Playing Stalker 2 is making me sad bros. I'm so old. I can feel my 20 year old self and his memories of playing SoC, like a ghost haunting me as I play. Why can't it be like, playing SoC at 20 was one kind of magic, and playing Stalker 2 now is a different kind of magic? Why is the magic simply gone? Why am I still here if I'm this robotic husk and the "richness" of life has bled away? It's like my soul has gone colorblind and lost its sense of smell. The world is a grey dead flat nothing.

>>714558196 (OP)
love is the answer

You see anon when you played Stalker SoC it felt like a new experience, when you play Stalker 2 you have new expectations in place where Stalker 2 is never able to meet due to all the devs being dead probably

>>714558302
That's partly it but it's like my soul is literally too old for fun or immersion now. I can't remember the world being lit up with possibility and mystery. I know too much, and all it does is make me 30% more efficient at "jobs." I want to go back.

I went to the rookie village and Rostok and for a brief second the nostalgia overwhelmed me so hard that I could feel my younger self welling up inside me. It was like the feeling when you wake up from a wonderful dream and reality's "thinness" sets back in. My younger self experienced meaning and immersion like he was on the surface of the sun and the best I can do, in rare moments, is light a candle.

>>714558421
It could also be that Stalker 2 is shit.

>>714558421
You need create the atmosphere that allows you to explore STALKER through a new lens. Community can do that, but the question is where. There's /vg/ here, but I feel everyone is just too jaded these days. I'd say find another anon or friend with the same interest for it and explore together. At the end of the day is all about mindset and perspective. If you had to live a year isolated in some bumfuck nowhere and you only had a PC without access to the internet and Stalker installed, I bet you would make the most of it.