Scott

Brandon I highly recommend vanilla plus to get the grounding of the story and how the base games play first. They are actually good stories (Call of Pripyat has good side quests, main story is meh) then try out Gamma but they are a different experience all together.

As someone who has just completed Stalker 2 I can confidently say that it would be a struggle to follow the story (especially later on) if you haven't at the very least played the first game.

You haven't actually played th originals have you?

"In the original STALKER and its two expansions, it was entirely possible to wander the Zone and come upon groups of bandits, members of the Ward, or fellow Stalkers having their own adventures and misadventures within the Zone"

No, no you couldn't as the Ward didn't exist in the original games.

This article also paints a positive picture of how A-life worked. It wasn't that amazing it just so happened that every now and then you would bump into more people and mutants out and about. It wasn't as common as everyone seems to think it was.

Don't get me wrong it's a good system and if 2.0 finally gets off the ground and the performance and bugs get fixed in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 it will be a masterpiece.