well the Ukrainan military is by far the largest force, and there are also a lot of mercenaries hired by western interests fight there as well. And mostly everyone still has to resist being killed by mutants and anomalies while in the zone, which makes long term control difficult.
Yeah, and the lore behind how the Zone exists and what it can do gets real fucking wild if you dig deeply enough. There's stuff about the Monolith's obelisk-like deity possibly being, like, a satellite thing sent by aliens that crashed out of orbit a thousand years ago, to the Zone being a conscious entity that is adapting to intruders and growing stronger for it.
Most of the memes of this series are, like, deep-fried pictures of Ukrainian military dudes saying "it's gonna get way worse" and CHEEKI BREEKI IV DAMKE, but the actual lore of STALKER is weird as shit.
the Monolith’s obelisk-like deity possibly being, like, a satellite thing sent by aliens that crashed out of orbit a thousand years ago
the real interesting thing about that is that it's basically a leftover from the real early stages of development (before even the Chernobyl setting had been settled on), when it actually was just a 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith, complete with the whole idea that it causes beings arounds it to "evolve" (which was how the mutants were explained away). They changed it later on, but still kept that aspect of the lore as speculation by in-game characters
well the Ukrainan military is by far the largest force, and there are also a lot of mercenaries hired by western interests fight there as well. And mostly everyone still has to resist being killed by mutants and anomalies while in the zone, which makes long term control difficult.
And aren’t some characters theorizing that the zone is growing?
Yeah, and the lore behind how the Zone exists and what it can do gets real fucking wild if you dig deeply enough. There's stuff about the Monolith's obelisk-like deity possibly being, like, a satellite thing sent by aliens that crashed out of orbit a thousand years ago, to the Zone being a conscious entity that is adapting to intruders and growing stronger for it.
Most of the memes of this series are, like, deep-fried pictures of Ukrainian military dudes saying "it's gonna get way worse" and CHEEKI BREEKI IV DAMKE, but the actual lore of STALKER is weird as shit.
the real interesting thing about that is that it's basically a leftover from the real early stages of development (before even the Chernobyl setting had been settled on), when it actually was just a 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith, complete with the whole idea that it causes beings arounds it to "evolve" (which was how the mutants were explained away). They changed it later on, but still kept that aspect of the lore as speculation by in-game characters