Warning Dog Lovers, Stalker 2 Ain’t For You

Stalker 2 is out now on Xbox Series X/S and PC. And you might be curious to check it out despite the bugs and performance problems. However, if you are someone who can’t stand the idea of shooting or killing dogs in a video game, then you probably should stay far away from Stalker 2.

Stalker 2 was released on November 20 after a very long and troubled development cycle that was partially slowed down by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The game is a big open-world FPS that is all about surviving extreme situations with very few resources in a digital recreation of the very real Chornobyl Exclusion Zone filled with (not real) mutants, monsters, and mercenaries. And while you might not be shocked to hear that in this harsh and painful video game world you sometimes have to kill wildlife, you might be surprised by how often it ends up being a dog at the end of your barrel.

Within the first 20 minutes of booting up Stalker 2 on Xbox Series X I was forced to gun down a dog that attacked me in the prologue. I didn’t think much of it, but I also don’t really mind killing anything in a game. Perhaps I’m a cold bastard. Perhaps its because I grew up in a rural area where animals died frequently due to coyotes, cold, and so on. Not sure.

But as I continued to play, more dogs kept getting killed. And even I, a cold-blooded monster in video games, started to feel weird about it.

Sure, the dogs in Stalker 2 are mutated a bit, but they still growl, bark, and whimper when shot, and they look an awful lot like a dog you might have as a pet, so it still might be uncomfortable for some.

For example, right after the prologue/tutorial section wraps up, a cutscene plays in which a dog bites your character’s foot and wakes you up. Before he can shoot it, the poor animal is grabbed by a weird radioactive anomaly and spun into an explosion of blood and skin.

Then, I had to kill a few more dogs on my way to a town where I could get quests, buy and sell loot, and stash some of my stuff. I wondered if there were other enemies in the game. (There are and oh god they are deadly and scary.)

Once I reached town and watched a few cutscenes, I talked to a bartender and asked about work. He gave me two missions, one of which involved tracking down some stray dogs and killing them. Then, after I left the bar and explored the town, a different NPC called out to me and asked I wanted to help out with a job. The job? Killing a pack of dogs. At this point, I did start to wonder if everyone in this town hated dogs.

Leaving town to do a different quest involving a person hiding from a few different groups, I tracked down a possible location for the target. I arrived and ran into bandits who just so happened to have a bunch of wild dogs in their base. I mean, I assume they were wild strays because when I killed them after they attacked me, nobody in the base cared at all. Perhaps they’re even more coldhearted than me?

This all happened in the first 3 to 4 hours of Stalker 2. As I continued to play, the dog killing became a bit less common, but they are an enemy you’ll run into a lot and NPCs will ask you to kill them during (what I think are) randomly generated quests.

So if the idea of killing a dog in a video game makes you squeamish or it just sounds like a shitty experience, than I’d recommend not playing Stalker 2. And if you do enjoy killing dogs in games, that’s…weird, but uh, boy, this new game is for you!

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