New game, new plot, new Main Character, new faces, new missions, new riddles, new places and new secrets of the Zone!!! There are so many new things that I don’t even know where to start!
And I’ll start, perhaps, with the new graphics 😁! She is really new here, and not as cartoonish as in the previous two parts of the game series. The graphics are clearer and sharper, even more realistic. Take, for example, “Yanov”. He is clearly visible from afar, but up close it seems as if he is standing in front of you.
The new plot is really new. Alexander Degtyarev (the Main Character) will have to be a detective throughout the game and investigate the mysteries of the helicopter crash, the disappearance of the Stalkers and the mystery of “Flint” / “Magpie”.
The new Main Character is not “Marked” and not “Scar”, but Alexander Degtyarev. He is an experienced Stalker, and a military man at that (major of the Security Service of Ukraine). And this makes him a man of dignity, honor, justice, responsibility, sanity, nobility and self-sacrifice.
New faces, such as “Beard”, “Owl”, “Cardan”, “Capercaillie”, “Nimble”, “Flint/Magpie” and so on. Some of them are inveterate swindlers, hypocrites, traitors, murderers, simply unpleasant and disgusting individuals, but among the total number of people, in all three locations, there are truly normal, honest, decent and adequate men. The contingent, as they say, is “motley”.
There are a lot of new missions and new riddles. Uncover the mystery of the failure of Operation Fairway, uncover the mystery of the disappearance of the Stalkers, destroy communication towers with the Monolith, find tools for Cardan, find secret documents from equally secret laboratories, and so on.
New places that include portals, a secret cave with the “Controller”, secret laboratories, a school, a kindergarten, a cinema, a river port and many others!!! They are all no less dangerous than the “Iron Forest” or the village “Kopachi”, but what makes them remarkable is that the more dangerous they are, the higher the level of interest in them.
The new secret of the Zone was revealed to me a long time ago (since my first playthrough of the game), but I was able to solve it only after three years (!!!) of the game - “Oasis”. At the end of the storyline, the secret of the “Oasis” remained unsolved and scientists from the bunker constantly went in search of this “Oasis”. But I still revealed this secret of the Zone (not without outside help from a friend). And what was my surprise at the simplicity of solving this mystery!!! The answer was before my eyes and under my feet at the same time!!! All you had to do was think and be patient!!!
I hope you enjoy the game as much as I do 😉.