviet-era propaganda posters, foliage and sounds. And as the [[Reality Is Unrealistic]] example states above, they also managed to create one of the most realistic ballistics models ever, with correct bullet drop calculation and real life firearm specs being just the icing on the cake. One example is the British L85A1 rifle, whose early models in real life had very poor reliability and so were pulled from mass production; STALKER's lore actually plays on this and states that the decomissioned rifles made it to the Zone via the black market. Of course this is reflected in gameplay as well, with the L85A1 having a ridiculously low reliability rating and starting to jam after the ''third mag'' of firing.

** And that just begins to scratch the surface. Another good example is the drug "Vinca", which appears in ''Call of Pripyat''. The in-game description lists it as "Ukrainian Vikasolum, the artificial equivalent of Vitamin K. The drug increases the blood's coagulation rate, causing small wounds and lacerations to close up faster." Guess what? Although the drug's in-game effects are (understandably) stronger than one would expect, the drug is real, and the effects and description are 100% accurate to its actual purpose.

* [[We Can Rule Together]]: {{spoiler|After Strelok successfully discovers the C-Consciousness and makes his way to their control center, they offer him an opportunity to join them in their efforts to create a species-wide [[Hive Mind]]. Canonically, he refuses, and then proceeds to fight his way through their entire guard force before killing the entire Consciousness with assault rifle fire while they sit helpless in their pods.}}

* [[What the Hell, Player?]]: In Shadow of Chernobyl, shooting Arnie, the Arena organizer, pisses the Barkeep right off, who curses you while placing a bounty on your head. Shooting his replacements gets an increasingly confused and enraged Barkeep.

* [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]]: ''Call of Pripyat'' ends this way.

* [[Wide Open Sandbox]]: For the most part. More restrictive than Fallout, but has more overall quests, an active ecosystem, and, occasionally, people fighting desperate battles against each other/mutants.