Happy about: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Prypiat – Enhanced Edition

Seven years ago I sat down and played through the original three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. titles. Of that playthrough, Call of Prypiat was easily the big highlight. Shadow of Chornobyl was frustrating, if curious. Clear Sky was a slog. But this one? This one was actually cooking. It felt like GSC Game World have finally figured out what the series are supposed to be about, at least as far as my tastes were concerned. So, when I decided to check the Enhanced Edition versions of all games that are part of the Legends of the Zone Trilogy release, I fully expected things to go similarly. I mean, I secretly hoped that the re-releases would fix the first two games as they desperately needed it, but, unfortunately, while the new versions are mostly superior, they didn’t change how messy and frustrating those games are. Call of Prypiat was already good, so is there a point in this re-release? Well, kinda.

Like the previous entries, Call of Pripyat is an FPS roleplaying game with open levels full of things to explore and dangers to encounter. As before, you don’t have any experience systems and cannot level up the main character, but have lots of different equipment to find and all of it has different upsides and downsides. You also have a proper inventory system with a weight limit and a bunch of other statistics to pay attention to – mainly resistances and also needs, like a need to eat food regularly. None of the games on normal (Stalker) difficulty are full on survival game titles, even though your resources tend to be quite limited at the start, but you’re meant to feel underpowered and vulnerable, meant to be afraid of the mutants in the zone or even larger groups of hostile humans and most of all, afraid of the Zone itself, as its full of weird anomalies and other dangerous things that can easily kill you.

The big difference between CoP and prior two games, however, is in focus on particulars. Those games tried to have a more linear and cinematic story, with lots of scripted events, characters to meet and lots of these open levels to jump between. Which has been my biggest criticism of those titles – for how scary and strange the Zone was supposed to feel, it was awfully crowded. And you were far more likely to run into bandits or other hostile humans, rather than accidentally walk into an anomaly or get suddenly killed by a weird and spooky mutant. Call of Prypiat instead narrows things down to having just three open levels that gradually become available (though, technically, you can go to between the first two from the start). And most of your time in those levels is spent on quiet and moody exploration. Avoiding or engaging with small groups of mutants. Investigating anomaly fields with the special tools to get precious artefacts (that have cool benefits but even more importantly can be sold for a lot of money). Just… being exploring a really strange, but very cool locations, constantly switching between awe and unease. Find an empty industrial building from the 1970s, get curious, start carefully exploring it, seemingly find nothing dangerous, then suddenly come face to face with a dangerous mutant about to eat your face.

It helps that in this game all of the janky and disjointed ideas and systems of these games finally came together. The quests make sense and are almost all entirely non-repeatable and hand-made. One centralized “safe spot” in each map you want to return to after each “excursion” into the Zone to keep you focused and let you set your own goals alongside very broad main story goals. You can finally sleep to skip time, because the night is still very dark and dangerous and early on you might want to avoid being out at night. Very clear and easy to understand inventory and equipment mechanics. Complete removal of dedicated “guides” for quick travel, instead only having those between the open levels. While inside a level you can just talk to most people you can occasionally find and ask them where they are going and join them. In fact, a lot of quests also can just teleport you to and from a location if you want to. Running is faster and depletes your stamina much slower if you’re not carrying too much. Very clear and easy to read UI for things that you might’ve not even realized were there in previous games.

They even managed to fix the big issue with the systems-driven world. In previous titles, stuff constantly happened around you to the point where it was just a mess that could involve important NPCs. In CoP it seems like their approach is very simple – as you just start exploring one of these 3 open levels, they don’t have too many mutants or potentially hostile humans and most of what there is exists for quest content. But as you complete main story and the side quests, the areas start becoming more systemic and open, filling the world with more random things, for those who are interested in the simulation aspect, but also keeping the game from becoming completely hectic for those, who’d prefer a more directed experience.

Even the storytelling got an upgrade. And while the plot and characters might still be not for everyone, they are introduced better, events that affect their fates are handled better and you even get a detailed Black Isle Studios-style ending, where the fate of each important character and of each settlement is described. And it depends on what you did during the playthrough. They finally made it, the Ukrainian Fallout. With a pinch of Gothic. And it’s great and so easy to get into.

…which might be a downside for some. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is one of those odd franchises, where more people probably played these games using mods than the vanilla versions. And from what I’ve seen, people love to make S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience hardcore and focusing on survival. As someone who doesn’t give a crap about this aspect, I’m fine with the fact that by the middle of the game on normal difficulty you can be fully confident in your abilities and resources. If I ever wanted to make the game “more challenging” I’d switch up the difficulty, but for “normal” – I think they nailed it this time. But for the hardcore crowd, I’m sure, this was a disappointment.

But let’s get back to that “kinda” in my answer on if Enhanced Edition is worth it. Because, at its core Call of Prypiat is mostly unchanged. Yeah, the shadows and reflections got better, you get modern upscaling technologies (which are best Anti-Aliasing solutions we have as of now), but for the most part this game looks about the same as it in the original version. The inclusion of the Ukrainian localization by default is great and now that you can switch the voice acting and text language separately, I’d say using Ukrainian VA and English text is the best experience for English-speaking players. As for authenticity reasons, Ukrainian VA actually keeps a lot of the russian VA for bandits and other assholes like Duty. So you get the best possible experience. Some of the soviet-times art got a bit more mushy, most notably few characters that looked like characters from well known soviet-time animation. I assume that might’ve been done to avoid potential lawsuits, now that I think of it. I also had fewer bugs with friendly AI following me in the few missions where you need to have an AI follow you out of a location, though this might’ve been just a fluke and I got lucky. So, it’s basically the same game as before, but slightly better and slightly different. And has a higher chance of running and being supported well into the future, unlike the original release. And the console players have a chance to play it.

If you’ve never played a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, just start with this one and specifically the new Enhanced Edition. Not like you can buy the old one separately anyway, but play this one, it’s going to be a better experience. If you have played Call of Prypiat before, this being Enhanced Edition alone doesn’t really warrant a replay. But if you were considering revisiting the game, you probably owned it anyway and got the new version for free, so go with this one. And if you did try Shadow of Chornobyl or Clear Sky at some point and it didn’t click with you, maybe Call of Prypiat will. The only people who might not be happy about this release are people who love certain mods which, maybe, aren’t running as well with this new version. But that’s probably just a matter of time.

Either way, I was really glad to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Prypiat again. It’s far from perfect. The third level (streets of Prypiat itself) is slightly less fun than the first two. And jank is still here, even if much lessened. But this game did scratch that Fallout/Gothic(or Risen 1 suppose) itch I’ve had recently and did it really well.