Welcome to STALKER! Which GAME and MOD should you Play?
Summary
TLDRThe video script addresses common questions from newcomers to the 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R.' gaming universe, discussing the best starting point and the role of mods. It provides a brief history of the series, explains the different types of mods, and the evolution of the modding scene with 'Call of Chernobyl' and 'Anomaly'. The narrator suggests playing the original trilogy with minimal mods for the authentic experience before exploring the extensive modding options, emphasizing the importance of a welcoming community for new players as 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2' approaches.
Takeaways
- ๐ฎ The script discusses the complexities of starting with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series, especially for newcomers faced with the original trilogy and numerous mods.
- ๐ต๏ธ The original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy consists of 'Shadow of Chernobyl', 'Clear Sky', and 'Call of Pripyat', each with its unique story and gameplay elements.
- ๐ ๏ธ Mods for the games can be categorized into three types: bug fixes and improvements, new content additions, and standalone mods that offer entirely new stories and experiences.
- ๐ 'Call of Chernobyl' was a significant shift in the modding scene, as it aimed to combine the levels of the three games into a single open-world experience.
- ๐ฅ 'Misery' was a highly influential mod for 'Call of Pripyat', known for its challenging survival experience and new features.
- ๐ฑ 'Anomaly' is a standalone mod that doesn't require the original games, offering a modernized S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience with extensive customization through add-ons.
- ๐ 'Escape from Pripyat' and 'Gamma' are mod packs built on 'Anomaly', each offering a different focusโ'Escape' on gunplay realism and 'Gamma' on survival and crafting.
- ๐ The script emphasizes the importance of playing the original games to understand the lore and character development, which enriches the experience of later mods.
- ๐ The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. community is diverse, with Western and non-Western segments, and the script calls for a welcoming and inclusive attitude towards new players.
- ๐ The channel introduces its first sponsor, 'Raid: Shadow Legends', a mobile game with collectible characters and various game modes.
- ๐ The video script provides links in the description for further exploration of mods and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. community.
Q & A
What is the general consensus on starting with the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games or jumping straight into the mods?
-There is no definitive answer; it depends on personal preference. Some purists recommend playing the original games in order to appreciate the lore and character development, while others may prefer the modern experience offered by mods like Anomaly and its modpacks.
What are the three original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games and in which order should they be played?
-The three original games are 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl,' 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky,' and 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.' They should be played in the order of their release to follow the story and development of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe.
What is the role of mods in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series?
-Mods serve three main purposes: fixing bugs and crashes to improve the original games' experience, adding new content such as weapons and items while staying true to the original story, and creating standalone mods that offer entirely new stories and experiences within the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe.
What is 'Call of Chernobyl' and how did it change the modding scene for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.?
-'Call of Chernobyl' aimed to port all levels of the three original games into the latest X-Ray engine, creating a unified open-world experience. It became a sandbox for modders to create add-ons, weapon packs, and quests, and served as a foundation for other mods, significantly impacting the modding community.
What is 'Anomaly' and how does it differ from the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games?
-'Anomaly' is a free standalone mod that doesn't require the original games to run. It offers improved gameplay and gunplay but lacks the story, lore, and character development found in the original trilogy, focusing more on providing a modern S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience.
What are 'modpacks' in the context of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and what role do they play?
-Modpacks are collections of mods and add-ons fine-tuned to work together, enhancing the base game experience. They can be tailored to different aspects of the game, such as gunplay realism in 'Escape from Pripyat' or survival and exploration in 'Gamma'.
Why is the community's response to newcomers important, especially with the anticipation of 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2'?
-A welcoming and informative community is crucial for the growth and health of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fandom. With 'S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2' on the horizon, attracting and retaining new players will become increasingly important, and the community's response can significantly influence this.
What advice would be given to a newcomer named 'Igor' who is starting in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe?
-Igor should play the original three games to understand the lore and character stories, then try 'Anomaly' and its modpacks for a modern experience. Exploring other mods, especially story-driven ones, is also recommended to fully appreciate the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe.
What is 'Raid: Shadow Legends' and how does it relate to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. community?
-'Raid: Shadow Legends' is a mobile game that sponsored the video. It is a collectible character game with over 600 Champions, various game modes, and a new Sylvan faction. The sponsorship signifies the channel's growth and the community's expanding interests.
How can newcomers get involved with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. community and find support?
-Newcomers can join the community through platforms like Reddit and Discord, where they can ask questions and seek advice. They should also watch videos and read guides that provide insights into the games and mods, and be open to the diverse experiences the community offers.
Outlines
๐ค Navigating the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Universe for Newcomers
This paragraph discusses the common questions and confusions faced by newcomers to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series, particularly regarding where to start and whether to use mods. It highlights the community's mixed response to new players and the presence of 'gatekeeping' by veterans. The speaker suggests that the community could better support new players, using the hypothetical friend 'Igor' as a way to guide the discussion on the best approach to entering the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe. Additionally, the paragraph introduces the first sponsor of the channel, Raid: Shadow Legends, a mobile game that offers a collectible character experience with high-quality graphics and various game modes.
๐ A Brief History of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Games and Modding
This paragraph provides an overview of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series and the evolution of its modding community. It categorizes mods into three types: those that fix bugs and crashes, those that add new content while staying true to the original games, and standalone mods that offer entirely new stories and experiences. The paragraph explains how the modding scene transformed with the release of 'Call of Chernobyl,' which aimed to combine the levels of the three original games into a single open-world experience. It also discusses the progression from mods like 'Misery' to 'Call of Misery,' 'Last Day,' and eventually 'Anomaly,' which became a standalone experience with its own extensive modding community. The paragraph emphasizes the importance of understanding the history to make informed decisions about gameplay and modding.
๐ ๏ธ Customizing the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Experience
The final paragraph addresses the question of what a newcomer, represented by 'Igor,' should do to have the best experience with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It suggests that there is no 'wrong' way to engage with the games and that players should enjoy them as they wish. The speaker proposes a balanced approach, recommending playing the original three games with mods that enhance the experience without drastically altering it. They mention specific mods like ZRP, SRP, and OGSR, and suggest that playing the original games provides necessary lore and context for the more modern mods and modpacks like 'Anomaly.' The paragraph concludes by encouraging players to explore the rich variety of mods available, including those that focus on storytelling, and to enjoy the games and the passionate community that surrounds them.
Mindmap
Keywords
๐กS.T.A.L.K.E.R.
๐กShadow of Chernobyl
๐กMods
๐กCall of Pripyat
๐กAnomaly
๐กMod Packs
๐กCommunity
๐กGatekeeping
๐กLore
๐กRaid: Shadow Legends
๐กStalker 2
Highlights
The channel welcomes its first sponsor, Raid Shadow Legends, a mobile game with high-quality graphics and smooth performance.
Raid Shadow Legends offers over 600 unique champions with various skills for team building and different game modes.
The video discusses the influx of new players to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. community and the challenges of gatekeeping by veterans.
The importance of community response to newcomers and the need for a more inclusive approach is emphasized.
A hypothetical friend, Igor, is introduced to guide viewers on how to start with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe.
The video provides a brief history of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, starting with Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat.
Mods are categorized into three types: bug fixes, new content additions, and standalone mods with new stories.
Call of Chernobyl aimed to port all levels of the original games into a single open-world experience.
Misery was a popular mod for Call of Pripyat, known for its challenging and immersive survival experience.
Call of Misery and Last Day were iterations of Misery, improving and rebalancing the mod for a new engine.
Anomaly is a free standalone mod that doesn't require the original games and is popular for its gameplay and customization.
Anomaly mod packs, such as Escape from Pripyat and Gamma, offer different focuses like gunplay realism and survival exploration.
The video suggests starting with the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games for lore and character development before moving to mods.
Mods like ZRP, SRP, and Cutoff are recommended for enhancing the original games without straying too far from the original experience.
The importance of playing the original games to understand the mechanics and lore before jumping into mods like Anomaly is highlighted.
The video encourages exploring story-driven mods that Anomaly might overshadow, especially in the Western community.
The channel aims to shine a light on story-driven mods and the importance of a healthy community for welcoming new players.
Transcripts
I'm new to stalker which game should I
try first do I really need to play the
original Three games shadow of chernoby
looks outdated can I start with Call Of
prepaid should I use mods yes which ones
is it okay to start with anomaly I've
heard anomaly is all you need and what
about Gamma can I just play gamma what's
the difference with escape from prepaid
by the way you see where this is going
this is some of the most common
questions I get asked on this channel
and seen some big YouTubers Shine the
spotlight on stalker and Gamma in
particular the community the Reddit the
discords everywhere has been flooded
with newcomers asking these questions to
Fair it's pretty understandable the
crazy amount of mods available for this
game is actually impressive anybody
completely new to the stoker universe
will get lost in the middle of all this
but the point I'm trying to make here is
that the community response to all these
has been a little bit disappointing if
you want my opinion I've seen a lot of
strong arguments held by Veterans of the
game and unfortunately a lot of
gatekeeping I understand that this
happens every time you have a big influx
of new players arriving in a relatively
small community but I think we can do
better than that if this was a big test
before circuit 2 releases to see how the
community handles new players we're kind
of failing it so let's pretend that we
have a friend who's getting started into
the Starkey Universe let's let's call
him Igor Igor has no idea where to start
I'm gonna try to answer in this video
what's the best advice we can give Igor
to make sure he can fully enjoy these
amazing games and the community as a
whole let let's dive into some stalker
history and try to answer all these
questions right but before we start I
would like to welcome the very first
sponsor on this channel which is pretty
exciting raid Shadow Legends I'm really
not big on mobile games to be perfectly
transparent so I had no idea what to
expect when I installed it for the first
time and I liked my mobile games exactly
the same way I enjoy stalker played on a
10 year old potato and I must say I was
surprised how smoothly everything was
running and the quality of the graphics
this is the perfect game if you like to
collect different characters and make
powerful teams you can pick from over
600 Champions that all have unique
traits and skills and fight in a ton of
different game modes like dungeon runs
campaigns pedals and PVP matches these
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drawers especially hardening and Gala as
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just released a new faction the Sylvan
lectures with a ton of new champions
forest elves and Druids face that will
bring a lot of new strategies to the
game braid also has a full lineup of
events and a new season of the forge
pass where you can get your hands on
some of the most powerful gear ever
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if you haven't started playing raid yet
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just click the link in the description
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the game okay let's go back to Igor the
best we can do is go back in time and
have a quick overview of the storker
games and modding history to clear up a
little bit of all the confusion so
everything obviously started with the
original Three games in order of release
shadow of Chernobyl considered by far
the best one in terms of story and
atmosphere and setting up the whole
stolklorean universe followed by clear
sky a little bit of the Lamb duck of the
series I personally enjoy it a lot and
think it brings a lot of new interesting
Concepts and it is overall enjoyable to
play but I will agree that it's a bit of
a mess and the weakest of the three for
sure and then you have Call of pripyat
by far the most polished especially in
terms of gameplay and Gunplay with a
pretty decent story okay pretty easy to
follow so far right let's start making
things more complicated than talk about
mods please note that I'm not gonna do
them in chronological order and it's
gonna make things even more complicated
so I think we can Define three
categories of mods for each game you
have first the modes that aimed to fix
bugs crashes and added a ton of fixes to
the game to make them more enjoyable but
staying true to the vanilla version of
each game and closest to the real
experience as it was intended then you
have the mods that added new content
generally more guns more items improve
the graphics the textures and added a
lot of quality of life elements
generally including all the bug fixes of
the mods I previously talked about these
mods stayed true to the original story
and questlines and whole feeling of the
game they just add a lot more content on
top of it the final category we could
call it the Standalone mods they offer a
completely new story in questline new
characters new items New Mutants like
pretty much everything it's basically a
brand new story in the universe of the
original game some of them are are
absolutely amazing by the way but we'll
get back to those later so up until this
point you had the three original game
and their respective modes but the whole
modding scene changed when call of
Chernobyl was released in a sense the
idea was simple but brilliant porting
all the levels of the three games in the
latest x-ray engine and turning them
into a big stalker open world call of
Chernobyl was meant to be a modding
resource first but it was released as a
standalone sandbox as well for people to
play around windows on freely if they
wanted to and it's exactly what happened
code of Chernobyl became its own game in
a way with the community starting to
build add-ons weapon packs quests and
pretty much everything you can imagine
for it and it also got used as its
primary goal a resource to build other
mods upon at the time there was a very
popular mod for color of pripyat called
Misery everybody that was here at the
time know how big of a deal misery was
I'm not gonna do a full dragon of it but
it shaped a lot of what the stalker
modding Community is today it's added a
ton of new features to the game and was
based on the ID to provide an extremely
hard Challenge and survival experience
to the player so the next big step
became to bring misery to call of
Chernobyl under the very fitting name
call of misery then after that came last
day an updated rebalanced full of new
features version of call of misery and
it's on last day according to a newer
64-bit engine and made extremely modable
and configurable that the anomaly we all
know today was built and I'm of course
keeping dozens of other mods along the
way but it shows how stalker modding
history really developed like a tree
branching a little bit in every
direction and the strong branches
carrying a lot of smaller ones with them
anomaly being a free Standalone that
didn't need the three original games to
run became one of the most popular mods
with hundreds of add-ons that people
could pick and install to have exactly
the experience they wanted it has great
gameplay and Gunplay but it goes without
saying that it lacks by Design all the
story lore and character development of
the original Three games and here we
arrive at today's state of stalker
modding with what we call the mud packs
basically anomaly with a giant
fine-tuned and perfectly tailored amount
of add-ons built on top of it escape
from pripyat is one of the big ones and
as the name implies it's a reference to
tarkov it's a Modpack mainly tailored
towards improving the Gunplay of anomaly
and it's where it shines making
gunfights as realistic and immersive as
possible with a ton of other features of
course and more recently cam gamma which
in a sense is the same thing more than
300 add-ons fine tunes to work perfectly
together gamma being much more oriented
towards survival exploration and
crafting than efp it has a very
different vision of the game in terms of
economy and trading to be fair there are
so many changes made specifically for
gamma to give you a specific experience
of stalker I see it as being much more
than just a lot of add-ons bundled
together that's the reason in a lot of
my previous videos I refer to gamma as a
mod not a mod pack as I think it's a
specific vision of the game and how it
should be played rather than just
Improvement on anomaly but I digress now
let's get back to the big question
because in the middle of all this
rambling we forgot about Igor knowing a
little bit more of the stalker and
modding history what should Igor do to
have the best experience well I think
the most important thing to start with
is that it doesn't really matter there's
no such thing as the wrong experience
and people should be able to enjoy the
game however they want a purist will
tell you to read the book watch the
movie play all three games in
chronological order unmody of course
because pain and frustration is part of
the stalker experience and any other way
of doing is wrong and not being a true
story killer and I'm not exaggerating
I've seen this take held many times by
veterans on the opposite side of the
spectrum some people are not interested
in the greater Narrative of stalker the
story the lore they don't want to play
the original games because old and just
one of three large open survival shooter
with endless replayability and
customization and will jump straight to
anomali and its modpacks and that's
perfectly fine too my personal opinion
and I can say most regular and
reasonable stalker fans will have the
same one or more or less the same one
lies in the middle of these two extremes
and it's pretty much as follows play the
original Three games it's important
use mods to make the experience more
enjoyable but try not to stray too far
from the vanilla experience just use
mods that fix bugs crashes and glitches
namely use zrp for shot of Chernobyl SRP
for clear sky and to be fair cutoff
prepaid can be played just fine without
any modes some people will tell you to
push the envelope a bit further with
mods like ogsr no or GSE that is a
remaster of shadow of Chernobyl with
extra content an updated experience of
the original if you want while staying
true to its spirit it's fine too but I'm
not gonna dive too deep in all the
options I'm just gonna leave all the
links in the description and you can see
through all this by yourself the point
here is that even if your final goal is
to have the most modern stalker
experience and to play anomaly and its
mod packs and only anomaly having played
the three original games will provide
you with all the lore building and
character stories that will make all the
modes you play after that much more
meaningful it will also be an
introduction to all the items and base
mechanics of stalker because jumping
straight into anomaly will leave you
lost with a ton of answered questions
about how anything works pretty much
it's gonna be very confusing and all of
this is ignoring the fact of course that
the three original games especially with
a bit of modding are absolutely amazing
and a great experience by themselves all
the modes you can experience after that
are just a cherry on top so yeah play
the three original games then play
anomaly and its mod packs then look into
the hundreds of other amazing mods a lot
of them are completely story driven that
anomaly tends to overshadow especially
in the Western Community oh yeah because
I didn't even talk about how we
technically have two stalker communities
the Western English-speaking one being
just one small part of the whole story
but that will be something for an the
video so yeah look into all the story
driven mods that exist too I'm slowly
trying to shine the light on them on
this channel and overall just enjoy
yourself these are amazing games that
have an amazing and very dedicated
community that can be a little bit
intense at times and especially with
stalker 2 at the Horizon welcoming new
players and growing in a healthy way is
going to become even more important okay
guys thanks for watching thanks for raid
for sponsoring this video it probably
doesn't mean much for most people but
this channel has been a passion project
for a while and it's been like so much
work having like a first sponsor
actually means a lot anyways yeah Josh
thank you guys for being here and I'll
see you in the next one
[Music]
thank you
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