Can STALKER 2 be the best open world game to date?

Okay. Wish it was in third person view, but I know that takes skill that small devs like this don't have.

My god you bitch about everything on planet Earth.

No. It’s impossible for it to beat Tears of the Kingdom.

totk can't even beat tw3, let alone ER, or even worse, ER and sotet combined.

Well, if you add MS after the word everything and that's you. So, you can't talk.

As for the question, NO.

@hardwenzen: Stalker 2 open world gonna get its cheeks clapped by Tears of the Kingdom’s open world. I feel bad that you’re trying to hype it to levels that it won’t be able to achieve.

For a child, sure. A nintendo wearing fanboy goggles millennial? Sure. Normal person? Nobody even thinks of totk when "best open world" is in conversation.

I shit on Concord more than anything currently on the Xbox, so calm down.

@hardwenzen: Didn’t you get the memo? “Normal” people are the minority.

Couldn't finish my second playthrough of Witcher 3 because there was too much in it. CDPR doesn't understand brevity or urgency. They sabotaged their own story by putting in 1200 side quests. Like there's a job or someone yelling for help every five feet IRL. NPCs are mostly so boring to listen to. Movement and fighting of course weren't good either.

Elden Ring sucks and FromSoftware has become very boring.

Flawed as it is and as much as I miss the old Zelda formula, Tears of the Kingdom (and before that Breath of the Wild) was the only open world to really grab me these last several years.

The ones that could even answer the question that i am asking. Those casuals you're referring to haven't played anything else but a pokemon game and totk, so their opinion about Stalker is as relevant as 343i in 2024.

@hardwenzen: Sorry but you’re simply outnumbered. You’ll have no other choice but to acquiesce. It is what it is. You need to understand your situation here. 🤷‍♂️

Outnumbered by irrelevancy. I agree, and it makes no difference. There are more ants than people, so?😎What you need to understand is that those that don't know any better, can't vote because they don't know what they're talking about. Never forget that.

Found some of my old Witcher 3 comments. No idea why it's so beloved.

"Way too much Ubisoft shit in this game that I don't remember in my first playthrough about when the game came out. There are entertaining quests, but they're separated by so much copy and paste. How many times am I going to come across a dead body with a note by the water with a chest below? Just getting back to a quest giver in another part of the map takes far longer than I expect because of the fifty question mark icons in between. It doesn't need all that. Of course you can ignore it, but because it's an RPG and everything is in numbered levels and stats doing so makes it harder on yourself."

"Know what they should have added? Double-tap evade (left Alt) to roll, freezing up the Spacebar and allowing you to climb and jump as usual. So that when you are in a fight and an enemy is on a platform above you or you are trying to escape from a fight to a higher platform, Geralt doesn't keep rolling into the low wall like a moron."

"My plan was to focus more on the side quests this time, since I didn't enjoy the story that much years ago. But I feel buried. There is too much to do, too many odd jobs. The game has been telling me to find a boat to Skellige for hours and hours now and I'm still swamped in Novigrad, not even counting all the Witcher contracts I left open, which go beyond the city. No sense of urgency, no penalty for being obsessive."

"The excessive use of journals and audio logs in modern games is so abundantly stupid. Villager had time to write all this to no one as bandits were out to kill. For what?"

@hardwenzen: But isn’t relevancy dictated by the majority? I know that it can be a shock to the system to learn of one’s irrelevance. You just need to accept this. Please understand.

Majority, yes, but when they're no better than ants, why should i care? They're not even Summer Ants either.

@hardwenzen: You were just trying to get ahead of the curve on that one.

Always, i live ahead of the curve.

@hardwenzen: Ants will one day rule the world forcing mankind to work in the sugar mines. I for one welcome our new overlords.

And here I was thinking playing the game was required to make the claim of best ever.🤷🏽‍♂️

Doubt it but I'll still play it.

STALKER games are more of semi open. but if count STALKER 1 already best non linear sandbox game ever made.

so why cant STALKER 2?

now the question is will it be better than Original? that's hard to beat.

There's a certain section of gamers🐄🤡 that will have to answer this once they see youtube walkthroughs.

May i suggest theradbrad for the folk who's system aren't getting stalker 2👍

Better than anything coming to PS this year.

While some claim Gamepass is not the future, it continues to get bigger and better.

for its genre then yes, it's definitely possible. not much competition in the semi / open world survival horror genre though.

i'm still in the wait and see camp. it's got big shoes to fill and a lot to prove after going through (a non self inflicted) development hell and potentially the pressure to make it accessible to a wider audience. if it can get anywhere close to the atmosphere and level of immersion like the first games whilst being mechanically sound, i'll be happy

You need more than just good graphics to make a good open world game. STALKER was mechanically solid. But the lack of info they provide regarding the gameplay is deeply concerning.

Breath and Tears both utilized their open world in a way that interacted well with the game's mechanics. Elden Ring had you look for a cave symbol on the map, mount Torrent, face the general direction and hold forward... yawn.

Not a chance because everyone knows...

lol :P

Haven’t played it yet,haven’t played the first one either. Looks good though.

Stop coping. Breath and Tears are completely forgotten for a reason.

But they aren't. If they were they would not have been brought up in this thread.

When a system doesn't have anything recent in the open world space, totk is the only thing you can even discuss about.

I decided to buy it on GoG. Wish that CDKey had an option for GoG over Steam but oh well🤷‍♂️

I'm more concerned about its optimization and bugs

DF played it, and said that it was pretty well optimized, even on the Xbox.

Sadly Gothic exists.

@hardwenzen:

Yes and it's on Xbox/Game Pass and not Paperweight Station 5

Maybe, maybe not.

With games like Elden Ring and Zelda out there? Hell no.

Bro, i need more effort from your responses.

Never. STALKER games are not very good , only Atmosphere is perfect.

Best game ever. maybe.

Not on PS5 :)

I think it'll be tough to compare it to big open world RPGs.

I suspect from a atmosphere/immersion standpoint it'll be up there if they execute properly. I'm not expecting much from the story - and I know, a great story alone can't make for a great game. But it can help invest you in the world and what you are doing. That is why I'd take RDR2 or The Witcher 3 over Elden Ring even though ER is much stronger from a gameplay perspective - because I had no idea WTF was going on in Elden Ring, I just ran around killing stuff. So I always felt a bit detached from the experience even though stuff often looked really cool and interesting.

Those other two games had me invested in the story and setting and that helps with immersion and escapism, which is really the point of singleplayer games IMO.

having said that, Stalker 2 should have a sort of baked-in story premise of surviving in the Zone that will help with some of that even if the actual plot of the game is nonsense. I just hope if its bad it doesn't get in the way of the good bits.

probably yes i cant wait play it on my xsx

Came here to say the same ... Stalker looks pretty, but when it comes to true sandbox game, TotK is unmatched, maybe Stalker 2 can "beat" games like Horizon or Assassin's Creed, you know games at its level.

@madsnakehhh: Yeah, it definitely has a chance against those games.

I'm not sold on it yet.

Hot take: stalker 2 is being overhyped, the franchise had 1 game from 15 years

That wasn't good at all at launch and but was fixed by modders to make it more enjoyable and then it gained a following.

I haven't seen any gameplay that has wowed me, visually impressive, but haven't seen any gameplay that makes me go "oh man I really want to play that, looks fun!"

Hopefully it's great