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):
Continue reading →

And what the hell, I may as well finish it off tonight. Endgame spoilers!
Continue reading →

After a brief break, I figured it was time to work on the main story path in STALKER a bit more (hey, it’s the weekend), and the first stop was to deactivate the brain scorcher in Red Forest. The trip to get to it was pretty uneventful, really — there was a long road to it and a base that had to be fought through, protected by members of the Monolith cult, but it was all fairly straightforward firefights. The only unusual bit was that ‘ghosts’ of mutated animals would appear and slowly run towards me, but they did no damage and disappeared upon reaching me.

After entering the base, things were rather quiet. I had to work my way down a rather twisty set of hallways to reach the brain scorcher, but there wasn’t much resistance along the way other than a few blood suckers. Even after reaching the brain scorcher, all I had to do was walk up to it and pull a lever, which was a bit anti-climactic. A cutscene followed, and a voice in my head told me to go visit the wish granter in the Chernobyl plant.

Getting out of the brain scorcher base was much tougher than getting in since now the halls were crawling with Monolith members, so it was a slow process working my way through them. But, on the plus side, I got a replacement and an extra for my heavily-worn GP 37 rifle, and most of them were dropping the right kind of ammo. After exiting the base, the fuzziness and ‘ghosts’ had gone, but apparently all hell had broken loose and various factions were now fighting each other on the road, trying to get to the core of the zone first.

I was rather heavily encumbered, so I had to walk all the way back to the Bar to sell and drop off some of my equipment. The Monolith suit of armour I was wearing was in near tatters, but now that the end of the game seems to be near, I can pull some of my better armours out of storage and start using them…

It was another day of STALKER progress, and I started it off by doing the tasks necessary to join the factions. Normally, joining one makes you hostile to the other, but after a bit of digging I found discussion about a way you can exploit the quest system and join both Duty and Freedom. Doing so was actually fairly simple, I just had to:

– Go to the warehouses area, talk to the Duty commander there, and accept the mission to take out a nearby sniper.
– Kill the sniper, return to the commander, but don’t accept the next part of the mission and make sure you click the ‘See you’ option to quit the dialog (i.e., don’t hit escape to do so).
– The Duty team goes ahead and assaults the Freedom base without you. Wait for them to fail (they don’t really stand a chance), and just make sure the Freedom leader survives.
– Once the Duty team is dead, go to the Freedom leader, report that there’s a Duty outpost nearby, and then tell him that you’ve ‘already taken care of them’.

It took me a few tries to pull off successfully due to some glitches, like one Duty member retreating and causing everyone to remain stuck in battle mode. Once it’s done though, you can now continue to do the Freedom leader’s quests and you’ll become friendly with them, and can still go back and do Duty quests to become friendly with them too. Just avoid the ones that require you to assault the others’ bases or assassinate their leader…

After that I did various quests for Freedom and the barkeep, and picked up a GP 37 rifle along the way. It was definitely a big improvement over the TRs 301, with good accuracy and a scope built-in. I also got a sniper rifle off of one of the dead Freedom troopers, though ammo for it is a bit scarcer.

Then it was finally off to the west to reach the X16 lab. To get there I had to go through the Wild, where I rescued a scientist under attack by mercs and escorted him to the next zone line, including going through an area filled with flame anomalies. Upon arriving in Yantar, I headed to the mobile science base and got a protective suit as a reward for saving the scientist, and then had to help him collect radiation readings by escorting him around the zone. This zone is filled with ‘zombified’ soldiers who move slowly, but can still use their weapons (though a bit less effectively), and take more hits to kill, and also a bunch of ‘snorks’.

After helping out the scientists, they gave me a device which would let me withstand the psychic attacks and enter lab X16 itself. Unlike X18, this one was fairly linear and didn’t have too many anomalies, just a lot of zombified soldiers and more snorks. Towards the end there was a timed part where I had to shut down the four parts of a machine before it broke through my protective device, but that wasn’t too hard. Getting out was a bit of a pain though, since I had to drop down into a secret tunnel that was filled with even more zombies and snorks, and I was starting to run low on ammo. The soldiers dropped a type I couldn’t use, I didn’t have the carrying capacity to take their weapon type, and I didn’t want to throw away the GP 37. I finally made it out with just barely enough ammo, though.

Then I had to head south to meet a ‘guide’, as mentioned by the recording a stalker named Ghost left in X16, and he directed me towards a doctor, back in a hidden spot I’d previously visited. Upon meeting him, there was a big revelation about Strelok, what’s happening with some kind of ‘Monolith’ near Chernobyl, and some advice about what to look for in the north.

I think I’ve done pretty much all I can in the southern parts, so it looks like I next have to head north and continue investigating this Monolith, and deal with this ‘brain scorcher’ thing along the way. There are only three zones left that I haven’t visited yet, so this is probably getting close to the endgame.

I was indeed back in STALKER today, and I think I managed to get a fair bit of progress done.

I did a couple more minor quests for Sidorovich, but they’re starting to repeat themselves a lot (clearing out the same camp, returning the same kind of artifact, etc.), so I headed back to the Bar and got a few quests there. Those were also pretty uneventful, and one of them took me over to the Dark Valley area where the main story quest continues, so I figured I may as well work on that while I was there.

I had to infiltrate a bandit stronghold to get the key to a lab called X18, and then clear out the guards around the buildings where the lab is before I could head down. This is where things really start to get weird, as the lab is apparently connected to these anomalies that have been popping up, and you find a lot of them and some mutant types not seen before down there. Crates and small bits of pipe get picked up, hover in the air a bit, and are then thrown at you by something unseen. A bundle of electrical energy floats around, and you’d better not get in its way. A shimmering effect marked the locations of various fire anomalies, and I had to sprint through them quickly before they’d ignite. And this is where I first saw the ‘snork’ mutant type, which can leap a very long way and hit you fairly hard, and another short, round, blobbish mutant which absorbed a lot of damage. The unexpected appearance of a lot of these anomalies and mutants, the dim, eerie lighting, and sudden creaks, rustles, and other bits of background noise make for a very effective, creepy atmosphere in this base.

Upon finding the documents I needed, I was attacked by an anomaly that was mostly invisible but spewed fire whenever I got too close, but it didn’t take much damage to kill it. After that though, the military started storming into the base while I was still trying to escape it, and these were the elite troops. I had to waste a lot more ammo on them, but shooting near the head helped a lot.

I was able to get the Obokan rifle off these elite troops, and had been looking forward to an upgrade, but it turns out it’s not as good as I’d hoped. It jams constantly, even if it hasn’t worn down much on the durability meter, which is really annoying. I’d already discarded my old rifle before realizing this (carrying capacity is very limited), so I was stuck with it for a while.

After escaping the base and making my way back to Cordon, Sidorovich had a mission for me to go steal a package from the nearby military outpost, and told me it would be best at night when there would only be two guards. I ran back and forth between Cordon and the Bar for a bit doing minor quests to waste time until nightfall, and then headed to the base. There were a hell of a lot more than two guards though, and I must have taken down a dozen or so before I could safely enter and get the package.

At some point along the way (I forget exactly when), I managed to find a better set of weapons, and now I use a TRs 301 for NATO ammo and a Tunder 5.45 for Warsaw Pact ammo. They haven’t been degrading very quickly, but armour has, so I’ve been sticking with some of the crummier stuff like bandit armour in hopes of saving the better stuff (so far I have a merc suit and a suit of stalker amour) for later on. I can buy more armour at the traders, but the good stuff like stalker armour is really expensive.

I think I’ve pretty much exhausted the quests for the Bar, so I’ll probably start on the next part of the story quests soon, which will take me to another lab, X16. I should also start investigating what needs to be done to ally with one of the factions, though I still haven’t found the Freedom base yet.