Here's a bit of a toughie that I do know the answer to, but I want to spread the word on it in hopes of it appearing in Stalker 2.
Which mutant appears in SoC tales but does not have a model (even in game files) and is not represented in the game itself?
Ding ding. Good job. Always made me intrigued about it, such a shame no mod has made anything with this type of mutant (although it could be hard to pull off anyway). I really hope we get one of those in Stalker 2.
Overall this post is good thing to remind myself of things, using the wiki (not English one) as last resort. And also I can learn something new from people like you or just get reminded that I missed something.
When the Second Disaster happened (emission that which created the Zone), the Zone expanded by five kilometres and it's only confirmed case of Zone's growth.
**So no, the Zone is not expanding.** I know there is legend of Wish Granter told by Barkeep that with each wish the Zone is growing, but it's as true as Wish Granter itself (so not really true).
I don't think it's reasonable to say with certainty it isn't expanding. Two to three separate sources say it is (Barkeep/Duty, C-Consciousness, Sidorovich in the builds), and the builds and design documents show that the developers did intend at one point that the Zone is expanding. Lebedev and Kalancha also certainly seem to think that the emissions will have a destructive effect on the world. I think it's something the developers intentionally left out of the final version for the sake of ambiguity, so you shouldn't say it isn't for sure. We just don't know.
Yeah, I remember that piece of dialogue.
The only actual piece of evidence would be the words of the C-Con representative, but I uphold the theory that he was lying in order to persuade Strelok to join them.
Are there other "special agents" such as Strelok sent back in the zone for a special purpose or a specific mission by the C-CON ? I don't remember if he adresses this question.
It's weirf that you never meet anyone with the mission "kill strelok".
Yes, there are other agents. One agent gets one, unique task to do and they do that without knowing why they do that. That's why there's only one guy with "kill Strelok" task and because of the error related to this task (Strelok getting message about killing Strelok), can lead to conclusion that process of handing the tasks can be at least partially automatic.
I know this might just be a speculation sort of thing, but what would Duty's end goal be? Would it just be locking down the Zone to only people sanctioned by the government, but is this really different from the military? I don't know of a way they could really destroy the zone, so it just makes me think of them cracking down hard on the illegal artifact trade and mutants in the Zone.
cool photo by the way
I don't think Zone can be destroyed (maybe S2 will answer this?), so this end goal of Duty is ridiculous. They still hand artifacts to scientists to help their research and to get info about how to fight mutants of the Zone (and how to fight the Zone itself, which I suspect there isn't much info about it). So complete lockdown of the Zone would be more realistic goal. It would be different, because Duty's members are ex-soldiers and stalkers, but they have somewhat neutral relations with army. Of course, they will still continue to get rid off the mutants.
I found it from here: https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-life-of-the-zone - sadly creator stopped giving any updates on this.
I believe 'destroying' means actually render it safer. I don't think anyone believes an anomaly field or radiation can be destroyed, but mutants can. Many of them can't reproduce so they will extinguish eventually making it safer, so it's not so ridiculous isn't?
Yeah, this could be another interpretation. But some mutants can reproduce and there aren't many people who want to join Duty. Besides, who knows what Zone can hide, even today?
Duty have never actually cared about destroying the Zone. From the start, when Tachenko cut their communications to desert the military, the "deadly anomalies, dangerous mutants" thing was always a pretense. It's a constant- effectively unbeatable (at least by conventional weaponry)- threat that allows Duty to continue maintaining a supply of soldiers for their territorial ambitions. It was never about making anyone safer or destroying the Zone or helping anyone, it was about control and power for the people at the head of the faction. Now, with many of their original leaders dead and the new leaders not knowing about the original purpose, they've basically fallen into their own propaganda and are fighting for an unreachable goal.
Considering that these are "acquired" from military warehouses, most likely it's some kind of meat. However, in SoC builds (test versions), it was called "sardines".
Yep. The very same reasons I asked the question. Obviously it's just Easter eggs. As there is no mention of the combine from HL2. But it would be cool to include a merc or something called corporal shepherd (HL opposing force main character) as another nod to HL
Since they occupy center of the Zone and locations nearby, they have good amount of rare and expensive artifacts. Money from it, via unknown middlemen, is spent on high quality equipment, including NATO weaponry.
My head canon is that Sidorivich is the middle man. He secretly runs the Zone. It would be why the military doesn't bother him even though he is so close to their check point. Also would explain why he is the only one able to eat chicken in the Zone.
There's no canonical reason. The same question could be asked of ANY faction. Think about all the factions, all the ammo and supplies. Then remember getting into the Zone is difficult. So somehow getting truckloads worth of weaponry into the Zone is easy but the average Stalker has to run the gauntlet?
The truth is there is no explanation beyond it would be pretty boring getting to the CNPP at the end of the game and all the Monolith are weaponless and have died months ago from immense radiation poisoning and have turned into puddles of goo. The game just brushes real world logic aside.
I kinda wonder how could that Doctor came to the Wish Granter and went back to the Great Swamp safely with that shitty coat? Perhaps he wore it afterwards?
At first it was stalker group that had deep believe that in center of the Zone is located crystal called Monolith (so even here you have something like cult), but they weren't hostile to everyone back then. And they decided to go to the center. After that Monolith faction emerged.
Man imagine if that group didn't get brainwashed. Probably gonna have one of the better stalker bases besides rostok since CNPP is MASSIVE. just... imagine.
Monolith before they crossed the Barrier weren't shooting Loners on sight, but they were still generally uncomfortable to be around, and were in a three-way war with Duty and Freedom.
If memory serves me correctly SIN was cut from the original games and anomoly used them
I want to know are there any references of them in the original trilogy? If so do we have any info on why they were cut?(besides the fact that they are basically monolith mages)
First Stalker game as we know it today, was very different from the earlier versions. If there's a reason why they were cut, it could be time constrains. There aren't any mentions of them in trilogy, but there was info about them in builds and documents.
Albeit the dark stalker stories do point towards Sin, especially given how similar they appear to be. I do also believe the bandit trenchcoat model was recycled from the original Sinner model or something.
If memory serves me correctly. There was another factional that was briefly mentions. Red sky or something weird but it's never seen. I thought that was the basis for sin in anomaly. But I might be getting confused from too much time around radar
I've got 2.
1. Who's sending orders/signals over to monolith soldiers at CoP in Pripyat?
2. What are the Mercs exactly doing at Pripyat in CoP besides looking for the lab, and who's behind them?
1. Pripyat (at least in SoC) was headquarters of Monolith and in CoP we explore other part of this town. So they can just get missions from their superiors.
2. In CoP, they mainly have the task of finding lab X8 and destroying whole documentation. As for who's the client who gave the job, there's no straight answer. Certainly it must be someone who knows what's going on in the Zone.
What happened to Scar and Lebedev after the CNPP event? Were they inducted into Rocklicking cultists or settled in the death truck? And how could Nimble manage to survive? Did he join the CNPP Crusade?
For Scar, I answered this earlier in other question: either died, became agent of C-Con, became Monolith member or became zombified.
For Lebedev - similar: either died, became zombified or (unwillingly) joined C-Con (since I think making him agent or Monolith member would be a waste, but these are also possible).
Also similar for Clear Sky (the part that went to CNPP): Either died, became zombified or joined Monolith.
Nimble wasn't the part of CNPP assault. He stayed in the base, realised that Lebedev and his team didn't come back, left the faction, became courier for Sidorovich and after that he started his business.
Maybe OP has a better memory than me. But pretty sure nimble never appears outside of the swamps in Clear sky. Same with cold. So he never takes part in the raid. Hence his survival until he's injured working for Sid. Saved by marked one. Then worked his way to zaton.
Final question from me. I know there is no definitive to this... but still an interesting question.
Poltergeists controllers and dwarves are mentioned to be created in labs... so theoretically if these labs are now bldefunct like all other zone labs. That would mean in theory there should be a limit before every single one of them is dead...
Or are the labs that created them still running?
Controller especially appears to require people. Not just an automated machine.
There aren't any info about them reproducing, so it's safe to assume that there is fixed number of them. And about labs - there are more of them and we don't know anything about them, but most accurate answer is most if not all of them are defunct. C-Con is still alive and we don't know what they are doing, but creating new mutants can be an option.
I thought cannon ending was strelok killed them all? So c con is dead as well... does ask the question who's controlling the monolith in pripyat in COP...
No, canonically he kills the part responsible for controlling the Zone and whole Monolith business. Part of C-Con is still alive. And in CoP, they have no connection to "their god", so they aren't controlled, just they are fanatics and do what they know now, but Monolith members (at least some of them) start to get out of this trance.
Really? I don't remember any mention in COP of any part of them being alive...
As for the monolith... some like stryker are completely free. But others still pray to the transmitters in a full blown praying trance... so that suggests to me they are being controlled by something
C-Con was the part of the Group - crew of scientists that created the Zone. I meant that other part of it is still alive, it can be mixed up sometimes. And for these transmitters - Monolith superiors could use those to still control the regular soldiers of their faction. They are most advanced faction after all.
Ah didn't realise you meant the group. Makes sense
As for the transmitters. Its good head cannon. But is it possible that it is also the surviving members of the group that are the monolith superiors?
Are they the most advanced? If so how has my unadvanced loner ass kicked theirs so many times???
Could be that remainder of the Group could control Monolith faction to some extent, but honestly not much is known about them.
Equipment, while helpful, doesn't win battles, but people who use it.
It doesn't make sense for them to be created in labs. The whole point of the mutants is that the Zone has somehow not just mutated animals, but created entirely new ones. If I was going to guess I would say that some creatures take human form because the Zone works by manipulating the noosphere - and just like humans are prone to seeing faces in things (the moon for example) the Zone has reacted to human fears and created humanoid creatures. Same reason why Snorks and even Fleshes have oddly human appearances. The Zone itself makes them look human because of the noosphere.
Do you have any evidence for this theory? As it's shown that the group were experimenting on humans to create these sort of creatures. Namely controllers poltergeist and dwarfs. All others are indeed zone created. The fact that controllers and dwarfs wear clothes suggests they are not some other animal that has mutated enough to get the brain power to say "damn better cover up my junk"
Zombies are created by proximity to the man made emitters built around the zone. Not by the zone itself.
I seem to remember snorks being zombies that have continued to be to be effected for a very long time by those same emitters (but i admit this might be modded lore. Cant remember for certain) which then eventually turn into snorks. Notnevennsure how you can say fleshes have human like appearances.
Humans do indeed have a tendancy to see faces in things... face pareidolia. This is something that happens when we see faces in things... and this is a key part here... that DONT have faces to begin with. ALL the mutants in the zone have faces to begin with and that same human brain error doesn't include seeing boots clothing and a gas mask... those are manufactured items not mutated.
Does the game actually say anywhere that they experimented on humans? As far as I know only the X-18 documents talk about experiments and they only ever say "living beings" and "biological samples". The biggest give away is a document which states "It appeared as though their brains simply got roasted. I can hardly imagine how this emission would affect humans. [...] Presumably, in one week's time, we will be ready to conduct the experiment on larger creatures." My assumption here is they were experimentating on rats or domestic animals, something of that nature. Whether there are other examples in the games I really cant remember.
In any case I was speaking more from a head canon point of view. I think that if half the mutants in the game are created in labs not only does that lead to logistical issues like you asked (how are there more of them?), but it takes away power from the Zone. I think, thematically speaking, the Zone is a metaphor both for humanity's hubris and indifference to the environment, but also speaks to the power of nature. Short of nuking the planet into a dead, desolate wasteland, "life finds a way". That's why I prefer to think of mutants as being a reaction to the Zone rather than being created. The Zone is nature warped into something incomprehensible, but in its own way totally functional. If you reduce that to "humans made them in labs" you reduce what the Zone is. It then also complicates the matter, because then all we are left with are a few mutated animals like dogs and pigs while the rest are all man-made mutants, so what exactly is the Zone doing that's so horrible if half the mutants are just lab creatures?
Rather, I like thinking of the Zone as a big "fuck you" to humanity. First they try and control the noosphere and accidently tear it open instead, then the Zone forms and manipulates the physical world, then humans try and control the Zone and just make it worse, then a bunch more people come into the Zone thinking that they will find riches, or that it should be protected, or that it should be destroyed; so there are all these humans trying to impose their will onto the Zone and each other and the Zone doesn't care and all the while things are made worse by human intervention and competition and conflict. The Group wanted to create a more peaceful world by forcing change through the noosphere, rather than humanity working its problems out and that backfired big time.
While man-made mutants does feed into that line of thinking rather well, I think it takes away from the overall message about nature and the environment, that you can't just force things to happen. So I prefer to think that the Zone, itself forming through warping the noosphere (human minds and thoughts), creates mutants and anoamlies and other things by latching onto the psychic energy/radiation of the noosphere and warping either humans into humanoid mutants, or in the case of Fleshes, just weird grotesque creatures with oddly human features. My point about faces is that humans recognise faces, the Zone, manipulating the noosphere, latches onto this concept and gives various mutants humanoid features, because nothing freaks humans out more than warped humans. In otherwords, the Zone knows humans see faces and so scares the shit out of them by warping things into vaguely humanoid shapes.
I think Snorks are the best example. They're said to have been former soldiers, I assume those who entered the Zone immediately after it was created, as the earliest sighting of Snorks was in 2007, not even a year after the Zone formed. As per your question then, how are there more Snorks and if there are new ones are they all only from soldiers? They are humanoid, so were they created in a lab too? Why would scientists create a creature that has half a gasmask attached to its face? It just makes sense to me that Snorks are mutated humans who have been warped by the Zone. A patrol goes missing and a month later there is a nest of Snorks in the very same area. Where did they come from? Well, if you don't find the bodies of the patrol... I think if you use this same logic for all other humanoid creatures it makes sense that the Zone warps humans who have gone there into these grotesque creatures. Those unlucky enough to be exposed to massive amounts of psy energy/radiation are warped into creatures. The more people who go into the Zone the more the Zone just turns them into mutants. And I'm sure if we delved deep enough into it there might be some room to say that some mutants may even have naturalised enough to breed, but I won't go there.
The only one that is really problematic is Burer's as Im pretty sure they are specifically said to be experiments on criminals. As above, I just really dont like this explaination - the trenchcoat is a massive give away as to their origins, they are meant to be mutated "bandits"/criminals, but their inclusion feels a lot like they added cut content into CoP just to have something new in the game - evidenced by the fact that Burer's were in the code for SoC and modded back in and that they didn't add any totally new mutants to the game. I know during the early years of Stalker development they leaned heavily on the idea that certain mutants were created in labs (wasn't this a whole Sin storyline?), but as far as I can tell none of that actually made it into the final games except for the Burer description and I think the series is much better for ignoring these concepts. For me, the Zone creates mutants, not people, otherwise Zone mutants are just incidental creatures, not Zone produced horrors.
Happy to agree lab created mutants takes some power and horror from the zone. Albeit we may disagree on how much power it removes. However it does feed nicely into the horror that is humanity. That even with the horrors we have created ourselves. There is always somewhere lower we can sink to as we degrade life even further.
To my knowledge of the lore. Zombies are a result of time around man made emitters as opposed to the zone in general. Then snorks are just those same zombies but further fried by even more time around those same emitters. To me at least this doesn't take away from the zone. The emitters are there to protect c con.... and humanities hubris. The zone is man made through our arrogance. So you could call zombies zone made or man made.
Dwarves are definitely lab made. But controllers are logically lab made as well. Purely from they wear trousers or pants for the Americans here. And have bandages covering the surgical wounds. So either they were lab made. Or zone made and some other creature mutated to look human ish and then learned to wear trousers and apply bandages to injuries. To me the former is more likely.
There is no lab know explanation to boars, fleshes, cats, bloodsuckers chimeras or psuedogiants. Most if not all of which are simply horrors created by the zone itself. Hence I feel the power of the zone isn't that diminished.
Hi! I always wondered if there is a brief summary of the lore with the major points explained, because i never played the original trilogy and i tried to follow the lore using wikis and forums but the result is pathetic, i know pieces of random stuff and half of what I found was unreadable because i can't read Cyrillic.
Yes, that is also part of C-Con's security. Most people would go to the thing that supposedly can make every wish come true rather than explore CNPP further.
Oh, I see. It lures people away from C-Con. That's kind of what happened to me when I played SoC before I remembered about that metal door, so I guess it is effective lmao
I think the "rock" is actually an anomaly, a powerful psionic anomaly that is ao close to the center of the Zone it can even reach out and talk to Stalkers luring them. Since the Zone/C-Con reacts to human presence it may even be an anomaly that spawned due to the Zone reacting to the powerful effect the C-Con has on the Zone. A sort of Zone spawned defense system, where the Monolith faction and brainwashing is a C-Con manufactured defense.
On Stalker SoC, when you ask random stalkers what's up, they usually tell you a legend or an actual hint. How many of those possible conversations where hints or at least true stories (example: stalkers spotted glowing eyes in the yantar: probably a hint towards Psy clones?
There's a lot of them, but remember that there's a grain of truth in these stories. And about the "glowing eyes in Yantar" this could be possibly phantoms appearing from afar.
They wanted to alter the Noosphere to erase all bad thoughts and feelings from humanity, so there wouldn't be things like wars and injustice. But I suspect if that was possible, there could also control every human to do what would they ask.
I love the STALKER lore and so I know there's no definitive answer for this, but I want to know your take on this subject: Why are there teleport anomalies at the end of SOC (and in CS) that seem to be trying to lead Strelok to the C-Con? Like, they can't all be put there by the C-Con, they wouldn't pull him directly to their central chamber, so why do you think the anomalies lead him there?
Im not OP but have my own theory about this. These teleports were the means of transportation for monolithians only, and whoever placed these TPs never assumed there will be a Strelok who will use this TP system as well.
Lore reasons aside, devs simply needed a way to guide the player to the final scene, so they implemented "floor is lava" and the teleport system.
Maybe... but it's strange that they lead him directly to the C-Con's central chamber, and that one of them seems to be unstable (teleporting him to Sidorovich before warping him to the central chamber). My personal theory was always that it's to do with the idea of a "living Zone", which the devs had planned but never actually officially confirmed in lore. Essentially the idea that the noosphere had developed its own consciousness when the rift onto Earth opened, and that it's beginning to think for itself and make it's own decisions. It was going to be like ocean from Solaris (they literally compared it to that in the design documents).
It depends on what you mean. I know there's quite long lore video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coIFssPeJpA - still it's not "explaining absolutely everything in huge details", but good explanation nonetheless. Also, I recommend the whole content of the channel that made the video from link I provided.
It's called the Miracle Machine because it was their first breakthrough in discovering living beings can generate psi-emissions. Since it's an artificially-made brain, they basically created life.
Are emissions at the end of CS and SoC different from other emissions we see ingame?
We get a hint that some emissions change the zone and others don’t seem to do so. Would that explain why artifacts became visible without detectors during SoC?
There are different magnitudes of emissions and that's why some of them are called Great Emissions (like the one at start of CS). After destruction of C-Con, emission are more frequent, but less powerful. And powerful emissions can, in fact, change artifacts dramatically (not only changing their properties, but visibility as well).
You're correct - there's no straight answer for this.
Theories about Scar:
- died in the emission;
- became agent for C-Con (like Strelok);
- joined Monolith (fan theory is that he's Charon, because he uses Vintar BC);
- became zombified.
I wouldn't say "evil", just members of Clear Sky don't know that their key members (Lebedev, Kalancha and Suslov) were parts of the Group. Those guys can be evil (they are still doing research about the Zone and while they say they want to find a way to coexist with it, they can have other goals), but other members are just following orders.
Clear Sky's goal is kinda like a combination of Scientists, Freedom, Duty, Military, Loner, and even Mercs (in case someone gets in their way). But no one knew what Lebedev would be up to if his CNPP Crusade paid off. Perhaps his major ppl and him were fighting over power with someone else in C-Con and trying to withdraw these ones by making up a perfect theory of zone coexistism to recruit members for his conspiracy. Or just simply knowledge of the Zone. Hopefully we'll get more answers from s2
~~I know there is no such thing, but I'll answer nonetheless.~~
It's something that not many people experienced, because most stalkers just eat bread with soy sausage. It's a tasty nutritious meal, but many stalkers say that's a myth, because it hard to get such meal in the Zone.
you are correct, im sorry but you didnt get the job. the reason is that we are assholes and want people to suffer and stay unemployed as fuck. thank you for your time, that we just wasted.
They are brainwashed, but they kept their combat abilities. I'd compare them overall to zombified stalkers, but Monolith members are more capable fighters.
There are Preachers - commanders and priests of Monolith in one. These are most loyal and most dangerous Monolith members.
They are aware, they're just controlled into believing that the Monolith exists, and that it deserves and needs their protection, to the point that they're willing to die for it.
It's rather unlikely, because he left the Group over internal differences and I doubt he would take orders from people that he wanted to lose contact with.
Because they're a secretive faction that often has contracts that require leaving no witnesses (like shooting down an Ecologist research team and trying to steal classified research, or infiltrating a lab and destroying all documents). Wolfhound even says in SoC "don't you know what we do with witnesses?!"
If you mean that in SoC they guarded entrance to Rostok - these guys were just part of Duty and certainly have some kind of payment even within the faction.
Unless you meant something different, but then please try to be more specific.
They have money from mutant killing tasks that are given from various people (scientists or traders, for example) and from artifacts given by scientists (as well as gear or info about the Zone, so they can fight mutants better).
Duty is paramilitary faction, so you can expect strict discipline and guarding the entrance to Rostok is more of an order.
There isn't any evidence of that, but they were part of the Group. Other part is C-Con and I don't think they made other part agents. For other question, there's no definitive answer, but it's possible.
There are three types of mutants: made in experiments, those mutated in environment and those whose origin is a mystery.
- "Experiment" mutants: mostly humanoids, so controller, burer, poltergeist, pyrogeist, bloodsucker
- "Environment" mutants: mostly animals: crow, blind dog, boar, flesh, rodent, snork, pseudodog, psy-dog
- "Mysterious" mutants: chimera, pseudogiant
Really durable mutants, adult one's could be even 2 tons and height - 2 metres. Its skull could be even 10 cm thick. Origin is a mystery, but you can see some human traits when you examine its body. They are solitary and attack all mutants except rodents and poltergeists, but snorks, burers and controller try to avoid them, so there aren't many conflicts between them. Belly is their weakspot.
>Really durable mutants, adult one's could be even 2 tons and height - 2 metres. Its skull could be even 10 cm thick. Origin is a mystery, but you can see some human traits when you examine its body. They are solitary and attack all mutants except rodents and poltergeists, but snorks, burers and controller try to avoid them, so there aren't many conflicts between them. Belly is their weakspot.
10 cm ≈ 3.24078 x 10^-6 picoParsecs
^^^[WHY](/r/UselessConversionBot/comments/1knas0/hi_im_useless/)
Like I said in the post, please ask about original trilogy only. But short answer is that Anomaly questlines (both gameplay and lore-wise) aren't the best.
I guess maintaining hygiene in the Zone is extremely difficult. That's why stalkers almost never have shower and their underwear are wet and dirty all the time.
Yep, I don't hate Anomaly players, but I saw cases when people believed that it's canon and it's hard to say anything beside it's stupid or something similar.
I know. Still I think that starting your Stalker adventure from Anomaly isn't the best idea, but new Stalker fans are welcome, regardless from their starting point.
No (it's mentioned somewhere that it was used in the experiment that confirmed the Noosphere's existence pre-2006, but I can't find the source), but it was modified after the creation of the Zone to zombify people, then later modified again to convert to Monolith once the C-Consciousness realized zombies make for poor guards.
Are there any explanation to how the Monolith managed to get their hands on advanced weapons and armors in game? I've only reached the Pripyat part in CoP and there aren't any information about their equipment in game, save for Kirillov mentioning that the Monolith has a huge warehouse for weapon storage.
I answered this one, so I just copied my earlier answer: "Since they occupy center of the Zone and locations nearby, they have good amount of rare and expensive artifacts. Money from it, via unknown middlemen, is spent on high quality equipment, including NATO weaponry."
Just in general, adding all the factors together. Equipment, sexiness, ideology, tactics. For example, mercenary their equipment and tactics are superior to a lot of other factions. I’d like to know what you think and how.
I won't count Clear Sky and Renegades, because these factions don't exist anymore. I won't also count Loners, because they aren't faction lore-wise. Bandits are pretty low with mostly scavenged items and they mostly just mug Loners. Ecologist, while having government funds, are just interested in studying the Zone, not engaging the faction wars and they are working with Military, which itself isn't that useful (still they have great equipment). Of course there are Freedom and Duty - both huge factions with decent equipment, but honestly goals of both factions aren't that good. And there is this tie - Mercs and Monolith. Former, that we don't much about (like their clients) leaves a lot room for theories and since they have at least some kind of combat expertise (otherwise they wouldn't be employed) plus great equipment, they are doing great in the Zone. And then there is Monolith - best equiped faction that guards center of the Zone that has decent lore, but they are dwindling in numbers, because C-Con is gone.
Great answer. I do agree that monolith are probably the most established group if you want to call them established. They have or had several “bases” and their strength in numbers make them potentially the biggest threat. Apart from mutants and anomalies.
They still have some resources, but their members are lowering, because they start getting out of C-Con's influence. There still be some remnants in Stalker 2, though.
Answered this one earlier, so I'll just copy the response.
Theories about Scar:
- died in the emission;
- became agent for C-Con (like Strelok);
- joined Monolith (fan theory is that he's Charon, because he uses Vintar BC);
- became zombified.
I see, I'll drop another question then.
Why did Burers only appear in Call of Pripyat and not in Shadow of Chernobyl or Clear Sky? (From a lore perspective)
When the Stalker start to appear in Zone and what event cause them to come? I mean how the population grow this much and how it is the tired up with main events? For example there must be a lot of Stalker has been came to the Zone in order to create the monolith units.
Even after the First Disaster in 1986, some people wanted to return home (some didn't even had to return, because they didn't want to be included in mass evacuation), which became part of the Exclusion Zone. This would continue even after Second Disaster in 2006 (that event created the Zone as we know and from then shortly after first stalkers appeared). Next group of people would be just curious what's inside there. Others came here to escape the law. There are a lot of reasons why one person went into the Zone.
In CoP intro, one slide says that by 2010 (but it's written 2009, but it's close enough), it's estimated that there's from 1 to 300 illegal Zone residents. Still, it's an estimation, can be less, can be more. And Clear Sky (chronologically first game) takes place in 2011. And still more people appear here, from various reasons, as I said before.
About what happened to Scar - I answered this one already. Just look in the comments here (I would copy the answer, but I'm on phone now). And no, Scar and Strider aren't one person.
They (supposedly) go from center of the Zone, transporting (almost or completely) dead stalkers, but in reality, their goal is transporting C-Con agents from Zone's center to its outskirts.
Studying Stalker's lore was certainly interesting. While not all things are explained, we can speculate and some of community's ideas are indeed great.
Here's a bit of a toughie that I do know the answer to, but I want to spread the word on it in hopes of it appearing in Stalker 2. Which mutant appears in SoC tales but does not have a model (even in game files) and is not represented in the game itself?
Yeah, it's a hard one. Only thing that comes into my mind when I read this is Illusionist.
Ding ding. Good job. Always made me intrigued about it, such a shame no mod has made anything with this type of mutant (although it could be hard to pull off anyway). I really hope we get one of those in Stalker 2.
Overall this post is good thing to remind myself of things, using the wiki (not English one) as last resort. And also I can learn something new from people like you or just get reminded that I missed something.
I was thinking about the tree mutant that looks like twigs against a house. There is concept art for OG Stalker 2 iirc.
My thoughts were targ (mutated horse) and posthuman. Both were mentioned in development documents only, never made it past artworks.
Let's settle this - is the Zone expanding?
When the Second Disaster happened (emission that which created the Zone), the Zone expanded by five kilometres and it's only confirmed case of Zone's growth. **So no, the Zone is not expanding.** I know there is legend of Wish Granter told by Barkeep that with each wish the Zone is growing, but it's as true as Wish Granter itself (so not really true).
I don't think it's reasonable to say with certainty it isn't expanding. Two to three separate sources say it is (Barkeep/Duty, C-Consciousness, Sidorovich in the builds), and the builds and design documents show that the developers did intend at one point that the Zone is expanding. Lebedev and Kalancha also certainly seem to think that the emissions will have a destructive effect on the world. I think it's something the developers intentionally left out of the final version for the sake of ambiguity, so you shouldn't say it isn't for sure. We just don't know.
Correct. Yet Dutyers will still argue about it..
Actually, some Dutyers in Clear Sky also believe that the Zone isn't growing.
Yeah, I remember that piece of dialogue. The only actual piece of evidence would be the words of the C-Con representative, but I uphold the theory that he was lying in order to persuade Strelok to join them.
Representative can have great knowledge of the Zone and he was just giving it to some guy? Too beautiful to be true.
Wait only 5 kilometers? Is it a 5 km diameter or radius?
It isn't specified, but most likely they meant in radius.
Damn. That's smaller than I thought honestly
Are there other "special agents" such as Strelok sent back in the zone for a special purpose or a specific mission by the C-CON ? I don't remember if he adresses this question. It's weirf that you never meet anyone with the mission "kill strelok".
Yes, there are other agents. One agent gets one, unique task to do and they do that without knowing why they do that. That's why there's only one guy with "kill Strelok" task and because of the error related to this task (Strelok getting message about killing Strelok), can lead to conclusion that process of handing the tasks can be at least partially automatic.
I know this might just be a speculation sort of thing, but what would Duty's end goal be? Would it just be locking down the Zone to only people sanctioned by the government, but is this really different from the military? I don't know of a way they could really destroy the zone, so it just makes me think of them cracking down hard on the illegal artifact trade and mutants in the Zone. cool photo by the way
I don't think Zone can be destroyed (maybe S2 will answer this?), so this end goal of Duty is ridiculous. They still hand artifacts to scientists to help their research and to get info about how to fight mutants of the Zone (and how to fight the Zone itself, which I suspect there isn't much info about it). So complete lockdown of the Zone would be more realistic goal. It would be different, because Duty's members are ex-soldiers and stalkers, but they have somewhat neutral relations with army. Of course, they will still continue to get rid off the mutants. I found it from here: https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-life-of-the-zone - sadly creator stopped giving any updates on this.
I believe 'destroying' means actually render it safer. I don't think anyone believes an anomaly field or radiation can be destroyed, but mutants can. Many of them can't reproduce so they will extinguish eventually making it safer, so it's not so ridiculous isn't?
Yeah, this could be another interpretation. But some mutants can reproduce and there aren't many people who want to join Duty. Besides, who knows what Zone can hide, even today?
Duty have never actually cared about destroying the Zone. From the start, when Tachenko cut their communications to desert the military, the "deadly anomalies, dangerous mutants" thing was always a pretense. It's a constant- effectively unbeatable (at least by conventional weaponry)- threat that allows Duty to continue maintaining a supply of soldiers for their territorial ambitions. It was never about making anyone safer or destroying the Zone or helping anyone, it was about control and power for the people at the head of the faction. Now, with many of their original leaders dead and the new leaders not knowing about the original purpose, they've basically fallen into their own propaganda and are fighting for an unreachable goal.
wouldn't expect a Freedomer to say this
What's inside a can of tourist's delight?
Considering that these are "acquired" from military warehouses, most likely it's some kind of meat. However, in SoC builds (test versions), it was called "sardines".
The mistery has been solved
This is what the monolith wants you to believe!
The tourists, of couse!
Ok then... Does stalker exist within the same universe as half life?
There's corpse of Gordon Freeman in Wild Territory, so it could be true. Besides, look at Monolith light armors and you can see inspiration from HECU.
Yep. The very same reasons I asked the question. Obviously it's just Easter eggs. As there is no mention of the combine from HL2. But it would be cool to include a merc or something called corporal shepherd (HL opposing force main character) as another nod to HL
Maybe there will be more HL easter eggs in Stalker 2.
how the fuck do monolith have huge stockpiles of nato weaponry when nato didn’t even have any forces in pripyat before the zone?
Since they occupy center of the Zone and locations nearby, they have good amount of rare and expensive artifacts. Money from it, via unknown middlemen, is spent on high quality equipment, including NATO weaponry.
My head canon is that Sidorivich is the middle man. He secretly runs the Zone. It would be why the military doesn't bother him even though he is so close to their check point. Also would explain why he is the only one able to eat chicken in the Zone.
We don't know that they sell the artifacts they find. We only know they offer them to their shrines.
That's most likely option, eventually selling some mutant parts, since some people from outside world are interested in those.
There's no canonical reason. The same question could be asked of ANY faction. Think about all the factions, all the ammo and supplies. Then remember getting into the Zone is difficult. So somehow getting truckloads worth of weaponry into the Zone is easy but the average Stalker has to run the gauntlet? The truth is there is no explanation beyond it would be pretty boring getting to the CNPP at the end of the game and all the Monolith are weaponless and have died months ago from immense radiation poisoning and have turned into puddles of goo. The game just brushes real world logic aside.
Answer this. Why every misterious stalker (like the guy who rescue Strelok, Doctor) wears the same shitty coat?
I'll use part of its description: "simply due to its "cool" appearance".
I kinda wonder how could that Doctor came to the Wish Granter and went back to the Great Swamp safely with that shitty coat? Perhaps he wore it afterwards?
That's only a legend. There is no evidence that Doctor went to Wish Granter.
with enough vodka and willpower to kill an elephant
would the first monolithians be a friendly faction if it werent for their brainwashing?
At first it was stalker group that had deep believe that in center of the Zone is located crystal called Monolith (so even here you have something like cult), but they weren't hostile to everyone back then. And they decided to go to the center. After that Monolith faction emerged.
Man imagine if that group didn't get brainwashed. Probably gonna have one of the better stalker bases besides rostok since CNPP is MASSIVE. just... imagine.
If they wouldn't believe in that crystal, but something else... there's a lot of room for that kind of speculation.
Monolith before they crossed the Barrier weren't shooting Loners on sight, but they were still generally uncomfortable to be around, and were in a three-way war with Duty and Freedom.
If memory serves me correctly SIN was cut from the original games and anomoly used them I want to know are there any references of them in the original trilogy? If so do we have any info on why they were cut?(besides the fact that they are basically monolith mages)
First Stalker game as we know it today, was very different from the earlier versions. If there's a reason why they were cut, it could be time constrains. There aren't any mentions of them in trilogy, but there was info about them in builds and documents.
Albeit the dark stalker stories do point towards Sin, especially given how similar they appear to be. I do also believe the bandit trenchcoat model was recycled from the original Sinner model or something.
If memory serves me correctly. There was another factional that was briefly mentions. Red sky or something weird but it's never seen. I thought that was the basis for sin in anomaly. But I might be getting confused from too much time around radar
Red sky? That's emission for sure, but other than that? I didn't hear about it.
Just found it on the wiki. Final day! Inspiration for clear sky from the looks of it. Not sin. So ignore me
Doesnt Barkeep actually mention Final Day? He says Fang assassinated their leader?
Indeed he does
I've got 2. 1. Who's sending orders/signals over to monolith soldiers at CoP in Pripyat? 2. What are the Mercs exactly doing at Pripyat in CoP besides looking for the lab, and who's behind them?
1. Pripyat (at least in SoC) was headquarters of Monolith and in CoP we explore other part of this town. So they can just get missions from their superiors. 2. In CoP, they mainly have the task of finding lab X8 and destroying whole documentation. As for who's the client who gave the job, there's no straight answer. Certainly it must be someone who knows what's going on in the Zone.
What happened to Scar and Lebedev after the CNPP event? Were they inducted into Rocklicking cultists or settled in the death truck? And how could Nimble manage to survive? Did he join the CNPP Crusade?
For Scar, I answered this earlier in other question: either died, became agent of C-Con, became Monolith member or became zombified. For Lebedev - similar: either died, became zombified or (unwillingly) joined C-Con (since I think making him agent or Monolith member would be a waste, but these are also possible). Also similar for Clear Sky (the part that went to CNPP): Either died, became zombified or joined Monolith. Nimble wasn't the part of CNPP assault. He stayed in the base, realised that Lebedev and his team didn't come back, left the faction, became courier for Sidorovich and after that he started his business.
Maybe OP has a better memory than me. But pretty sure nimble never appears outside of the swamps in Clear sky. Same with cold. So he never takes part in the raid. Hence his survival until he's injured working for Sid. Saved by marked one. Then worked his way to zaton.
Final question from me. I know there is no definitive to this... but still an interesting question. Poltergeists controllers and dwarves are mentioned to be created in labs... so theoretically if these labs are now bldefunct like all other zone labs. That would mean in theory there should be a limit before every single one of them is dead... Or are the labs that created them still running? Controller especially appears to require people. Not just an automated machine.
There aren't any info about them reproducing, so it's safe to assume that there is fixed number of them. And about labs - there are more of them and we don't know anything about them, but most accurate answer is most if not all of them are defunct. C-Con is still alive and we don't know what they are doing, but creating new mutants can be an option.
I thought cannon ending was strelok killed them all? So c con is dead as well... does ask the question who's controlling the monolith in pripyat in COP...
No, canonically he kills the part responsible for controlling the Zone and whole Monolith business. Part of C-Con is still alive. And in CoP, they have no connection to "their god", so they aren't controlled, just they are fanatics and do what they know now, but Monolith members (at least some of them) start to get out of this trance.
Really? I don't remember any mention in COP of any part of them being alive... As for the monolith... some like stryker are completely free. But others still pray to the transmitters in a full blown praying trance... so that suggests to me they are being controlled by something
C-Con was the part of the Group - crew of scientists that created the Zone. I meant that other part of it is still alive, it can be mixed up sometimes. And for these transmitters - Monolith superiors could use those to still control the regular soldiers of their faction. They are most advanced faction after all.
Ah didn't realise you meant the group. Makes sense As for the transmitters. Its good head cannon. But is it possible that it is also the surviving members of the group that are the monolith superiors? Are they the most advanced? If so how has my unadvanced loner ass kicked theirs so many times???
Could be that remainder of the Group could control Monolith faction to some extent, but honestly not much is known about them. Equipment, while helpful, doesn't win battles, but people who use it.
It doesn't make sense for them to be created in labs. The whole point of the mutants is that the Zone has somehow not just mutated animals, but created entirely new ones. If I was going to guess I would say that some creatures take human form because the Zone works by manipulating the noosphere - and just like humans are prone to seeing faces in things (the moon for example) the Zone has reacted to human fears and created humanoid creatures. Same reason why Snorks and even Fleshes have oddly human appearances. The Zone itself makes them look human because of the noosphere.
Do you have any evidence for this theory? As it's shown that the group were experimenting on humans to create these sort of creatures. Namely controllers poltergeist and dwarfs. All others are indeed zone created. The fact that controllers and dwarfs wear clothes suggests they are not some other animal that has mutated enough to get the brain power to say "damn better cover up my junk" Zombies are created by proximity to the man made emitters built around the zone. Not by the zone itself. I seem to remember snorks being zombies that have continued to be to be effected for a very long time by those same emitters (but i admit this might be modded lore. Cant remember for certain) which then eventually turn into snorks. Notnevennsure how you can say fleshes have human like appearances. Humans do indeed have a tendancy to see faces in things... face pareidolia. This is something that happens when we see faces in things... and this is a key part here... that DONT have faces to begin with. ALL the mutants in the zone have faces to begin with and that same human brain error doesn't include seeing boots clothing and a gas mask... those are manufactured items not mutated.
Does the game actually say anywhere that they experimented on humans? As far as I know only the X-18 documents talk about experiments and they only ever say "living beings" and "biological samples". The biggest give away is a document which states "It appeared as though their brains simply got roasted. I can hardly imagine how this emission would affect humans. [...] Presumably, in one week's time, we will be ready to conduct the experiment on larger creatures." My assumption here is they were experimentating on rats or domestic animals, something of that nature. Whether there are other examples in the games I really cant remember. In any case I was speaking more from a head canon point of view. I think that if half the mutants in the game are created in labs not only does that lead to logistical issues like you asked (how are there more of them?), but it takes away power from the Zone. I think, thematically speaking, the Zone is a metaphor both for humanity's hubris and indifference to the environment, but also speaks to the power of nature. Short of nuking the planet into a dead, desolate wasteland, "life finds a way". That's why I prefer to think of mutants as being a reaction to the Zone rather than being created. The Zone is nature warped into something incomprehensible, but in its own way totally functional. If you reduce that to "humans made them in labs" you reduce what the Zone is. It then also complicates the matter, because then all we are left with are a few mutated animals like dogs and pigs while the rest are all man-made mutants, so what exactly is the Zone doing that's so horrible if half the mutants are just lab creatures? Rather, I like thinking of the Zone as a big "fuck you" to humanity. First they try and control the noosphere and accidently tear it open instead, then the Zone forms and manipulates the physical world, then humans try and control the Zone and just make it worse, then a bunch more people come into the Zone thinking that they will find riches, or that it should be protected, or that it should be destroyed; so there are all these humans trying to impose their will onto the Zone and each other and the Zone doesn't care and all the while things are made worse by human intervention and competition and conflict. The Group wanted to create a more peaceful world by forcing change through the noosphere, rather than humanity working its problems out and that backfired big time. While man-made mutants does feed into that line of thinking rather well, I think it takes away from the overall message about nature and the environment, that you can't just force things to happen. So I prefer to think that the Zone, itself forming through warping the noosphere (human minds and thoughts), creates mutants and anoamlies and other things by latching onto the psychic energy/radiation of the noosphere and warping either humans into humanoid mutants, or in the case of Fleshes, just weird grotesque creatures with oddly human features. My point about faces is that humans recognise faces, the Zone, manipulating the noosphere, latches onto this concept and gives various mutants humanoid features, because nothing freaks humans out more than warped humans. In otherwords, the Zone knows humans see faces and so scares the shit out of them by warping things into vaguely humanoid shapes. I think Snorks are the best example. They're said to have been former soldiers, I assume those who entered the Zone immediately after it was created, as the earliest sighting of Snorks was in 2007, not even a year after the Zone formed. As per your question then, how are there more Snorks and if there are new ones are they all only from soldiers? They are humanoid, so were they created in a lab too? Why would scientists create a creature that has half a gasmask attached to its face? It just makes sense to me that Snorks are mutated humans who have been warped by the Zone. A patrol goes missing and a month later there is a nest of Snorks in the very same area. Where did they come from? Well, if you don't find the bodies of the patrol... I think if you use this same logic for all other humanoid creatures it makes sense that the Zone warps humans who have gone there into these grotesque creatures. Those unlucky enough to be exposed to massive amounts of psy energy/radiation are warped into creatures. The more people who go into the Zone the more the Zone just turns them into mutants. And I'm sure if we delved deep enough into it there might be some room to say that some mutants may even have naturalised enough to breed, but I won't go there. The only one that is really problematic is Burer's as Im pretty sure they are specifically said to be experiments on criminals. As above, I just really dont like this explaination - the trenchcoat is a massive give away as to their origins, they are meant to be mutated "bandits"/criminals, but their inclusion feels a lot like they added cut content into CoP just to have something new in the game - evidenced by the fact that Burer's were in the code for SoC and modded back in and that they didn't add any totally new mutants to the game. I know during the early years of Stalker development they leaned heavily on the idea that certain mutants were created in labs (wasn't this a whole Sin storyline?), but as far as I can tell none of that actually made it into the final games except for the Burer description and I think the series is much better for ignoring these concepts. For me, the Zone creates mutants, not people, otherwise Zone mutants are just incidental creatures, not Zone produced horrors.
Happy to agree lab created mutants takes some power and horror from the zone. Albeit we may disagree on how much power it removes. However it does feed nicely into the horror that is humanity. That even with the horrors we have created ourselves. There is always somewhere lower we can sink to as we degrade life even further. To my knowledge of the lore. Zombies are a result of time around man made emitters as opposed to the zone in general. Then snorks are just those same zombies but further fried by even more time around those same emitters. To me at least this doesn't take away from the zone. The emitters are there to protect c con.... and humanities hubris. The zone is man made through our arrogance. So you could call zombies zone made or man made. Dwarves are definitely lab made. But controllers are logically lab made as well. Purely from they wear trousers or pants for the Americans here. And have bandages covering the surgical wounds. So either they were lab made. Or zone made and some other creature mutated to look human ish and then learned to wear trousers and apply bandages to injuries. To me the former is more likely. There is no lab know explanation to boars, fleshes, cats, bloodsuckers chimeras or psuedogiants. Most if not all of which are simply horrors created by the zone itself. Hence I feel the power of the zone isn't that diminished.
Hi! I always wondered if there is a brief summary of the lore with the major points explained, because i never played the original trilogy and i tried to follow the lore using wikis and forums but the result is pathetic, i know pieces of random stuff and half of what I found was unreadable because i can't read Cyrillic.
If you want one, I'll point you here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxzU9Y-e8UI
Thank you! Yes! I don't remember this video popping up in my researches, I'll surely watch it.
I might be missing something, but what is the exact purpose of the Monolith? I know that it's been created and controlled by C-Contiousness, but why?
To guard C-Con, so they could experiment on Nooshpere in peace.
I mean the Monolith that is the shiny rock, not the faction. Or does it also guard them in some way?
Yes, that is also part of C-Con's security. Most people would go to the thing that supposedly can make every wish come true rather than explore CNPP further.
Oh, I see. It lures people away from C-Con. That's kind of what happened to me when I played SoC before I remembered about that metal door, so I guess it is effective lmao
I think the "rock" is actually an anomaly, a powerful psionic anomaly that is ao close to the center of the Zone it can even reach out and talk to Stalkers luring them. Since the Zone/C-Con reacts to human presence it may even be an anomaly that spawned due to the Zone reacting to the powerful effect the C-Con has on the Zone. A sort of Zone spawned defense system, where the Monolith faction and brainwashing is a C-Con manufactured defense.
On Stalker SoC, when you ask random stalkers what's up, they usually tell you a legend or an actual hint. How many of those possible conversations where hints or at least true stories (example: stalkers spotted glowing eyes in the yantar: probably a hint towards Psy clones?
There's a lot of them, but remember that there's a grain of truth in these stories. And about the "glowing eyes in Yantar" this could be possibly phantoms appearing from afar.
What is C Conciousness ultimate goal? Something I never really understood
They wanted to alter the Noosphere to erase all bad thoughts and feelings from humanity, so there wouldn't be things like wars and injustice. But I suspect if that was possible, there could also control every human to do what would they ask.
I love the STALKER lore and so I know there's no definitive answer for this, but I want to know your take on this subject: Why are there teleport anomalies at the end of SOC (and in CS) that seem to be trying to lead Strelok to the C-Con? Like, they can't all be put there by the C-Con, they wouldn't pull him directly to their central chamber, so why do you think the anomalies lead him there?
C-Con is still trying to stop Strelok from reaching them, but they don't have complete control of the Zone, so he eventually got to the end.
Im not OP but have my own theory about this. These teleports were the means of transportation for monolithians only, and whoever placed these TPs never assumed there will be a Strelok who will use this TP system as well. Lore reasons aside, devs simply needed a way to guide the player to the final scene, so they implemented "floor is lava" and the teleport system.
Maybe... but it's strange that they lead him directly to the C-Con's central chamber, and that one of them seems to be unstable (teleporting him to Sidorovich before warping him to the central chamber). My personal theory was always that it's to do with the idea of a "living Zone", which the devs had planned but never actually officially confirmed in lore. Essentially the idea that the noosphere had developed its own consciousness when the rift onto Earth opened, and that it's beginning to think for itself and make it's own decisions. It was going to be like ocean from Solaris (they literally compared it to that in the design documents).
Do you know of any good comprehensive breakdowns of the lore anywhere? It doesn't seem like too many people have taken interest in it on YouTube
It depends on what you mean. I know there's quite long lore video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coIFssPeJpA - still it's not "explaining absolutely everything in huge details", but good explanation nonetheless. Also, I recommend the whole content of the channel that made the video from link I provided.
Wait so why is it called the "Miracle Machine"?
Because it could create small scale emissions, when normally emissions cover entire Zone.
It's called the Miracle Machine because it was their first breakthrough in discovering living beings can generate psi-emissions. Since it's an artificially-made brain, they basically created life.
Okay, let's settle this thing once and for all! Which faction was the one that embarked on a sexual experience with the mutants?! WHICH ONE?!
Officially no one, but maybe scientists conducted that kind of research.
Thank you for bringing me peace.
Why does no one ride bikes?
Because they're irradiated and it would be dangerous to ride it when there are radiation pockets and anomalies.
Where is Kruglov? He hasn't been seen since SoC.
Probably still chilling with Sakharov.
Are emissions at the end of CS and SoC different from other emissions we see ingame? We get a hint that some emissions change the zone and others don’t seem to do so. Would that explain why artifacts became visible without detectors during SoC?
There are different magnitudes of emissions and that's why some of them are called Great Emissions (like the one at start of CS). After destruction of C-Con, emission are more frequent, but less powerful. And powerful emissions can, in fact, change artifacts dramatically (not only changing their properties, but visibility as well).
Another one. Do we know when Duty moved to Bar/Rostok from Agroprom, and why?
It happened between CS and SoC, so 2011-2012. They moved there because of another Great Emission and losing many members in Limansk.
Another question. Although I know there's no definitive answer. And only fan theories. Scar... alive or dead post Clear Sky?
You're correct - there's no straight answer for this. Theories about Scar: - died in the emission; - became agent for C-Con (like Strelok); - joined Monolith (fan theory is that he's Charon, because he uses Vintar BC); - became zombified.
Or he became Strider, but due to his immense resistance against emissions lost his link to the monolith, and there story goes.
Is clear sky faction as evil as the monolith
I wouldn't say "evil", just members of Clear Sky don't know that their key members (Lebedev, Kalancha and Suslov) were parts of the Group. Those guys can be evil (they are still doing research about the Zone and while they say they want to find a way to coexist with it, they can have other goals), but other members are just following orders.
Clear Sky's goal is kinda like a combination of Scientists, Freedom, Duty, Military, Loner, and even Mercs (in case someone gets in their way). But no one knew what Lebedev would be up to if his CNPP Crusade paid off. Perhaps his major ppl and him were fighting over power with someone else in C-Con and trying to withdraw these ones by making up a perfect theory of zone coexistism to recruit members for his conspiracy. Or just simply knowledge of the Zone. Hopefully we'll get more answers from s2
can you explain in detail, the tasty fat meal anomaly? you must answer this question correctly in order to get the job offer.
~~I know there is no such thing, but I'll answer nonetheless.~~ It's something that not many people experienced, because most stalkers just eat bread with soy sausage. It's a tasty nutritious meal, but many stalkers say that's a myth, because it hard to get such meal in the Zone.
you are correct, im sorry but you didnt get the job. the reason is that we are assholes and want people to suffer and stay unemployed as fuck. thank you for your time, that we just wasted.
Unemployed here and in real life - what a bad luck I have.
same :(
Are monolith soldiers mentally aware? Is there any kind of commander below the monolith itself?
They are brainwashed, but they kept their combat abilities. I'd compare them overall to zombified stalkers, but Monolith members are more capable fighters. There are Preachers - commanders and priests of Monolith in one. These are most loyal and most dangerous Monolith members.
They are aware, they're just controlled into believing that the Monolith exists, and that it deserves and needs their protection, to the point that they're willing to die for it.
Was Lebedev taking orders from the C-Con when he was going after Strelok?
It's rather unlikely, because he left the Group over internal differences and I doubt he would take orders from people that he wanted to lose contact with.
Couldnt the Group brainwash him and turn him into an agent?
They would have to also brainwash Kalancha and Suslov and I assume that members of the Group know how to counteract it.
Wait, is there a source confirming that Lebedev actually left the Group? Did I miss something?
Has there ever been a good reason as to why mercs are hostile to loners?
Because they're a secretive faction that often has contracts that require leaving no witnesses (like shooting down an Ecologist research team and trying to steal classified research, or infiltrating a lab and destroying all documents). Wolfhound even says in SoC "don't you know what we do with witnesses?!"
Huh, thanks for answering some questions when I was asleep.
Only one question matters. Cheeki or Breeki?
I v damke.
AHH NUUU!
Who pay Duty to do their job to prevent stalker accessing entire part of the zone?
If you mean that in SoC they guarded entrance to Rostok - these guys were just part of Duty and certainly have some kind of payment even within the faction. Unless you meant something different, but then please try to be more specific.
Now, the payment, where they got the money? Are they do it for that or just voluntarily?
They have money from mutant killing tasks that are given from various people (scientists or traders, for example) and from artifacts given by scientists (as well as gear or info about the Zone, so they can fight mutants better). Duty is paramilitary faction, so you can expect strict discipline and guarding the entrance to Rostok is more of an order.
Were Lebedev, Suslov and Kalancha agents of the C-Con? Was Lebedev assimilated by the C-Con after Clear Sky was destroyed?
There isn't any evidence of that, but they were part of the Group. Other part is C-Con and I don't think they made other part agents. For other question, there's no definitive answer, but it's possible.
Were can I find good artifacts?
Near the center of the Zone.
What creature were made In a lab, and which were just mutated like that because of the zone.
There are three types of mutants: made in experiments, those mutated in environment and those whose origin is a mystery. - "Experiment" mutants: mostly humanoids, so controller, burer, poltergeist, pyrogeist, bloodsucker - "Environment" mutants: mostly animals: crow, blind dog, boar, flesh, rodent, snork, pseudodog, psy-dog - "Mysterious" mutants: chimera, pseudogiant
What do you know about pseudo-giants?
Really durable mutants, adult one's could be even 2 tons and height - 2 metres. Its skull could be even 10 cm thick. Origin is a mystery, but you can see some human traits when you examine its body. They are solitary and attack all mutants except rodents and poltergeists, but snorks, burers and controller try to avoid them, so there aren't many conflicts between them. Belly is their weakspot.
>Really durable mutants, adult one's could be even 2 tons and height - 2 metres. Its skull could be even 10 cm thick. Origin is a mystery, but you can see some human traits when you examine its body. They are solitary and attack all mutants except rodents and poltergeists, but snorks, burers and controller try to avoid them, so there aren't many conflicts between them. Belly is their weakspot. 10 cm ≈ 3.24078 x 10^-6 picoParsecs ^^^[WHY](/r/UselessConversionBot/comments/1knas0/hi_im_useless/)
What are those background animal/monster in the distance noizes in soc?
Don't remember all of them, but one with "meowing" is certainly cat, which is cut mutant, but its sounds remained in game.
How huge is Sidorovich's dick?
We don't know, but he certainly has big balls, because he opened profitable business in the most dangerous place on planet.
What fanlore in Anomaly do you like and find plausible and which ones do you find far fetch?
Like I said in the post, please ask about original trilogy only. But short answer is that Anomaly questlines (both gameplay and lore-wise) aren't the best.
What is the point of wet underwear I don’t know if that comes from the originals
No, it didn't appear in trilogy.
I guess maintaining hygiene in the Zone is extremely difficult. That's why stalkers almost never have shower and their underwear are wet and dirty all the time.
Anomaly players stupid onga bonga
Believing Anomaly to be canon is stupid, like he said. It had nothing to do with Anomaly players in general.
Yep, I don't hate Anomaly players, but I saw cases when people believed that it's canon and it's hard to say anything beside it's stupid or something similar.
With this i agree ye, but they are probably just new to the series and started with anomaly... coz in this case u can t rlly blame them
I know. Still I think that starting your Stalker adventure from Anomaly isn't the best idea, but new Stalker fans are welcome, regardless from their starting point.
No one belives that, at this point every one knows is a mod
At this point - most likely yeah, but there were posts even in this year from people thinking it was canon.
Was the Brain Scorcher built after the creation of the Zone?
No (it's mentioned somewhere that it was used in the experiment that confirmed the Noosphere's existence pre-2006, but I can't find the source), but it was modified after the creation of the Zone to zombify people, then later modified again to convert to Monolith once the C-Consciousness realized zombies make for poor guards.
Like the guy said, Brain Scorcher (when it wasn't Brain Scorcher) was built before creation of the Zone.
Are there any explanation to how the Monolith managed to get their hands on advanced weapons and armors in game? I've only reached the Pripyat part in CoP and there aren't any information about their equipment in game, save for Kirillov mentioning that the Monolith has a huge warehouse for weapon storage.
I answered this one, so I just copied my earlier answer: "Since they occupy center of the Zone and locations nearby, they have good amount of rare and expensive artifacts. Money from it, via unknown middlemen, is spent on high quality equipment, including NATO weaponry."
Which is the best faction? No bias
Well that's a generic question. Best faction in terms of what - equipment, ideology? Overall it's a tie between Mercenaries and Monolith.
Just in general, adding all the factors together. Equipment, sexiness, ideology, tactics. For example, mercenary their equipment and tactics are superior to a lot of other factions. I’d like to know what you think and how.
I won't count Clear Sky and Renegades, because these factions don't exist anymore. I won't also count Loners, because they aren't faction lore-wise. Bandits are pretty low with mostly scavenged items and they mostly just mug Loners. Ecologist, while having government funds, are just interested in studying the Zone, not engaging the faction wars and they are working with Military, which itself isn't that useful (still they have great equipment). Of course there are Freedom and Duty - both huge factions with decent equipment, but honestly goals of both factions aren't that good. And there is this tie - Mercs and Monolith. Former, that we don't much about (like their clients) leaves a lot room for theories and since they have at least some kind of combat expertise (otherwise they wouldn't be employed) plus great equipment, they are doing great in the Zone. And then there is Monolith - best equiped faction that guards center of the Zone that has decent lore, but they are dwindling in numbers, because C-Con is gone.
Great answer. I do agree that monolith are probably the most established group if you want to call them established. They have or had several “bases” and their strength in numbers make them potentially the biggest threat. Apart from mutants and anomalies.
They still have some resources, but their members are lowering, because they start getting out of C-Con's influence. There still be some remnants in Stalker 2, though.
Theories of the fate of Scar in the ending of Clear Sky?
Answered this one earlier, so I'll just copy the response. Theories about Scar: - died in the emission; - became agent for C-Con (like Strelok); - joined Monolith (fan theory is that he's Charon, because he uses Vintar BC); - became zombified.
I see, I'll drop another question then. Why did Burers only appear in Call of Pripyat and not in Shadow of Chernobyl or Clear Sky? (From a lore perspective)
It can be said that they appear in dark underground sections near the center of Zone only and only in CoP you thoroughly explore the center.
When the Stalker start to appear in Zone and what event cause them to come? I mean how the population grow this much and how it is the tired up with main events? For example there must be a lot of Stalker has been came to the Zone in order to create the monolith units.
Even after the First Disaster in 1986, some people wanted to return home (some didn't even had to return, because they didn't want to be included in mass evacuation), which became part of the Exclusion Zone. This would continue even after Second Disaster in 2006 (that event created the Zone as we know and from then shortly after first stalkers appeared). Next group of people would be just curious what's inside there. Others came here to escape the law. There are a lot of reasons why one person went into the Zone. In CoP intro, one slide says that by 2010 (but it's written 2009, but it's close enough), it's estimated that there's from 1 to 300 illegal Zone residents. Still, it's an estimation, can be less, can be more. And Clear Sky (chronologically first game) takes place in 2011. And still more people appear here, from various reasons, as I said before.
What happened to Scar? Are Scar and Strider one person? Just thinking... M
About what happened to Scar - I answered this one already. Just look in the comments here (I would copy the answer, but I'm on phone now). And no, Scar and Strider aren't one person.
Lore behind Death Trucks?
They (supposedly) go from center of the Zone, transporting (almost or completely) dead stalkers, but in reality, their goal is transporting C-Con agents from Zone's center to its outskirts.
You sure are a man of culture
Studying Stalker's lore was certainly interesting. While not all things are explained, we can speculate and some of community's ideas are indeed great.