Just finished the game solo. Absolutely AMAZING!
The customize system is incredibly good, and tons of QOL makes itr2 a masterpiece but with one huge problem.
This game doesn't feel like a ITR game, its kind like losing the very essence of original ITR.
Gameplay is great but the whole atmosphere is ... weird...I'd like to say.
Lets consider ITR as an movie.
In ITR, we are exactly the movie protagonist, because there is no actually people around.
The white girl is more like just one of those strange statues.
All we have is a mission terminal and a train, lifeless and empty.
We don't who we are, where we are or where to go, and no one to talk, so we have no choice but to explore.
Because we can't make any interaction with anyone, so if there is an real actor as the explorer, he will still just exploring the radius like we did.
So we were wandering in the empty world inside the radius, tried to find something meaningful, and this is what made us explorers.
What we found were just notes and voice echoes, some remain of people once existed.
We were all alone from the beginning to the end, which made up the lonely depressing empty atmosphere of ITR, and I absolutely like it.
And for ITR2, its a completely different story.
I understand devs want to make ITR2 different than ITR, and trying new storytelling style is fine, but the problem is...
There are actually people around, guide and supervisor, AND WE CANNOT INTERACT WITH THEM, WHICH COMPLETELY BROKE THE IMMERSION!
If ITR2 is a movie, the explorer will 100% doing some talking with the guide, and throw tons of questions to the supervisor. Because there two are real people, they can actually talk and respond!
But as a player we cannot do any of those. The guide is our buddy, but we cannot even interact with him except hold his hand when moving across the maps, and we cannot send messages to the supervisor.
Unable to interact will directly throw us out of immersion, remind us that they are just scripted NPCs every time we see them.
Or in STALKER not ITR2, we can TALK to every friendly NPC, which is to some degree more immersive than ITR2!
And on top of that, we can only find really few notes in ITR2, which made the world so empty in the bad direction.
Guess we should be able to find some notes or voice echoes every time we break a explorer statue, which is different from ITR, and will enhance the atmosphere of ITR2.
I like ITR2 so much for its gameplay, but yeah maybe the atmosphere need some improvement.
