The Beastmaster of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, part four: the last bite

They say hope is the first step towards disappointment, and reader, I took one hell of a step. Previously, on my mission survive STALKER 2: The Heart of Chernobyl, having only wild mutants as weapons, I would found clues that someone else is trying to tame the brutal inhabitants of the Zone. With one of his e-collars in his hands and absolutely no prior knowledge their location, I went in search of this soul mate, but the Zone once again slammed the door in my face.

A cold, steely, very literal door to boot. It turns out that the scientist’s laboratory is locked tightly, and will remain so until I am twenty hours deep into the faction war that flared up while I was running around throwing irradiated rats at people in tracksuits. Great. Great! But I keep the collar.

Returning to the quest, it soon becomes apparent that I shouldn’t have sent these rats to their deaths in the first place, since the information I needed from their gang killers is also available on the corpse’s PDA in the nearby cave. . It’s guarded by Burer, a stocky, melted-looking humanoid mutant who nearly kills me with a battery of physically levitating rifles; the power is so seductive that I stay close, trying to lure it out so I can turn it into a weapon in turn. However, he is smarter than his bloodsucking cousins ​​- not least because he knows how to cover his ass – and refuses to pursue, leaving me to continue the investigation alone.

How it was with mine early workThe purely pacifist approach I’m forced to adopt is strangely effective in several successive missions. I get out of the assassination job by bribing the man who gave it to me. I escape his subsequent deception by bloodlessly throwing myself into the sewer. I’m friends with a group of former cultists, and when they send me to retrieve some vital equipment, I just blow past the brain-wiped zombies guarding it. Panic almost sets in when I’m attacked by the Controller, another psychic mutant guy who makes my vision wobble like my eyes are attached to cartoon springs, but he’s also an optional fight that I escape from with only a little skin torn brain. .

And yet I am unhappy. I am supposed to be Bogdan the Beastmaster, the conqueror of abomination, but nevertheless, I advance only in the most passive and least mutant-dependent way. Upon returning to the former cultists’ base, I was rewarded with a fancy camouflaged sniper rifle, as if the universe itself was telling me, “Come on, man, do it right.” No, I must persist. I accept the gun with the same smile I gave my grandmother when she gave me a Pixar’s Cars alarm clock at age 17, and continue to move toward my next goal: a military base where I can install refurbished equipment.

Once again, without encountering any monster buddies along the way, I arrive at the base just after its guards have been gunned down, and then run into the attackers in the tunnels below. These are some defector cult members who are either scouring the base for their own nefarious purposes or just really, really want their sniper rifle back. The corridors are narrow and they outnumber me even with the support of the beasts, but as always, their fully automatic firearms are no match for my escape technique. I climb the ladder and return to the surface, where a man I don’t recognize roars from the top of the control tower that he should have killed me when he had the chance.

This doesn’t narrow things down much – I spent hours wandering around the Zone without a weapon, buddy, there were plenty of chances. Anyway, he’s blocking my path to the gizmo installer, so climbing the tower and neutralizing him will be the only battle I can’t just book out of.

Finding his roost reveals bad news. Plan A failed: he’s upstairs, so even if I go and find the mutant and bring him here, he won’t be able to follow me and kill him for me. Plan B – ignoring him and just hoping I can set up the equipment before he shoots me – won’t work either, since I can’t physically interact with the vessel during the fight. Miraculously, it looks like I may be able to try a surprise Plan C as the Outburst – a deadly release of psychic storm throughout the Zone – begins to hit. As the wind picks up and the sky turns red, I leave the base of the stairs and take refuge in the laboratory below, knowing that the much more open tower will leave my attacker open to charring.

But no – when the sky clears and I go up again, more shots greet me. In my quest for this man to die in a non-bullet way, I forgot that his sect members were immune to surges, and all I achieved was giving him a tea break in the middle of the fight.

It’s no use. I have no options. He will apparently never run out of ammo. I’ve traveled half the Zone, used the power of its mutants to destroy experienced soldiers, and even turned the tables on my personal hunter, but this fool climbing the stairs will make it all pointless. And he still you shoot at me.

You know what? You can return the sniper rifle. Here you go:

And with this I failed. My oath, my promise to never kill with a gun, is now in as many pieces as this guy’s chest. Or is it true? He’s still breathing. He’s still breathing out threats. And I have a dialogue option: just walk away and leave him alone. I think I can get away with it unless he dies.

Nonsense.

It’s all over. As I claim the empty victory of being able to insert one MacGuffin into another, I imagine the spirit of my father and mentor Boris the Beastmaster shaking his head and muttering personal insults. “I’m sorry, father,” I whisper. “Damn,” he replies. Even worse, by abandoning my code, I not only failed the quest, but also lost my entire raison d’être. My meaning to live. What good is a beast master who can’t control beasts?

In fact, I should have known that I would be doomed from the start, and for reasons that go far beyond one dude walking up the stairs. After all, the Zone itself is quite a living being. He is agile enough to kill and reward those who endure him. However, while we can create sensors that allow us to dig through the dirt for artifacts, or scanners that can replenish their anomalous energy, the Zone itself violates many laws of physics and mathematics that are essentially unknowable – not to mention… that they can be understood. And how can you tame something, even its continuation, that you don’t understand?

However, if my journey ends, I cannot allow it to end with such a desperate abandonment of my principles. I’d say I still have the last bit of monster fighting left in me, and getting revenge on one of the tower shooter’s cultist accomplices sounds like the perfect way to exhaust it. I find him hiding a few kilometers to the south and immediately leave to find someone with big teeth to introduce him to.

In a supply shack near the southern swamps, I find exactly what I need: a Bloodsucker, who (unlike that lifeless Buren) happily follows me hundreds of yards back to where I came. Of course the cultist is still here. Shocked and probably completely confused, he shoots at me with an AK, but I have enough first aid kits and I have nothing left to lose. Concentrating, he completely ignores the clawed glare that followed me, and within seconds the Bloodsucker bursts from his cloak to take down the traitor with two blows.

I may not have been able to bend these beasts to my will, but when the body hits the concrete, I am satisfied that I can at least give them a push. Atonement, if not remission of sins. And so, sighing and smiling, I myself go up to the Bloodsucker and accept the verdict of the Zone, quietly falling at the hands of my last chosen comrade.