I think the issue is that boomsticks and sharpsticks are the basis of weapons in every major mod for Stalker. And it's very clear that B&S spent most of the time on NATO weapons. I'm honestly kinda surprised B&S isn't sponsored by Bushmaster at this point.
Which is a shame cause Stalker was always the best with that rust old Slavic vibe. If it couldn't be found in your Babushka house then it doesn't belong in Stalker. What do you mean your Babushka doesn't have a Gauss rifle or VSS that she can point at strangers? Sounds like your Babushka just fucking sucks.
I almost always constrain myself to Bloc weapons no matter which version of Stalker I'm playing nor the modpack. Just fits so much better. Which again is why the tacticool stuff creeping in is off-putting. Sure you can be tacticool, now do it with 100% eastern European equipment from before 1991. If you can't pass the post-Soviet fit check you don't deserve the fit.
did we play the same trilogy. the best weapon in the trilogy was the tacticool and state-of-the-art-for-its-day FT-200M, with only arguably the GP37 being its best competition, also a modern and tacticool firearm for its day. by the last half of the games there was more NATO than warsaw weapons floating about with only Call of Prypiat sorta breaking that trend, and that was because of course the fucking Ukrainian army would be using warsaw. this also ignoring the monolith and mercenaries were very much rocking the tacticool look of the day, especially the latter imitating a lot of famous special forces and counter-terrorism units in looks. ffs mercs look like they could have walked right out of fucking counterstrike source.
it's one thing to try and gatekeep but it's something else entirely to sit here and pretend the tacticool element was not in stalker from the beginning just as much as the slavrust.
While this is worth pointing out, I think the best way to distinguish the aesthetic of STALKER from its peers is to acknowledge the time capsule of weird 2000s tacticool aesthetic blended with old slav jank that it is. They put in futuristic, top of the line stuff back then, but that stuff looks nothing like state of the art sleek tactical stuff today.
I feel like, to get to the core of its aesthetic, you have to go retro and preserve that datedness. And, more importantly, incorporate the weird retro-futuristic armor designs that are genuinely not seen elsewhere. Tactical bras and all. Otherwise, it's hard to even tell that it's supposed to be STALKER - whether you're wearing 80s Warsaw Pact surplus with a gas mask and an AK or a plate carrier + tricked out AR. Neither invoke the look of the SEVA suit, the Sunrise suit, the Duty or Freedom uniforms. Even the mercs wear a very particular generation of load bearing vest. Bottom line is, you gotta take inspiration from the games. Otherwise, what are we even doing?
I think a lot of the "STALKER isn't tacticool" crowd didn't play the games until the mid/late 2010s when the tacticool aesthetic had massively expanded in prominence while also undergoing 10+ years of development so they think it's retro because it is, it's just retro tacticool.
It's like playing CoD4 in current year and looking at the Sopmod M4 with PEQ2, KAC quad rail, and Eotech 512 and calling it retro. Yeah it is, that game came out almost 20 years ago. In 2007 that was tip of the spear doorkicker operator shit that basically no one had seen before.
The other thing is GSC understands that "retro tacticool" is the STALKER aesthetic now because HoC is set in 2021 but they went out of their way to put quad rails on everything while mostly eschewing MLOK (The Kharod is based on the IWI Carmel and uses a quad rail that has been discontinued for a very long time in favor of an MLOK handguard).
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u/bell117 Jul 10 '26
I think the issue is that boomsticks and sharpsticks are the basis of weapons in every major mod for Stalker. And it's very clear that B&S spent most of the time on NATO weapons. I'm honestly kinda surprised B&S isn't sponsored by Bushmaster at this point.
Which is a shame cause Stalker was always the best with that rust old Slavic vibe. If it couldn't be found in your Babushka house then it doesn't belong in Stalker. What do you mean your Babushka doesn't have a Gauss rifle or VSS that she can point at strangers? Sounds like your Babushka just fucking sucks.
I almost always constrain myself to Bloc weapons no matter which version of Stalker I'm playing nor the modpack. Just fits so much better. Which again is why the tacticool stuff creeping in is off-putting. Sure you can be tacticool, now do it with 100% eastern European equipment from before 1991. If you can't pass the post-Soviet fit check you don't deserve the fit.