Following up on the previous articles, I believe it is time to tackle the “black sheep” of the series, the allegedly weakest of the 3 original STALKER games and make a good case as to why skipping it is a grave mistake for any FPS fans. Today we will be looking at the prologue to the series and the second (in terms of release dates) game in the franchise – S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky!

Clear Sky? Wait, is this not just some small DLC?

A common misconception, but Clear Sky is a full-fledged title and not a DLC to the original. It is a prequel game and its amount of content is similar to what Shadow of Chernobyl offered, which is a lot for a first-person game of this type. 

It also is largely systems-driven so there is decent amount of replay ability baked into it as well, especially once all factions within the game become active.

A prequel… so what has changed compared to the original title?

Clear Sky actually comes with a large chunk of small but meaningful changes to the core gameplay loop. One of the bigger ones is that most artifacts (the mystical items people enter the game’s world for) are now no longer visible and require specialized detectors to be found inside anomalies. While there are a few exceptions to this, this means that players now need to engage even more with anomalous fields to get an artifact, as well as to try and save up or find a higher tier artifact detector, of course with the help of the classical bolts! A nice suit with anomalous resistance attributes helps too.

The game’s flagship feature is the new faction wars system. Basically, several of the game’s factions are vying for control over parts of the game world and each one of them has a faction brain that assigns soldiers to different tasks – namely capturing points and paths inside the Zone and guarding their base(s) and camps while destroying mutants and enemy squads. The player can finish several quests for these factions and then join them, aiding them on their conquest and receive pay as well as some high-tier rewards from the faction commanders. Having good (or bad) relations with factions could also impact some of the late-game main quests too. An excellent concept I’d say, but… we will touch upon it later in greater detail.

The entrance to Duty’s base.

We also have a new weapons and armour customization and upgrades system, a general artifacts rebalance, and most mutants received upgrades to their artificial intelligence (AI), as well as new attacks. We also finally have a sort of fast travel in the game via the Stalker Guides who can be found in certain locations. And factions and their bases have become far deeper and more defined.

Welcome to hell…

Other than that, the usual new locations make an appearance, massively improved graphics, new AI routines, weapons, factions, new balance changes. The locations that are shared with the original received changes, are mostly enlarged, and have had a major facelift.

So, what happens in this prequel?

Since Clear Sky is a prequel, it allows us to see the Zone in its earlier stages, in some ways far more wild but also full with more people inside of it. A place in time before the conflict between the different factions left with manpower shortages.

As always, I do not want to spoil the game’s story but I will say it is still the same amazing setting full of all different kinds of people trying to partake in this new Klondike. Witnessing the Faction Wars as well as the effects of the Great Emissions and some of the more unique anomalies that bend reality was an experience. Meeting and aiding the mysterious faction Clear Sky, heavily armed scientists on a goal to make sure the Zone doesn’t actually kill everyone around it while keeping their own influence on the Zone a secret – the devs were cooking hard here. Also… you do meet one of the most important characters from Shadow of Chernobyl and this time – he is your antagonist.

It should be noted that GSC massively improved their ability to create and enrich the lore as well as the interactions with NPCs and factions – but the main plot does suffer from less mystery, less mystique so to say when compared to its 2007 predecessor. Also, the latter part of the game does feel rushed, the player can enter a point of no return without really knowing it, and the ending sequence is disappointing. It is obvious where the money and time ran out, which is quite unfortunate.

Personally, I think it probably is not the optimal starting point for a new player. It can work, hell some of my friends who are now Stalker fans started with Clear Sky but I do believe Shadow of Chernobyl is the best entry into the series. Or Call of Pripyat. But the entire story and lore of the series is massively enriched by the events of Clear Sky.

Maybe it is a fine enough game, yet it is considered the weakest STALKER title. Why is that?

Well, there is a reason why Clear Sky is seen as the Black Sheep in the series. The first major one is its release state.

Thought Cyberpunk 2077’s launch was rough? Well, it was… let’s be honest, but Clear Sky’s launch was *easily* on the same level of broken. The initial version and even the next 3 whole patches had the game in a nigh broken state. Missing quests, Faction Wars either not working at all or devolving into some chaotic nonsensical mess. Extreme performance issues, unfinishable quests, weapons and armour being bugged, NPCs not spawning properly, quests being unable to trigger or complete – crash after crash after crash, followed by a save file corruption. Yes, there were people able to finish the game. That did happen. But it was a luck of the draw, and by Novikov’s spirit, the probabilities were stacked against the player. To give GSC some credit, they released 10 entire patches to the game and the current version of Clear Sky actually *can* be finished and is about as stable as a modern AAA game is…

One of the most controversial aspect relates to the new balance of weapons and armour. For armour things are mostly good, but the weapons of Clear Sky are 2 steps forward and 2 steps backwards situation. Some of the weapons ladder system from Shadow of Chernobyl was removed – now late game weapons aren’t magically just superior in all ways to mid-game or even some early-game weapons. We also have the new upgrades system in place and the ballistics simulation is improved over what we had in Shadow of Chernobyl, especially with how well different objects and materials in the world react to high penetration fire. However, GSC made a (dare I say) big mistake with the default accuracy values for most upgraded weapons. A deliberate one as can be seen from their ”Making of the game” video, but it absolutely makes shooting stock weapons especially in the early to mid-game pure torture. Also, some of their balancing decisions such as inventing new effective firing distances for real life weapons or changing certain ammo types to be incredibly low velocity was… questionable to say the least.

To make the problem simple, if you upgrade your weapons, especially for accuracy, the gunplay works. If not – things are really annoying.

Another issue is related to the vaunted Faction Wars system. Its issues are numerous but to keep it simple – the game’s maps and the faction commander AI are just not optimal for the task at hand. There are cases where let’s say you are aiding the paramilitary Duty faction in their war against Freedom (a more anarchist group) and your faction’s soldiers cannot advance forward simply because a group of neutral or friendly Stalkers are in their way. Or occupy a position Duty would like. This is an AI limitation as well as a level design problem – these large open maps are great for the player, but they are still too small and full of choke points for the AI to have the ability to attempt complicated strategic orders and encirclements.

It bears mentioning also that most side quests are relatively simple and uninteresting. Unless the game’s systems make it cool by adding unknown human or mutant influence, it usually boils down to a simple fetch quest. Of course, there are a few exceptions and the Faction War side quests are more interesting.

There are other minor or not so minor problems of course, it is a large game. But I do understand how these major issues led to its (relatively) poorer reception especially on launch.

But when it works oh boy!

We have our own zoo here :O!

When it works as GSC envisioned it – it is so fun and engaging. Among the most fun I’ve ever had in a Stalker title, or video game in general. Their concept was strong, very very very strong. It just needed more time in the oven and stronger hardware to work.

What about the technology?

The engineering behind Clear Sky’s visuals cannot be denied. It levied DX10 and later 10.1 to great effect, adding more advanced rendering techniques alongside improved texture quality and model complexity. Clear Sky may have launched a bit over a year after Shadow, but it is a noticeable improvement in visual fidelity, which is surprising considering it started from an already beautiful game. Of particular mention is the volumetric lighting, the addition of early Ambient Occlusion, a super-heavy A-Tested MSAA anti-aliasing technique, and the awesome dynamic rain and wetting effects. Even to this day, in 2024, there are times where Clear Sky’s lighting and weather just come together – and it still can impress.

The art direction being sunnier (hah!) is also in my opinion more fitting for the Zone. It is supposed to be this hauntingly beautiful place, that is seldomly as ugly as it is dangerous. And Clear Sky captures that well.

I don’t know if it truly defeats the heavyweight – Crysis Warhead of its day. But it absolutely did stand alongside it with losses and victories against the top dogs of that era.

If I had to talk about aspects where GSC’s engineers weren’t successful though, well its animation quality. They made notable strides, deleting old animations, added brand new and fairly good ones, alongside inverse kinematics. There is a major upgrade over Shadow in terms of animation quality, but it still cannot stand next to that era of AAA games on this one aspect.

Modding it until it stops crashing!

Being the middle game in the original trilogy, Clear Sky was cursed with having the least amount of major mods released for it. However, that is still more than most games and to this day it has a small dedicated modding community, plus the modders working on its sequel – Call of Pripyat, can also generally help for Clear Sky as well. It does help that its SDK (software development kit) and even source codes have leaked online though.

So do not worry, you will be eating good with Clear Sky’s modding. It is in the high tier of modding among PC Games.

So how do I recommend entering the world of Clear Sky?

With all said and done I do believe Clear Sky is a good game. But a good game with multiple silly issues, some of which are bugs, while others run far deeper than that. However, for any and all fans of open world FPS games or people who liked any other STALKER title – I do recommend it. Highly. The Red Forest deserves to be experienced, the defense at Yantar, the new Agroprom Underground and Clear Sky’s struggle in the Great Swamps or the fighting in Limansk. All STALKER fans should experience this and honestly – perhaps all FPS or open world game fans should as well. Though there is a caveat that I will make here – it is advisable to use the Sky Reclamation Mod if you are on PC.

This fan made patch mod for the game incorporates many fixes and optimizations that make the game far more stable. With it, Clear Sky is a whole different beast and runs better and becomes downright stable by 2024 Gaming standards. Some of the Faction War mechanics issues are also addressed. The mod/fan patch also comes with certain optional installs, a few of which I would recommend to would be Clear Sky players. The “Reasonable Machinegun nest lethality” mod fixes what seems to be an oversight in the ability of a certain weapon in the game, making it strong but no longer unreasonably strong. The “Reduced Grenade Spam” option is also something I recommend. Yes, it does make the game easier, but the default setting is nonsensical, so if you are new, trust me on this one. Finally, for those who want relatively realistic weapons out of the gate, the “Realistic Weapons Ballistics Addon”. This makes weapons accurate and powerful from the get go and makes some upgrade paths and ammo types no longer unusable. Do note – enemies benefit from this as well and upgrading is still important! Lastly, removing enemy map markers from the map is a good idea too for immersion.

Looking for an artefact inside the epic Symbiont anomaly

Am I slightly cheating with these suggestions? I mean it isn’t exactly vanilla gameplay at this point. Perhaps. But Clear Sky is a game that deserves being experienced and this is one of the best ways to do so.

Come around the campfire!

Unfortunately, such mods do not yet exist on consoles, but they still get to experience a fully patched version of the game that runs quite well! It is slightly more fixed than the official PC Patch 10 version so things are not all bad.
And with that we end our look into STALKER Clear Sky! An imperfect, ambitious game with a soul and one that I believe is still more than worth experiencing! 

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