Yesterday, GSC Game World launched the Legends of the Zone Enhanced Edition on PC, a remastered bundle of the original three Stalker games. There's a lot to celebrate, namely controller support and achievements, but one look at the subreddit and store pages, and you'll see that plenty of fans aren't happy, as every game in the trilogy launched to 'Mixed' reviews on Steam yesterday.
The collection has removed or replaced several examples of Soviet imagery, likely due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, which forced several developers at the Kyiv-based studio to flee to the country's western border. This led to numerous delays for Stalker 2, with Russia even launching a disinformation campaign against the game. As a result, the studio refused to launch Stalker 2 in Russia, removing Russian voiceovers and subtitles. Now, it appears to be following suit with the original trilogy's remaster.
However, fans argue that the Soviet imagery in the first three Stalker games wasn't condoning Russia, and so it shouldn't have been axed in the enhanced editions. "Most overdone censorship in a video game in ages," writes one reviewer. "The main appeal of game's world set in Chernobyl [sic] is that the place itself...
