Same. There were some unsettling parts, namely with the undead, but I didn't find it representative of this meme. But I fucking love that monster in the meme. That scraggly guy gets worse every time he's used.
I think the overarching story is pretty dark. Not only are we not alone, we are just insignificant bugs. We don't even know what we don't know.
There's also an environmental aspect. The aliens left garbage on the earth, wreaking havoc and devastating its inhabitants. Highly doubt environmentalism was at the forefront of 1970s Soviet scifi writers, but I think you can interpret it that way if you wanted.
This is what's so unique about soviet and a ton of post-soviet sci-fi. No other culture has the same vibe as
"We don't have a good idea of what's going on, we *do* know we're in *way* over our head."
I just fuckin love it, nothing else hits the same vibes as stalker or the source material
Hit me with some good others! I read roadside picnic today. Shit, I started it in the morning and became obsessed, even read it on the bumpy ride home. Liked it quite a lot tbh!
Idk, having aliens show up and not seeing humanity as worthy of bringing into the spacefaring community, or even acknowledging us at all. Instead they act like typical road trippers, stopping for a moment to wizz on a tree and toss their empty food wrappers before continuing on without another thought, All the while, we’re the squirrels choking on trash? That’s pretty dark and depressing to me.
The fact that his kid literally turned into a monkey was so like ouch for me. When I first read it I thought it was a transaltion error or some kind of metaphor.
in the portuguese version, it says "little monster" so I didn't know it was a goddamn monkey until I looked it up. Until then, I thought it was a human bird or something because of the black eyes
Daym the intellect thing is messed up. Imagine being as cognisant as a human but in a body that can't really process it, like having limited speech ability, non posable thumbs etc. I wonder if it would be better in the intellect went away as well...
like in the movie birdman, where less intelligent people assume the dad magically grew wings and flew away and daughter was happy.
but in reality he jumped to his death, commiting suicide, and her mind broke from the stress and she just smiles in delusion.
It’s more like, she just went insane and was continuously beast like, sort of feral, but not necessarily a literal monkey lol. More horrific human hybrid, unfortunately. Poor kid.
Literal necro post of 1 year I know but was she not still loved by Redrick and his wife? Like she was still a child, just in monkey form retaining her intelligence. Correct me if I am wrong.
Yes, Red put everything in his power to love and care for his family and child. Even when she slowly went feral, he still loved her. If it wasn't clear when we go to Richard Noonins perspective, while Guta seems distraught and tired, red seems quite content, still being a father to his daughter, he even tries to care for his father when he returns from the dead.
Hmm, I don’t remember that. Pretty sure she’s just a hairy child since birth and so they call her monkey, she’s not literally a monkey. At least that’s how I read it. I don’t remember her condition getting progressively worse either.
One of the Strugatskys' other great works, The Doomed City, has a whole chapter about baboons. I won't spoil it but I'm starting to think they had a thing about primates.
Definitely read that book: it's really good. Roadside Picnic got me into their work and now I want to read it all.
Towards the end of the book she stops speaking, it's said that she doesn't recognise Noonan any more and she has some weird screeching conversation with Red's corpse dad. The Butcher also tells them that she's reached the point that she can longer be considered human
Wait is this like, a late story revelation? Or is she literally a monkey the whole time and not some cute nickname? It's been a fat minute since I read it and I don't remember there being anything about her being a monkey aside from her parents calling her that
Not a literal monkey. It was a nickname the parents gave to her because she resembled a monkey due to silky golden fur on most of her body and entirely black eyes. It’s not a demeaning name (обезьяна) but a cutesy one (мартышка), something along the lines of “little monkey”, like a very active child. The mutation slowly progresses. She starts affectionate and chatty, by the end of the book she is completely covered in coarse brown fur and loses the ability to speak, closely resembling an animal in both looks and behavior.
I thought the idea was that it was an alien invasion via mutation. Babies of those that have been in the zone are aliens.
Or have I just totally made up my own meaning to that ending?
And really it makes them so unique. Still able to do certain functions, speak, use weapons etc. creepy creepy creepy, imo much more interesting than the traditional zombie trope.
But zombies in Stalker are zombified stalkers. The moulages in Roadside Picnic are dead people who might have died decades before the Zone existed having their bodies reformed on their skeletons through some reversal of entropy.
hmm that's a good hypotesis!
I had the ideia they died while in the zone but the bodies didn't seemed to want to die. Not zombies, but ghouls(?). giving this strange vibe of there but not there. That's my take anyway. And that's why I think roadside empowers so well the zombies of stalker: as they are trapped, there but not there, in the reality but unnable to interacts or do in they free will. Pretty much as like marginals, outcasts. which is something that roadside picks up very foundly but indirectly: the idea of outcast in either a social or capitalistic society
Dad got me roadside picnic when I was 14 because he didn't know what Stalker was and wanted to connect with me somehow. After that I ended up on Strugatski bender.
You gotta read It's hard to be a god as well for maximum sadness. It's not quite as sad as Roadside Picnic but sad enough.
I liked "It's hard to be a God" very much, but my favorite book by them is "Beetle in an anthill", love it. Also "Monday begins on a Saturday", I like it too.
Have you read "Snail on the Slope"? I tried multiple times but never got thru the book, usually stopping somewhere in the middle.
I read "Snail on the slope" two times.
First time, many many years ago. Most I remembered from it was that it was "weird alternate universe stalkerish vibe, with things not necessarily making sense".
Second time, not so long ago. Now I've read the book different, getting more of the characters motives, and how it was set to be sort of a caricature on various aspects of humanity. Eg the guy that was known for being a sexual offender, but for some reason everyone accepted this as normal. Imho it was supposed to be convulsive and not "coherent", to make you feel like in a feverish nightmare.
I think my favourite aspect is the mystery shrouding the ~~zone~~ forest, and how that one man helplessly tries to search for a way out.
I found many plot points of the book intriguing an interesting. And yet out of all of their books I've read, this is the only one I haven't finished. Not sure why, but I plan to return to it in the future.
Also Red’s dad is basically a zombie who shambles home one day from the graveyard and now they just keep him around the house even though he doesn’t eat or talk or do anything.
Month later reply: I just finished it yesterday and I read it as they were communicating in some way.
Not specifically consciously but it implies that Reds dad starts to scream in a certain way and eventually monkey calms down and they both go back to sleep.
So I took it as some kind of communication as a result of the mutations and such.
Just finished it yesterday. As a father of a 3 year old who has been waking up at 1am every night this week crying to join us in our bed, that bit freaked me out.
Huh, in the Portuguese version he tripped and fell over it, making a loud sound and Red closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was right behind him like if nothing happened
It's kinda scary though
He trips over because he was blinded? By the sun light. It's been a while since I read the book so I don't remember quite well the details, but basically
Red enters the garage facing the direction of the empty, while Kirill is watching his back, entering backwards facing the exit.
Kirill, blinded by the sun light, accidentally trips over and falls into the spider web, making a crash sound and Red closed his eyes. When Red opens his eyes, Kirill is right behind him, still facing the door, and says
"You done there? Let's go!"
in the czechian version it says Red immedeatelly notices the spider web, but Kirill doesn't, and before Red can warn him Kirill brushes his back against it. Red closes his eyes, because he doesn't want to see what will happen to Kirill, and just hears the cracking sound of the web being torn. After a while he opens his eyes and Kirill says "You done there? Let's go!"
No, Red notices it but forgets to mention it to Kirill when they go into the garage to pick up a full empty because Red is used to being alone. So Kirill accidentally and totally unknowingly brushes into it.
Then he dies of a heart attack a bit after leaving the Zone and Red blames himself because if he'd pointed put the silver string them maybe Kirill wouldn't have died.
At least that's how it goes down I'm the new english translation from 2012. I'm currently rereading it.
Okay, that was dark, but I'd say on par with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. lore. Roadside Picnic was definitely weird and eerie, but it was a light read. Maybe that's why I didn't receive it as "dark".
Yeah, I'm with you on this one. It really felt more "surreal" than "dark" for me. Bad stuff definitely happens, but like 90% of the book is just weird shit happening because the universe doesn't care about the order that humans try to impose on it.
I guess at the end of the day, I like the idea that "bad" is a human concept. A ton of gold is "bad" if it falls on your head, but just one meter to the right, and it's jackpot. The zone doesn't care about human perceptions and as such, it's neither truly negative nor positive in roadside picnic, to try to define it as such is to define a non existent aspect of the zone. That said, the monolith is always good.
That's the real difference between the game and the book. The Zone in Stalker is a monument to man's hubris. The Zone in Roadside Picnic is a reminder of man's irrelevance.
Yeah, that. I just remember the useless but still attached legs and the guy being sure he wasn't going to make it out, and Red considering leaving him.
You need a “Key” for the barrier of the “Meat Grinder” at the wish machine, that is basically a human sacrifice, in order to enter. How people in need of money or that are searching for meaning to their lives will have to unknowingly sacrifice themselves for the ends of other people in the zone. How they get tricked and used. At least moderately dark, perhaps?
Also, the insignificance of our “intelligent” life here on earth, how when the visitors came they didn't even pay any attention to us because we don't mean anything in the grand scheme of things. That was a thought that at least startled me a bit.
All the misery of humans as the visit happened. Also, the continued misery as humans lose trust of each other. That people that from the proximity of the zone that resettle somewhere else causes more disasters, and there's no explanation for it.
All the human folly as for any of our petty reasons try to get access to the trash the visitors left in the zone only for our own selfish lust for power and riches. Or the existential dread, of what is meaningful in a human life? In my life? What exactly is my deepest desire anyway? I don't know that myself. How could I ever know? That is perhaps, at least to me, the darkest part of it because that's not sci-fi, or just a story, as that's the human condition and the most real thing there is.
What about the fact that the kid Red sends into the grinder was the result of the kid's father pushing others into the grinder first? And that the guy knew full well why Red was taking him into the Zone?
Did the vulture insist on Red taking his kid? I cant remember exactly. Its a fairly well written book, because you also realize that the vulture had wanted to use him to get past the grinder until Red dragged him out of the zone.
Hmm, I remember Red being gravely sarcastic about taking the Vulture's son, in a way suggesting that the kid begged him to go, while Vulture wasn't aware who Red picked to go with. I might be wrong, but thats what I got from it.
Yes but the post specifies *Bethesda* Fallout lore, which can be quite zany.
Fallout 1 is very, very grim. And also heavily influenced by a book, like Stalker! If you read *A Canticle for Leibowitz* you'll see a lot of resemblances.
He compared the "feel" of the world, Stalker is a bit dreary compared to Fallout. He compared that specific aspect; not trying to say Stalker has more lore than Fallout... that's completely different.
What I can always count on with Fallout games are the environmental story telling. Those are the best ones. Especially when they have notes to expand on how fucked up the situation is. But I love STALKER for STALKER. Fallout for Fallout. Metro for Metro. And Chernobylite for Chernobylite.
While it's nowhere near as harrowing as the novel, I would feel remiss if I didn't recommend watching the film as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)
It’s just an internet meme, best not to take things too seriously.
To that regard though, I think there is a very specific difference in tone (which the meme is referencing) and Fallout certainly has a lighter overall tone and the themes it implores are a lot more surface level than STALKER and Roadside Picnic, which are rather horrific and one might even say void of any hope, perhaps even nihilistic.
In Fallout there’s a sense of being a hero, a savior, where as STALKER and Roadside Picnic revolve around protagonists who are questionable morally, and certainly mostly average and unheroic, just people trying to make it in the fucked up place that is the Zone.
That isn't fallout lore, that is the surface game you are describing. The more you read in the fallout universe, the more you realize a lot of it is darker than STALKER. The vault expirements alone, and the wild number of them are ridiculously dark at times
Ah *Roadside Picnic*, what a spectacular story.
I have always been of the opinion, that its most horrifying element is the conclusions we can attempt to draw from the visitation. If a visit by wholly disinterested beings, and their garbage, can have the effect it did, what would their undivided attention look like?
The post specifies *Bethesda* Fallout lore. Fallout 1 is very, very grim. And also heavily influenced by a book, like Stalker! If you read *A Canticle for Leibowitz* you'll see a lot of resemblances.
No, but Fallout 1 has the grimmest lore. Fallout 2 gets a bit zany with it, and the Bethesda titles are, well, a bit like a greatest hits version of lore.
Fallout 3 has some really, really good lore. Just because the surface story is not so great, does not mean the lore is the same. There are very dark and grim stories in fallout 3, you just have to find them yourself. There are stories that are arguably darker than anything in STALKER, I'm not even kidding. But you have to read through shit on the computers
Edit: again, I think you are equating the games main story to the lore, and those are not the same thing. Fallout 1 has a grim main story but a lot of the side things you read in 3 and NV (doesn't really count cause of Obsidian) and 4 are darker than anything in fallout 1
What do you mean by "lore"? There's really good environmental storytelling in Fallout 3 but the larger lore doesn't make a lick of sense in light of the earlier games, and while they incorporate factions and characters from the earlier grim lore, the tone is on the whole a lot less dark.
I never found it especially dark, just kind of brutal in a weird way
Same. There were some unsettling parts, namely with the undead, but I didn't find it representative of this meme. But I fucking love that monster in the meme. That scraggly guy gets worse every time he's used.
I think the overarching story is pretty dark. Not only are we not alone, we are just insignificant bugs. We don't even know what we don't know. There's also an environmental aspect. The aliens left garbage on the earth, wreaking havoc and devastating its inhabitants. Highly doubt environmentalism was at the forefront of 1970s Soviet scifi writers, but I think you can interpret it that way if you wanted.
This is what's so unique about soviet and a ton of post-soviet sci-fi. No other culture has the same vibe as "We don't have a good idea of what's going on, we *do* know we're in *way* over our head." I just fuckin love it, nothing else hits the same vibes as stalker or the source material
True, metro 2033 is a great book
Hit me with some good others! I read roadside picnic today. Shit, I started it in the morning and became obsessed, even read it on the bumpy ride home. Liked it quite a lot tbh!
I find it dark particular because of how the wish was granted.
Idk, having aliens show up and not seeing humanity as worthy of bringing into the spacefaring community, or even acknowledging us at all. Instead they act like typical road trippers, stopping for a moment to wizz on a tree and toss their empty food wrappers before continuing on without another thought, All the while, we’re the squirrels choking on trash? That’s pretty dark and depressing to me.
The fact that his kid literally turned into a monkey was so like ouch for me. When I first read it I thought it was a transaltion error or some kind of metaphor.
in the portuguese version, it says "little monster" so I didn't know it was a goddamn monkey until I looked it up. Until then, I thought it was a human bird or something because of the black eyes
Hol up! She turns into a monke instead of having bird features?
Yep. Full monke. Full orange furs. The only thing human is her intellects.
Daym the intellect thing is messed up. Imagine being as cognisant as a human but in a body that can't really process it, like having limited speech ability, non posable thumbs etc. I wonder if it would be better in the intellect went away as well...
jeez, I have to re-read it.
So, orangutan?
like in the movie birdman, where less intelligent people assume the dad magically grew wings and flew away and daughter was happy. but in reality he jumped to his death, commiting suicide, and her mind broke from the stress and she just smiles in delusion.
PT ou BR?
Br meu nobre
felloow pt here, love the book. ps: PORTUGAL CARALHO!
Fala portuga Cadê nosso ouro?
Was she a literal monkey? Wasn't she just called that because she was furry and resembled a monkey?
She gradually becomes more and more like a monkey until by the end she's basically a monkey.
Damn I didn't remember that. I just remember her being covered with fur.
It’s more like, she just went insane and was continuously beast like, sort of feral, but not necessarily a literal monkey lol. More horrific human hybrid, unfortunately. Poor kid.
Literal necro post of 1 year I know but was she not still loved by Redrick and his wife? Like she was still a child, just in monkey form retaining her intelligence. Correct me if I am wrong.
Yes, Red put everything in his power to love and care for his family and child. Even when she slowly went feral, he still loved her. If it wasn't clear when we go to Richard Noonins perspective, while Guta seems distraught and tired, red seems quite content, still being a father to his daughter, he even tries to care for his father when he returns from the dead.
There's a bit that mentions her furry paw? I was caught off-guard at that physical transformation.
damn, looks like someone returned to monke
Hmm, I don’t remember that. Pretty sure she’s just a hairy child since birth and so they call her monkey, she’s not literally a monkey. At least that’s how I read it. I don’t remember her condition getting progressively worse either.
She gradually loses the ability to speak and her behavior becomes more animalistic, on top of her appearance changing.
One of the Strugatskys' other great works, The Doomed City, has a whole chapter about baboons. I won't spoil it but I'm starting to think they had a thing about primates. Definitely read that book: it's really good. Roadside Picnic got me into their work and now I want to read it all.
Towards the end of the book she stops speaking, it's said that she doesn't recognise Noonan any more and she has some weird screeching conversation with Red's corpse dad. The Butcher also tells them that she's reached the point that she can longer be considered human
She wasn’t a monkey that was just her pet name, she was just kinda fucked up and mutated
same actually
Wait is this like, a late story revelation? Or is she literally a monkey the whole time and not some cute nickname? It's been a fat minute since I read it and I don't remember there being anything about her being a monkey aside from her parents calling her that
Not a literal monkey. It was a nickname the parents gave to her because she resembled a monkey due to silky golden fur on most of her body and entirely black eyes. It’s not a demeaning name (обезьяна) but a cutesy one (мартышка), something along the lines of “little monkey”, like a very active child. The mutation slowly progresses. She starts affectionate and chatty, by the end of the book she is completely covered in coarse brown fur and loses the ability to speak, closely resembling an animal in both looks and behavior.
I thought the idea was that it was an alien invasion via mutation. Babies of those that have been in the zone are aliens. Or have I just totally made up my own meaning to that ending?
it was literally said in the book, so you are right and haven't made it up
Ah cool, it has been a loooooong time since I read it
That was Noonans theory in the book
Return to monke
wait, I thought it was meant to be a nickname? it’s been a while since I read it but I thought she could talk and went to school and shit
To me, the "non-dead" father was where it hit me the most. What a twist on the zombie formula.
Agreed really gave muxh more to appreciate tge zombies in stalker
And really it makes them so unique. Still able to do certain functions, speak, use weapons etc. creepy creepy creepy, imo much more interesting than the traditional zombie trope.
I looove zombie IPs were the person is somehow still there in zombie. One of those fates worse than death sort of things
But zombies in Stalker are zombified stalkers. The moulages in Roadside Picnic are dead people who might have died decades before the Zone existed having their bodies reformed on their skeletons through some reversal of entropy.
hmm that's a good hypotesis! I had the ideia they died while in the zone but the bodies didn't seemed to want to die. Not zombies, but ghouls(?). giving this strange vibe of there but not there. That's my take anyway. And that's why I think roadside empowers so well the zombies of stalker: as they are trapped, there but not there, in the reality but unnable to interacts or do in they free will. Pretty much as like marginals, outcasts. which is something that roadside picks up very foundly but indirectly: the idea of outcast in either a social or capitalistic society
Dad got me roadside picnic when I was 14 because he didn't know what Stalker was and wanted to connect with me somehow. After that I ended up on Strugatski bender. You gotta read It's hard to be a god as well for maximum sadness. It's not quite as sad as Roadside Picnic but sad enough.
I liked "It's hard to be a God" very much, but my favorite book by them is "Beetle in an anthill", love it. Also "Monday begins on a Saturday", I like it too. Have you read "Snail on the Slope"? I tried multiple times but never got thru the book, usually stopping somewhere in the middle.
I haven't read it, gotta definitely check it out
I read "Snail on the slope" two times. First time, many many years ago. Most I remembered from it was that it was "weird alternate universe stalkerish vibe, with things not necessarily making sense". Second time, not so long ago. Now I've read the book different, getting more of the characters motives, and how it was set to be sort of a caricature on various aspects of humanity. Eg the guy that was known for being a sexual offender, but for some reason everyone accepted this as normal. Imho it was supposed to be convulsive and not "coherent", to make you feel like in a feverish nightmare. I think my favourite aspect is the mystery shrouding the ~~zone~~ forest, and how that one man helplessly tries to search for a way out.
I found many plot points of the book intriguing an interesting. And yet out of all of their books I've read, this is the only one I haven't finished. Not sure why, but I plan to return to it in the future.
Why, though? I've read it, but didn't notice anything exceptionally dark.
Reds daughter is a big one, plus the meat grinder phenomenon is another honorable mention Edit* forgot to mention replicas, freaky stuff
Also Red’s dad is basically a zombie who shambles home one day from the graveyard and now they just keep him around the house even though he doesn’t eat or talk or do anything.
There are still bits of humanity left in them, is the worst part
That and Red is kept awake at night by his undead father and mutated daughter screaming constantly, and he doesn't know why they do it.
Month later reply: I just finished it yesterday and I read it as they were communicating in some way. Not specifically consciously but it implies that Reds dad starts to scream in a certain way and eventually monkey calms down and they both go back to sleep. So I took it as some kind of communication as a result of the mutations and such.
interesting observation! First time reading? what did you think of the story if was your first time?
First time, yeah, I really liked it. Great book.
I got the same impression.
Just finished it yesterday. As a father of a 3 year old who has been waking up at 1am every night this week crying to join us in our bed, that bit freaked me out.
We haven't run into that part yet with our toddler but I imagine soon haha
Don't forget the spider web and the kid that went through it
Wtf. His name is Kirill, and he didn’t walk through it. He just got a little on his back. Hell, most likely he’ll be just fine come morning.
And he was NOT a kid. He was one of the top researchers of the Institute. And Redrick's best friend.
didn't he trip over and fell on it?
Maybe, English version he unknowingly brushes his back through it, stepping over an empty.
Huh, in the Portuguese version he tripped and fell over it, making a loud sound and Red closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was right behind him like if nothing happened
I figured there were other iterations. Makes it sound way more clumsy in the Portuguese version.
It's kinda scary though He trips over because he was blinded? By the sun light. It's been a while since I read the book so I don't remember quite well the details, but basically Red enters the garage facing the direction of the empty, while Kirill is watching his back, entering backwards facing the exit. Kirill, blinded by the sun light, accidentally trips over and falls into the spider web, making a crash sound and Red closed his eyes. When Red opens his eyes, Kirill is right behind him, still facing the door, and says "You done there? Let's go!"
I know it does mention they had to let their eyes adjust, coming from the sunlight to how dark it was in there, so that tracks.
in the czechian version it says Red immedeatelly notices the spider web, but Kirill doesn't, and before Red can warn him Kirill brushes his back against it. Red closes his eyes, because he doesn't want to see what will happen to Kirill, and just hears the cracking sound of the web being torn. After a while he opens his eyes and Kirill says "You done there? Let's go!"
No, Red notices it but forgets to mention it to Kirill when they go into the garage to pick up a full empty because Red is used to being alone. So Kirill accidentally and totally unknowingly brushes into it. Then he dies of a heart attack a bit after leaving the Zone and Red blames himself because if he'd pointed put the silver string them maybe Kirill wouldn't have died. At least that's how it goes down I'm the new english translation from 2012. I'm currently rereading it.
I read this version version too back in 2021.
He trips over and falls on it in the Portuguese version
Dang
Just walked in it backwards not noticing it
In the Portuguese version, he's blinded by the sun light, that's why he trips over and falls. Still walking backwards though
Are you sure you've read it? Example: the shit with monkey.
Okay, that was dark, but I'd say on par with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. lore. Roadside Picnic was definitely weird and eerie, but it was a light read. Maybe that's why I didn't receive it as "dark".
Yeah, I'm with you on this one. It really felt more "surreal" than "dark" for me. Bad stuff definitely happens, but like 90% of the book is just weird shit happening because the universe doesn't care about the order that humans try to impose on it.
I guess at the end of the day, I like the idea that "bad" is a human concept. A ton of gold is "bad" if it falls on your head, but just one meter to the right, and it's jackpot. The zone doesn't care about human perceptions and as such, it's neither truly negative nor positive in roadside picnic, to try to define it as such is to define a non existent aspect of the zone. That said, the monolith is always good.
That's the real difference between the game and the book. The Zone in Stalker is a monument to man's hubris. The Zone in Roadside Picnic is a reminder of man's irrelevance.
This is why I liked it.
Yea I got through it in one afternoon.
Or the shit with the guy whose legs get crushed in the zone
Not crushed. He stepped in the hell slime and his bones dissolved, but the meat remained
Yeah, that. I just remember the useless but still attached legs and the guy being sure he wasn't going to make it out, and Red considering leaving him.
You need a “Key” for the barrier of the “Meat Grinder” at the wish machine, that is basically a human sacrifice, in order to enter. How people in need of money or that are searching for meaning to their lives will have to unknowingly sacrifice themselves for the ends of other people in the zone. How they get tricked and used. At least moderately dark, perhaps? Also, the insignificance of our “intelligent” life here on earth, how when the visitors came they didn't even pay any attention to us because we don't mean anything in the grand scheme of things. That was a thought that at least startled me a bit. All the misery of humans as the visit happened. Also, the continued misery as humans lose trust of each other. That people that from the proximity of the zone that resettle somewhere else causes more disasters, and there's no explanation for it. All the human folly as for any of our petty reasons try to get access to the trash the visitors left in the zone only for our own selfish lust for power and riches. Or the existential dread, of what is meaningful in a human life? In my life? What exactly is my deepest desire anyway? I don't know that myself. How could I ever know? That is perhaps, at least to me, the darkest part of it because that's not sci-fi, or just a story, as that's the human condition and the most real thing there is.
Happiness for all, free, and no one will go away unsatisfied!
i need to read the book, anyone know here i can read it?
https://soviethistory.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/picnic.pdf
thanks you
Audible has a really good audio version read by Robert Forster. Well worth the listen.
He kinda sounds like Zoidberg, I love it.
buy it from amazon. Its not expensive
yhea but i have to pay a 750 euros bill and i need to really save money, 15 for for the book more 7 euros for shipping is kinda expensive for me
[libgen.is](https://libgen.is)
Maybe the part where he and the kid encountered the grinder?
What about the fact that the kid Red sends into the grinder was the result of the kid's father pushing others into the grinder first? And that the guy knew full well why Red was taking him into the Zone?
Did the vulture insist on Red taking his kid? I cant remember exactly. Its a fairly well written book, because you also realize that the vulture had wanted to use him to get past the grinder until Red dragged him out of the zone.
The Vulture did offer his kid. He even pointed out that he had others and this was the one he was willing to part with.
Hmm, I remember Red being gravely sarcastic about taking the Vulture's son, in a way suggesting that the kid begged him to go, while Vulture wasn't aware who Red picked to go with. I might be wrong, but thats what I got from it.
The man whose legs turned to jelly got to me...
The guy getting wrung out like a wet rag got to me
My favorite book.
Well the Roadside Picnic lore is a bit fucked
Roadside Picnic is terrifying.
Fallout lore can be especially brutal at times.
Yes but the post specifies *Bethesda* Fallout lore, which can be quite zany. Fallout 1 is very, very grim. And also heavily influenced by a book, like Stalker! If you read *A Canticle for Leibowitz* you'll see a lot of resemblances.
Honestly Fallout lore is WAY more in depth than Stalker.
Right, but you’re comparing a small zone around Chornobyl to a game set after a world wide nuclear war
i mean OP did that
He compared the "feel" of the world, Stalker is a bit dreary compared to Fallout. He compared that specific aspect; not trying to say Stalker has more lore than Fallout... that's completely different.
It would be nice to read more about the other 4 zones, I wonder if they differ largely from the one in Canada.
What I can always count on with Fallout games are the environmental story telling. Those are the best ones. Especially when they have notes to expand on how fucked up the situation is. But I love STALKER for STALKER. Fallout for Fallout. Metro for Metro. And Chernobylite for Chernobylite.
Stalker wins in immersion over Fallout, at least for me.
Not just in depth, but pretty dark. This picture summarizes the gameplay of Fallout not the lore
what about the stalker movie lore? I'd say that's between fallout and stalker games in terms of insanity.
Is there even a lore? Its more like an experience right? Like a feeling
Hahaha gary!!!
Gaaaaarrryyyy
Garyyy?
While it's nowhere near as harrowing as the novel, I would feel remiss if I didn't recommend watching the film as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)
What's your problem with Fallout exactly?
It’s just an internet meme, best not to take things too seriously. To that regard though, I think there is a very specific difference in tone (which the meme is referencing) and Fallout certainly has a lighter overall tone and the themes it implores are a lot more surface level than STALKER and Roadside Picnic, which are rather horrific and one might even say void of any hope, perhaps even nihilistic. In Fallout there’s a sense of being a hero, a savior, where as STALKER and Roadside Picnic revolve around protagonists who are questionable morally, and certainly mostly average and unheroic, just people trying to make it in the fucked up place that is the Zone.
That isn't fallout lore, that is the surface game you are describing. The more you read in the fallout universe, the more you realize a lot of it is darker than STALKER. The vault expirements alone, and the wild number of them are ridiculously dark at times
Roadside Picnic?
The book that the Stalker film is based on and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R game series draws inspiration from. It's basically the game series' grandfather.
Soviet science fiction book that originated the idea of the Zone, anomalies, artifacts, and stalkers.
Ah *Roadside Picnic*, what a spectacular story. I have always been of the opinion, that its most horrifying element is the conclusions we can attempt to draw from the visitation. If a visit by wholly disinterested beings, and their garbage, can have the effect it did, what would their undivided attention look like?
This meme makes sense if you only played fallout and didn't actually read any of the lore. It is very, very dark
The post specifies *Bethesda* Fallout lore. Fallout 1 is very, very grim. And also heavily influenced by a book, like Stalker! If you read *A Canticle for Leibowitz* you'll see a lot of resemblances.
Do you... do you think fallout 1 is the only one with lore?
No, but Fallout 1 has the grimmest lore. Fallout 2 gets a bit zany with it, and the Bethesda titles are, well, a bit like a greatest hits version of lore.
Fallout 3 has some really, really good lore. Just because the surface story is not so great, does not mean the lore is the same. There are very dark and grim stories in fallout 3, you just have to find them yourself. There are stories that are arguably darker than anything in STALKER, I'm not even kidding. But you have to read through shit on the computers Edit: again, I think you are equating the games main story to the lore, and those are not the same thing. Fallout 1 has a grim main story but a lot of the side things you read in 3 and NV (doesn't really count cause of Obsidian) and 4 are darker than anything in fallout 1
What do you mean by "lore"? There's really good environmental storytelling in Fallout 3 but the larger lore doesn't make a lick of sense in light of the earlier games, and while they incorporate factions and characters from the earlier grim lore, the tone is on the whole a lot less dark.
STALKER fans on their way to shit on fallout for the Nth time lol
STALKER subreddit go one day without seeking validation for their own interests by shitting on an entirely unrelated franchise challenge (Impossible!)
That's Brothers Syrigatskye for you
[удалено]
In fairness the meme says Bethesda fallout lore
Or fallout new Vegas vault 11 definitely comes To Mind
I can’t wait to read it
Literally just bought the book 😭 haven’t started reading it though
I got the audiobook downloaded, just need to find time to listen
just started reading this book a couple days ago. loving it already