They are saying hope is step one on the highway to disappointment, and reader, I’ve made a fairly rattling huge step. Beforehand, on my mission to outlive S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2: Coronary heart of Chornobyl with solely wild mutants as my weapons, I’d found clues that another person was making an attempt to tame the Zone’s beastly inhabitants. With certainly one of their digital monitoring collars in hand and completely no preexisting data of their location, I got down to discover this kindred spirit, just for the Zone to as soon as once more slam a door in my face.
A chilly, metal, very literal door besides. It seems that the scientist’s laboratory is locked up tight, and can stay so till I delve about twenty hours deeper into the faction battle that’s bubbled up whereas I’ve been operating round throwing irradiated rats at individuals in tracksuits. Tremendous. Tremendous! However I’m retaining the collar.
Again on the hunt grind, it quickly turns into obvious that I didn’t must ship these rats to their deaths in any respect, as the data I wanted from their bandit-gang slayers can be obtainable on the PDA of a corpse in a close-by cave. It’s guarded by a Burer, a stocky, melted-looking humanoid mutant who nearly kills me with a battery of bodily levitated rifles; an influence engaging sufficient that I stick round, attempting to bait him exterior in order that I’d weaponise him in flip. He’s smarter than his Bloodsucker cousins, although – not least as a result of he is aware of to cowl up his bum – and refuses to chase, leaving me to proceed my investigation alone.
Because it did with my earlier oddjobbing, the purely pacifist method I’m compelled into taking is weirdly efficient on a number of successive missions. I wriggle out of an assassination job by bribing the person giving it to me. I escape his subsequent double-cross by bloodlessly hurling myself right into a sewer drain. I befriend a bunch of former cultists and, after they ship me to retrieve some important equipment, I merely sprint previous the mind-wiped zombiemen guarding it. Panic nearly units in after I’m attacked by a Controller, one other psychic mutie lad who sends my imaginative and prescient lurching round like my eyes are connected to cartoon springs, however he too is an non-compulsory combat that I dash out of with an solely minorly flayed mind.
Nonetheless, I’m sad. I’m imagined to be Bohdan Beastmaster, subjugator of the abominable, and but I’m solely progressing in essentially the most passive, least mutant-reliant method attainable. Upon returning to the ex-cultist base, I’m rewarded with a flowery camouflaged sniper rifle, as if the universe itself have been telling me “Come on, man, do that correctly.” No – I have to persist. I settle for the gun with the identical smile I gave my nan when she gifted me a Pixar’s Vehicles alarm clock at age 17, and proceed on to my subsequent purpose: a army base through which I can set up the recovered tech.
But once more failing to select up any monster buddies alongside the way in which, I arrive on the base moments after its guards are gunned down, then stumble upon the assailants within the tunnels beneath. It’s some turncoat members of the cult, who’re both combing the bottom for their very own nefarious functions or simply actually, really need their sniper rifle again. The corridors are tight they usually’d outnumber me even with beast backup, however as ever, their absolutely automated firearms are not any match for my running-away-jutsu. I scramble up a ladder and again onto the floor, the place a person I don’t recognise bellows from atop a management tower that he ought to have killed me when he had the possibility.
That doesn’t slender it down a lot – I’ve been bumbling across the Zone with no gun out for hours, buddy, there have been possibilities aplenty. Regardless, he’s blocking my path to the gizmo installer, so ascending the tower and neutralising him goes to be one battle I can’t simply ebook it from.
Casing his perch reveals dangerous information. Plan A is a bust: he’s up a ladder, so even when I am going off, discover a mutant, and produce it again right here, it gained’t be capable of observe me up and kill him for me. Plan B, ignoring him and simply hoping I can set up the equipment earlier than he shoots me useless, gained’t work both, as I bodily can’t work together when the receptacle whereas in fight. Miraculously, it appears to be like as if I can attempt an sudden Plan C, as an Emission – a deadly, Zone-wide psychic storm blowout – begins to roll in. Because the winds choose up and the sky turns crimson, I abandon the bottom of the ladder and take cowl within the lab downstairs, understanding the much more uncovered tower ought to go away my attacker open for a charring.
However no – because the sky clears and I climb again up, I’m met with extra gunfire. In my eagerness for this man to die by means of non-bullet means, I’d forgotten that members of his sect are proof against Emissions, and all my cowering had achieved was grant him a mid-fight tea break.
It’s no good. I’m out of choices. He, apparently, won’t ever run out of bullets. I’ve travelled half the Zone, have wielded the ability of its mutants to wipe out skilled troopers, and even turned the tables alone private manhunter, however this dweeb up a ladder goes to render all of it pointless. And he’s nonetheless capturing me.
You understand what? You may have the sniper rifle again. Right here you go:
And with that, I’ve failed. My vow, my promise, by no means to kill with a weapon now lies shattered into as many items as this man’s ribcage. Or is it? He’s nonetheless respiratory. He’s nonetheless gasping out threats. And I’ve the dialogue choice to easily stroll away and go away him be. I believe I can get away with this, so long as he would not die.
Bollocks.
It’ve over. As I declare the hole victory of having the ability to insert one MacGuffin into one other, I image the spirit of my father and mentor, Boris Beastmaster, shaking his head and muttering private insults. “I’m sorry, father”,” I whisper. “Prick,” he responds. It’s worse than that – by abandoning my code, I’ve not simply failed a quest, however have misplaced my total cause for being. My cause to dwell. What good is a beastmaster who can’t grasp beasts?
I ought to have recognized, actually, that I’d be doomed from the beginning, and for causes that broaden effectively past one dude up a ladder. The Zone, in spite of everything, is close to sufficient a dwelling factor itself. It’s mercurial sufficient to each kill and reward those that courageous it. But whereas we are able to construct sensors that permit us scrabble round within the filth for artifacts, or scanners that may replenish their anomalous power, the Zone itself breaks so many legal guidelines of physics and arithmetic that’s primarily unknowable – by no means thoughts comprehensible. And how are you going to tame one thing, even an extension of it, that you just don’t perceive?
Nonetheless, if my highway goes to finish, I can’t let it finish with such a determined abandoning of my rules. I’d say I’ve acquired one final good little bit of monster-wrangling left in me, and vengeance on one of many tower shooter’s cultist co-conspirators feels like the proper solution to exhaust it. I discover him hiding out just a few kilometers south, then instantly go away to go discover one thing with huge tooth to introduce him to.
In a provide shack down close to the southern swamps, I discover simply the factor: a Bloodsucker, who (in contrast to that no-life Buren) is all too comfortable to chase me the tons of of yards again the place I got here. Positive sufficient, the cultist remains to be there. Shocked and doubtless fairly confused, he blasts me his with AK, however I’ve acquired ample medkits and nothing else left to lose. In his focus, he utterly ignores the beclawed glimmer that adopted me in, and inside seconds, the Bloodsucker bursts from his cloak to slash the traitor down in two swings.
I could not have been in a position to bend these beasts to my will, however as that physique hits the concrete, I’m glad that I might no less than give them a nudge. Redemption, if not absolution. And so, with a sigh and a smile, I method the Bloodsucker myself and settle for the Zone’s judgement, falling quietly by the hand of my final chosen comrade.
