S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Is a Beautiful, Thoroughly Miserable, and Entirely Worthy Successor

The first man I killed in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl launched himself into outer space. It was dark, and I had been in The Zone for less than 10 minutes. I stabbed some kind of mutant-monster-pig in an abandoned hamlet and made too much noise doing so. That’s when I saw him move on me. He howled, I fired. Wildly. I watched him rocket upward like a Zenit-2. For a moment, I thought this was some mechanic of The Zone, that GSC Game World had decided to go truly wild with the anomalous physics this time. Then I noticed his body hadn’t gone anywhere, or if it had, it had come back. He was T-posing in the middle of a field. I turned around and the pig-thing was floating and vibrating. I turned back around and the man had disappeared entirely.

About ten minutes later, the game decided to start controlling in a way that I can only describe as “the scene from Requiem for a Dream where Aronofsky mounts the camera directly to Jennifer Connelly.” It was strangely compelling, if difficult to maneuver or fight. It happened on and off for the next three days. Then it stopped and was replaced by guys perpetually walking in place.

To say this game is coming in hot is a radical understatement. But when half your studio is in a warzone, and the other half are refugees in Prague, well, it’s understandably going to impact development. At the same time, in the short window for reviewing it, the game has undergone such profound patching that it went from playable only on Low (where it was genuinely eerie and surreal, and I recommend trying it no matter how powerful your “battle station”) to letting me enjoy the most unpleasantly moist and vegetally beautiful nightmare on its highest settings. They will undoubtedly continue to patch it. Even in its pre-release state, this is already a much more polished experience than the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (I know, many of you are sad to hear that. Trust the process. It was hard for me at first, too.)

I’m going to miss some of these glitches that created unexpected moments of horror and whimsy. One day, every enemy I shot with a shotgun would collapse in on themselves and spin frantically at a million RPMs like a gyroscope. It delighted me, but I understand the desire to deliver on your ambitions in a clean and focused way. Besides, nothing should be labeled “eurojank” (a ridiculous and unserious term) just because their game has curious bugs like literally every other game in the history of games, no matter their origination.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 builds on its predecessor with a map doubled in size and an updated version of the AI system that breathes life into The Zone’s seemingly endless cast of characters and beasts. I spent at least half of my time just getting lost in the world they built with no specific goal, just letting it consume me. A death drive flâneur on a nature hike.

I’ve never played a game with foliage like this. Full stop. My first impression of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R was how beautiful and eerie the trees were. The way clouds moved and light filtered across the landscape. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 continues this tradition. I swear to god, I’ve never seen rain affect foliage in a video game like this. Every plant, shrub, and tree swells and hangs with the moisture. Mud seeps and bloats. Almost the entire zone is overwhelmed by plant life. Concrete, asphalt, and steel can only peek out. This is a lush and vibrant landscape simultaneously grounded and totally unreal. The world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is a 1980s National Geographic Magazine gatefold photograph of a Jeff VanderMeer hallucination.

In the middle of one of my excursions, I found myself in the middle of a field. In the distance, I heard the faint pop-pop, tak-tak-tak of distant small arms fire. The rhythm changed and grew as I stopped to listen, half-expecting Clarissa Ward or Nick Paton Walsh to start editorializing about the quickly approaching factional conflict I was hearing. I scurried out of the way behind a small, concrete structure of what appeared to be a Soviet-era bus stop. The rain cleared up, and as the sun came out, across a field of chest-high reedy grasses, I could see seven distinct figures exchanging gunfire. Flanking and outflanking one another. One group circled back and used grenades. A body got flung lifelessly into the air, then back down again. An entire war was happening beside me in micro. I let them be. I was low on ammo, and I wanted to get a picture of the mural inside this bus stop.

Because I was distracted, I didn’t even hear the dog run up and attack me. I saw the damage indication and swung around. I fired on reflex, emptying my last shotgun shell—my last of any ammo—into the pitiful creature. This summoned the rest of the dogs I hadn’t seen in the grass. Five of them. I tried to make a tactical retreat. I slashed when possible with my knife. Trying to heal and trying to manage my stamina enough to run away. Solitary dogs in this game are brutal. This was a whole pack. And then pop-pop, tak-tak-tak. The remaining Stalkers, who had survived the initial firefight of their own, joined in to save me. They made quick work of the remaining dogs, and after running through my bandages, I approached the leader of their column.

“Hey buddy, I only got the good shit!” he said enthusiastically. I swear to god, the only things he had on him to trade were two pieces of irradiated bread (that sparkles when you eat it) and one beer. No ammo, no health kits. Bread and beer. The good shit. I paid for both and went back to get my photograph after wishing them well.

GSC’s ambition and decade-and-a-half of technical experience paid off in full in that moment. No weird bugs, no rough edges. Just systems engaging with each other as they were intended, producing moments of tension and delight that I’ll be thinking about for years. Only the good shit.

I’m sure, in the future critical appraisal of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, many people will default to the messaging from the developers about this game being an “anti-power fantasy.” And not to tell The Author they’re wrong, but … they’re wrong. This is absolutely a power fantasy. Even when it kicks in your teeth. If anything, this is a power fantasy about having your teeth kicked in, then getting up grinning blood, and breaking every bone in that motherfucker’s body. Sometimes, with the help of unexpected friends.

Yes, you will run out of bullets. Yes, your gun will jam. Yes, you will be forced to stab a man in the neck with your knife while desperately slamming the Q-key so that when the animation lock of killing him finishes, you can mainline a medkit to get just enough health to then hold down the Q-key in order to staunch the bleeding from the five hundred bullet holes you took rushing your now-dead enemy. And yes, you might fuck up and die in the process and have to do it over again and over again until you get it right. But when you do, if you’re lucky, that bastard is the kind of flesh pinata only The Jackal would have at his birthday party. And the game is going to look fucking beautiful the entire time—even if it’s in some godforsaken underground Soviet bunker.

Will you claim mastery over The Zone? Maybe, but probably not. I think on a long enough timeline every Stalker’s survivability drops to zero. Between the mutants, the anomalies, the humans with guns, and the radiation, you’re going to die. You’re going to die a lot. I’m certainly not going to master The Zone. But I’m older and my reflexes are slowing. Maybe you’re younger and faster. Maybe you have more time ahead of you.

The game calls me Skif and tries to guide me into a rough sketch of a person with a special purpose. But like a lot of the good, commonsense advice doled out by every fellow Stalker you meet who tries to keep you alive a little longer, I ignore Skif. I switch the dialogue to Ukrainian, a language I have absolutely no familiarity with, to further distance myself from him and his narrative. I become a mad woman of the exclusion. A post-Cold War Sibyl hanging inside a 60km² jar called The Zone. I play recklessly, fatalistically. I let my gear get worn out, and I run out of ammunition too quickly. I frequently eschew cover. I spin the mouse wheel to choose my guns. I throw grenades from the hip. I eat whatever I pick up, as soon as I pick it up. I’m constantly hitting the Q and E keys when I don’t mean to. The other Stalkers gossip about me, “How is she still alive? She sells all her good gear for food and medicine. Why does she walk all the way back here between hunts, it’s 5 kilometers each way. You won’t believe how she tried to fight all those mutant dogs with a knife. Every faction is at war with her.” I am a menace. The game allows it.

At a checkpoint, I noticed a military sentry hassling a fellow Stalker. I didn’t bother to ask questions. I had been out in the field just free-ranging for well over two real-world hours by this point. My shoulders hurt, and I slumped forward in my chair. I was craning my neck to one side to offset the pain on the other. The guard yelled at me for approaching, and said this wasn’t my business. I shot him in the face. It was all over in a mouse click. No questions. No statements. No words at all. One minute he was there making demands that pissed me off, and the next, he was bent backward in the mud, still wearing his stupid little hat. That’s when the guy on the concrete pillbox roof started unloading on us. I took a nearly lethal dose of radiation hiding behind a charming and conventional Eastern Bloc sedan. Its robust Slavic engineering finally succumbed to age, weather, and ionization. At least now, it was blocking these bullets. I shrugged off the sieverts with a bottle of vodka. I peeked out and threw several grenades.

Sure, I killed the guy I was trying to help. But I also killed the genius sniper who left his tower and his buddies who joined him. My wrists hurt. I stripped their bodies, grateful for that fucker’s gun. My own rifle jammed too much and I never bothered to fix things up. I leave my shitty one with his corpse. I crack my neck, try to shake out my hands, and think, “I’ve been in The Zone too long.” I slump back over my keyboard for the hike home. At least I get to walk along the riverbank through cattails that sway in the breeze. Everything is so pungent and moist-looking.

There wasn’t a single play session where S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 felt like it didn’t have a deleterious effect on my body. The act of playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is one of low-grade sadomasochism. For the right kind of person, it’s immensely satisfying, but that satisfaction comes at a cost. This is a tense, unnerving, and brutal game even when you’ve kicked the difficulty down to Story Mode so you can just get through as much as possible of the second half before the embargo lifts. It maybe could use a second pass of balancing. Or you could just learn to run fast.

The instant I left homebase, my posture changed. Despite it being just a videogame, I could feel my breathing and heart rate shift. My muscles tensed, and I bit down on my molars and had to repeatedly stop myself from grinding them. It’s hard to find a spot in The Zone that isn’t beautiful in some way. It’s impossible to find a spot out on an excursion that’s remotely safe. Danger is everywhere. Everything is a hard-won slog. It’s quite possible that I actually hate playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, that the true faithful are built different. I’m willing to accept that.

But that’s because if I had to distill it down, this is a game about being miserable in an irradiated and seemingly cursed field in Ukraine with no real end in sight. In that regard, the game is a runaway success. I only know peace at the campfire or makeshift bar. I am miserable going on missions. Every time I peek through a door, I feel my breath catch and seize in my lungs. Seeing movement on the edge of a hillside or distant rooftop makes my hands cramp up instinctively from not knowing if I’m going to be in a tense, twenty-minute-long firefight. The heartbeat sound effect feels like an out-of-control ear infection and makes my head hurt like one. And for what? Most of my time is spent rummaging through trash for irradiated cans of whatever or vodka to cure the radiation I am absorbing while looking for something that isn’t vodka. I can feel the lactic acid pooling in my muscles just thinking about it. This is raw survivalism in a Gerd Ludwig nightmare. And yet, everyone dies in The Zone eventually.

One man takes one wrong step, and he’s turned inside out by an anomaly. Another lights a cigarette in the dark and with two pops, he falls over dead from an unseen shooter who couldn’t take the risk. A hunting party encircles a monstrosity and one by one their gunfire stops, replaced by screams, and then it’s nothing but the wind. All around are the irradiated reminders of humanity’s achievements and limitations, the failures of insight, morality, and capability. Bodies stacked on bodies, rows of untouchable vehicles, all being slowly reclaimed by the natural world. We brush swamp grime and radioactive dust from old gas masks and half-broken Makarov pistols in hopes of something we can use to stave off the inevitable. Stalkers are constantly fighting a losing war against death. Expeditions into the zone are skirmishes against human entropy in a war of attrition being waged by a reclamatory natural world.

I return to thinking about the mural on that bus stop.

Someone tried to do something beautiful. To make their smaller world a better place within the complex systems of a larger chaotic existence. Somehow, despite their best efforts, it failed and fell apart. This is what is left. Maybe it’s not enough.

But then there’s my soldier boy. I haven’t run into him again. Hopefully, he’s still out there. A loaf of bread, a bottle of beer. Something to trade for the next lone Stalker, who needs more, but will make do with what she can. At the end of the day in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, you’re just trying to get by with a bunch of assholes who are also doing the same. It’s not even a metaphor for friendship and community in the 21st century. It’s just what it is.

We go out, we come back. We hope. Sometimes, someone turns on a radio. Sometimes, someone tells a joke. Sometimes, someone dies. This is life in The Zone. Happiness is when a friend plays a song on a guitar. Enjoy every campfire. Enjoy every energy drink.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl was developed and published by GSC Game World. Our review is based on the PC version. It is also available for Xbox Series X|S.

Dia Lacina is a queer indigenous writer and photographer. She tweets too much at @dialacina.