I think this is why I played as much as a did, despite being confused by feeling like I was missing out on whatever was supposed to be happening in the dream palace. And I really did like the base-building gameplay loop. It’s just that I didn’t feel there was much (any?) advancement left for me.
As with playing games like Metro and Stalker, that’s something I really appreciated as well, even if I knew a lot of it went over my head. It’s fascinating watching game developers from the other side of the Iron Curtain processing the fallout of the Cold War. So this is the sort of stuff brewing in their heads while I was fed a diet of Australian post-apocalyptic high-octane mixed with equal parts American testosterone?
In terms of gameplay, perhaps. But wouldn’t you say that in cultural terms, in terms of themes, or even just tone, don’t you feel comparisons are relevant? To me, Metro, Stalker, and Chernobylite are similar for more than just their “Soviet” settings.
For what it’s worth, you could have run into one of the game’s many bugs. I had a relatively bug-free playthrough but later discovered that many players had gotten stuck due to a character disappearing, a mission not progressing or something else.
Interesting difference of perception there! If I were to pick games with a similar theme and tone to Chernobylite, I’d think of System Shock and FEAR, perhaps Mass Effect, before those, though certainly Chernobylite has some similarities to Metro.
Stalker (mainly meaning Shadow of Chernobyl here) is a shooter driven by a “you mystery”. The plot is driven by you trying to find out what happened to you, there’s no personal relationships in the story. As a broader theme, Stalker explores what happens given a lawless society. The Zone has a full society with multiple groups, it’s effectively separate from the rest of the world, so Stalker explores what kind of groups could arise and how they can interact. There are nearly zero ethical choices in the game and the only ideological conflict is between the Freedom and Duty factions, which is also covered in just a few lines of dialogue. Notably, the world as a whole is fine in Stalker, and most people are in the Zone by choice.
Metro is a post-apocalypse game that is thematically a cousin of Fallout (and they’ve said Fallout is a big influence). The plot is about you trying to survive and help your small section of society survive (like Fallout’s save-the-vault). Social themes are also post-apocalyptic as there’s a few competing societies that have arisen and Metro goes into some depth about their beliefs, which are very much based on real politics, as the game has literal Stalinists and Nazis. The game’s quite heavy on choices.
Chernobylite is not post-apocalyptic, neither does it involve any society. The Zone is mostly empty, there’s no factions there, only the soldiers. Instead it’s a game about character relationships. The plot is driven by a character relationship - you’re trying to find out what happened to your fiancee. Then you meet other characters and develop relationships with them. This is very Mass Effect. There’s a mission for you to recruit each character, and a mission for you to do something they ask. There are many choices, similar to Metro, but in Chernobylite these choices affect your character relationships, which are a key resource.
The endings of Stalker and Chernobylite do ask similar questions on similar moral themes, but that’s just the last 20 minutes of both games.
I’m very tempted to say that this is a good showcase of terrible gaming journalism.
Chernobylite doesn’t try to be a Stalker-style game. It’s very upfront about it, and it doesn’t take much time with Chernobylite to discover that it is indeed completely different. Yet every reviewer had to include some comparisons to Stalker, which IMO just reinforces the incorrect idea that the games are closely related.
I finished this game and liked it, though I admit I used a story choice guide. I realized early on that I couldn’t predict how characters would react to decisions – or even how many chances I would get to influence the characters – so I opted to save myself some reloading and just skip that part of the game.
That said, the game does have a system to redo your old choices and gives you plenty of the resource that lets you do that, so maybe you can get through it without a guide. I also like that you activate this system by building and using a Suicide Booth in your base.
What surprised me was how much I got into the aesthetics of the base building. I was genuinely interested in making my warehouse a friendly and hospitable a place for my weird group of murderers. I fussed about stuff that didn’t even have a mechanical benefit, it got to Sims level for me. 20 minutes spent murdering ghouls in the dark, followed by 20 minutes putting potted plants and cabinets in everybody’s sleeping areas.
I gotta say it doesn’t feel like much of a stretch for me. Both games are exploration shooters with scavenging and inventory management, both set in the same geographic area, where there are pockets of the world where the supernatural bleeds in. I liked both games and appreciate the differences but I’d still recommend one to somebody who said they liked the other.
I’m not seeing it - they’re both FPS games where you mainly shoot other humans and the odd mutant, mixed with some light survival elements and stealth, all set in the the same locale with similar environmental hazards with your overall goal being to infiltrate the depths of the powerplant for McGuffin-y reasons.
Sure, Stalker leans more heavily into the action, so the pacing is different, but I can’t see the justification in saying it’s ‘terrible’ to assert that there are a great many similarities between the two and to consequently contrast them.
Great breakdown of how you’d describe the differences among the three games, Solver! Thanks for that. From my own perspective, I’d say you’re probably giving too much credit to overarching narratives in games where the overarching narrative never felt entirely coherent to me. My comments about the value of discussing them jointly have more to do with moment-to-moment gameplay and tone, so you’re right that it’s a matter of our respective perceptions. If I were still podcasting, I’d probably try to badger into joining me to talk about it on a podcast!
Again, I think this comes down to the similarities in the moment-to-moment gameplay of creeping around lushly realized Ukrainian apocalyptic landscapes where malevolent “anomalies” are lurking everywhere. Whether it’s open-world like Stalker or mission-based like Chernobylite doesn’t really factor into my boots-on-the-ground experiences in these games.
In other words, if I were writing about these games, I’d definitely be guilty of same charges you’re leveling at other reviewers. :)
You may well be very accurately pointing out my personal flaw there, I do pay a lot of attention to narratives and always end up exerting mental effort to put things into that context while playing. So I’d say the narrative in e.g. Stalker feels quite coherent to me but I’ve probably thought too much about it. And Chernobylite is probably the kind of game where you have to get into the narrative or else it gets boring a third of the way through.
What did you think of the late game twist about your character? It felt pretty out of nowhere to me, and very, very similar to the twist in STALKER. Good chance I missed some of the game’s foreshadowing though.
Somewhat mixed feelings there. I was pretty sure I’d figured out the twist but it was a different twist after all. I thought that the Black Stalker would be a time-travelling version of you but the actual twist was that he’s the actual Igor, while you’re Igor’s son. It did seem a bit out there and not quite what was foreshadowed, but then I liked how it fit with some of the game’s elements. For instance, it takes place in modern day ca 2020, meaning Igor would be at least in his mid-50s and he’s too physically proficient for that.
Stalker’s twist was better for two reasons. One, the twist in Stalker is well before the ending, so it’s more impactful. You play the last few levels while knowing that truth, which changes how you perceive things. And second, Stalker’s twist is actually possible to miss! It’s nicely implemented in that it rewards paying attention. If you don’t go talk to that character (I forget who), or if you don’t return to the hideout after the conversation, you’ll miss it. The game pushes you towards discovering the twist but does not force you.
If you’ll pardon the edited quote, I would apply this one fix to your post, at which point we’re in perfect accord.
And to that point about our different flaws priorities, I honestly couldn’t tell you much about the story of Chernobylite. I ran through the dialogues and enjoyed some of the vignettes and voice actors, but I don’t really remember stuff about the characters and motivations. My approach to Chernobylite was like my approach to a lot of games with stories that aren’t grabbing me for whatever reason: I focus on playing the systems and I just let the story beats happen without paying much attention*.
So when I think back to Stalker, Metro, and Chernobylite, I mainly remember the moment-to-moment gameplay instead of the overarching narratives. I should also confess I only ever dabbled with Stalker and I barely scratched the surface of the last Metro. I’m by no means an authority on these games.
-Tom
* That’s probably why I was so preoccupied with what was going on that dream palace. It was literally a museum of story beats, but I was sure there was some hefty gameplay system in there I was missing!
Yeah as much as I hate Ubisoft style popups that explicitly explain game mechanics the story museum could have used one.
“This place lets you spend Chernobylite to retroactively change any story decision you previously made. It’s optional. You can get back here by killing yourself.”
It’s probably the most creative mechanic in the game, too. Chernobylite’s scavenging, base building and gunplay are par for the course. Whether you enjoy the game’s particular implementations or not, they’re all fairly standard mechanics.
The “dream palace” - I think the game used “fractal timeline” as the name - is like an integrated save-scumming system that’s well presented graphically and even somewhat ties into the story. A character hates you because of something you did? Go to the fractal timeline and change that action into a different outcome. Hey, it’s like Old World’s undo button ;)
Yep, that’s definitely how it works in the game. The problem for me was this part:
I never understood why it would matter if a character hates me, so I never understood why I would want to “rewind” and try again. I mean, this was the entire gameplay in Life Is Strange, so I got it there. But in this game? Why would I care about it when I seemed to have everything I needed to beat the missions and progress the base just fine?
Definitely exhibit number… whatever for the game explaining itself poorly.
If a character dislikes you enough, they’ll just leave. At that point, the problem should become clear - you have the planning board in your base, which will show that you’re missing a role for the final mission, so of course you can no longer achieve the best outcome. But the game doesn’t really spell it out until you actually upset a character enough to lose them.
