Revisiting S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl and Clear Sky – Enhanced Editions

Seven years ago was the first time I’ve decided to finally sit down and play through all of the original three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. titles start to finish. Because even though I have followed the development of the original from early 00s, when it was just a sci-fi Oblivion Lost project with no ties to the Roadside Picnic or the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, I didn’t particularly care about the game when it finally came out. Anyway, that playthrough from seven years ago was the second time I’ve completed Shadow of Chornobyl, first time I’ve completed Clear Sky and also first time I’ve played Call of Prypiat at all. For that playthrough I chose to not use any mods or fan patches to judge the games as they were. Now that Enhanced Edition versions of all three games are part of the Legends of the Zone Trilogy, I’ve decided to do the same. And in this post, I will talk about Shadow of Chornobyl and Clear Sky, the two titles I like less and which should have benefitted the most from a re-release.

First of all, let’s talk about the enhancements. All of the games now run on the same version of the GSC Game World old proprietary engine called X-Ray Engine. It feels like the main set of features is very close to Call of Prypiat, but with a few additional elements added on top, like screen space reflections and upscaling. Due to this, all three games have a more unified visual look, even though all of them retain the UI and mechanical differences unique to each title. The visual update does look nice, even though the upscaled textures sometimes exhibit artifacts typical for upscaling of older games like colour banding or an oversharpened look.

Unsurprisingly, Shadow of Chornobyl benefits the most, as the game originally didn’t even have a proper 16:9 aspect ratio support. Now it does, even though the 2D UI elements look a bit stretched. It also uses all of the cool technical features that in the original had to be enabled via console commands and even the gameplay is affected during night time. You see, in the original game, night made things darker, but you could still easily see things even without a flashlight or night vision goggles. But in this new version, the nights get quite dark in all of the three games, although Clear Sky is still the darkest it gets.

Ukrainian localization is now included by default, instead of being an optional patch, and one can have text and voice acting language set differently too. So I’d say Ukrainian voice acting should now be the default experience for everyone (especially since all of the bandits still speak russian, which is fitting and does not loose its flair). Controller can be used instead of keyboard and mouse without too much hassle, though I doubt anyone on PC would want that in an FPS. And many different tweaks seem to have been made overall, most welcome of which is the fact that loading times are much faster now. And mods are supported more clearly out of the box. But… That’s kind of it and I’m fully expecting that some people hoped for a more changed experience for the games, instead of a fresh coat of paint and modern hardware optimizations.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl – Enhanced Edition

The first game in particular now stands out purely in terms of overall design and gameplay flow, from the rest of the titles. Now that it looks like the others, it is especially odd to play and be constantly reminded of just how much of an unfinished janky mess it is. Time of day is now more impactful, but you still cannot pass time or sleep. Hunger exists as a mechanic, but you don’t really know about until it starts happening and most of the time you won’t even know it exists. Armour and weapons degrade over time, but cannot be repaired. And the ever beloved “A-Life”, the system that manages all of the “life” in the Zone, is such a mess in practice. You may hit a transition zone between levels and just find yourself surrounded by a human and mutant enemies who hate you equally.

This was the end of an era when developers dreamt of immersive sim design and “game plays itself” sandbox simulation. Just a year before the original game release, Bethesda released The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, that was originally developed with the same ambition of the world living without the player. But Bethesda, being more experienced (or cowardly, as some might probably say) developers, severely cut down what their simulation could do. GSC Game World boldly (and stupidly) kept a lot of the original ambition intact, so if a quest giver accidentally died somewhere, that’s just how it is. I was never a huge fan of sandbox experiences, but some people love this.

But for me, the biggest issue with Shadow of Chornobyl is that the game itself doesn’t quite know how it wants to be played. It is divided into many separate “open levels”, and most of those are designed to have a specific first time playthrough, just like a linear game would. But then you can backtrack, explore and do repeating quests… Yet, nothing about backtracking feels balanced and going off the rails puts you at a disadvantage. Some locations in the game barely register in your memory, some are used absurdly often. It’s like the team wanted to make an RPG, but all they knew how to do was a linear FPS. The UI is also so oddly hostile to the player. For example, all armours have stats and you can see most of its effects when you wear one. But you also have to wear it to know what it does, because the description of the item only describes things in text, with no stats shown. Like, sure, this adds to a certain mysterious charm of the game, but also, the game doesn’t feel designed around this. And given that the sequels change this, I guess even the developers agreed. But, of course, Enhanced Edition keeps things like this as they were, not like they could be.

So, I still don’t like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl all that much. At least with the Enhanced Edition it is less of a technical hassle to run. But it’s still jank, confusing and messy. It still has all of the old bugs and then introduces new ones. It’s curious, and of all the games, this one has arguably the strongest story. Not a good one, but there’s an intriguing mystery to solve and multiple endings and such. But personally, I don’t think I will ever want to revisit the game, even with this new version.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky – Enhanced Edition

I hated the original game. I never finished it when it launched originally and during that last playthrough this was a struggle. It focuses on the horribly executed “Faction Wars” that never function and lay bare how broken the underlying simulations in the game are. And also, in my opinion, are completely at odds with the cool atmospheric exploration of the Zone. It has terrible pacing, where you’re always out of resources for stupidest design reasons and it’s never ever fun. Horrid balancing. Awful soundtrack. Dumb plot. Boss fights with health bars…

Nothing is fixed by the Enhanced Edition. Nothing at all. Engaging with any systemic elements is as pointless as it used to be. Balance is still horrid. Limited sprinting is especially terrible for the trek the game constantly expects you to do. There is a fast travel system with the “guides”, but it’s as useless as it was back in 2008. So, the reason I lump Clear Sky with Shadow of Chornobyl isn’t just because I don’t like both much. But also because this time I couldn’t even force myself to finish Clear Sky. I got to about the middle of the game and gave up. And never wish to play this game again.

Still, it’s not like it didn’t try. You could finally repair and upgrade weapons and armour, for example, with an upgrade tree with interesting choices to make. The system is a bit confusing, because there are way too many of the characters that can perform this and each one specializes on something particular. But this is still neat. UI in general is much improved, to the point where most of the changes here would remain as is for Call of Prypiat. It’s still not entirely designed as an action RPG where only stats matter and things like reliability of the weapon are hidden in the description, not the numbers. But that’s totally fine. While Enhanced Edition did make the nights of Shadow of Chornobyl a lot darker, in Clear Sky you’re basically blind in the dark. Cool as far as horror goes, but bad since you still cannot advance time. Artefacts are now hidden in anomalies and require special detectors to find, making them a lot more rare, but also a lot more useful. So a lot of things feel a lot more refined in Clear Sky in comparison to the first game. It’s just that actually playing the game isn’t fun.

Perhaps this is someone’s favorite entry, though if that is the case, they also probably use some mod to make it palatable. As a casual playthrough of a game out of the box, though, Clear Sky was garbage back in 2008 and it still is in Enhanced Edition.

Overall, I would not really recommend either Shadow of Chornobyl, nor Clear Sky for your first time casual experience with the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. titles. And with Clear Sky, I wouldn’t recommend playing it at all. It would have been nice to see these titles actually remastered or even remade… But then, from what I’ve seen and slightly played of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (I do not plan to do a full playthrough until all DLCs are out), the sequel does act as a remake and much more. We’ll see what I think of that game when I get to it, but returning to the first two titles was a bit frustrating. And I don’t think I will want to repeat this experience in the future.