So I still had the second ‘true’ ending to reveal in STALKER, by rejecting the C-Consciousness’ offer and being dumped in the rear yard of the reactor. This area is extremely large, and the ground is radioactive, so you have to get around it by going through various teleportation portals that take you from area to area on the buildings.

Each area would have a handful of Monolith troops defending it, often including snipers and rocket launcher attacks from buildings farther away, and occasionally some more would arrive in a portal just to keep you on your toes. Aside from a couple snorks though, that was pretty much it, and I just had to slog my way through each area.

It seemed to go on forever, with at least a dozen portals I had to go through, but I eventually reached the end. There wasn’t really a boss fight, just a final portalling-in of a half-dozen Monolith troopers at once, but they were easily dispatched from below. Upon entering the final portal, the ending cutscene played (with a more upbeat ending than the first ‘true’ ending), and that was that.

It was slightly confusing, though (spoilers):

The C-Consciousness said that they were trying to contain the zone, and invited you to help them. But if you reject that and go through the above path, ending with you killing the bodies of the C-Consciousness members, that restores the zone to normal (or so the cutscene implies)? Were they lying about containing the zone, then? But there’s no clear reason why they would, and the wish granter is the ‘bad’ ending… Eh, whatever.

I also went and did the Wish Granter ‘bad’ ending, which was easy since I discovered I had a save game right at the branching point, and didn’t even have to fight any more soldiers to get to it. I got the “I want to be rich” variant that most people do, with the appropriately ironic, illusory reward. There are other Wish Granter endings, but they’d require more preparation and redoing the power plant, so screw them.