Should you play the other Stalker games before playing Stalker 2?

The age-old question has arisen again. The terrifying specter of a number 2 after a game’s title causes instant worry that you will somehow be missing out if you don’t mainline all the previous releases in a game’s series before starting the new one – even though you might only have 24 hours to do that.

While it may be true that for lore reasons playing earlier games may benefit you, the prospect of going back and completing decades-old titles to see how they ended is not one that fills many people with a lot of joy.

Stalker 2 is upon us, it has been nearly 15 years since the last one. Do you really need to battle with antiquated installers and missing drivers that simply do not exist anymore?

Do you need to play the other Stalker games first?

A monster in Stalker 2

If you check out Steam.db you can see a fair amount of players are indeed jumping back into OG Stalker ahead of the launch to get in a little prep work, but the good news is it is absolutely unnecessary.

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is, to all intents and purposes, a completely standalone adventure that requires no prior knowledge to get going in or complete.

Obviously this is a sequel so if you have played the earlier titles back in the day you will instantly know you are in the same world, surrounded by much of the same lore, settings, enemies, and even weaponry, but it is all much more modernized and generally slicker as you would expect.

Going back and playing the old Stalker gamesj if you are not already a fan of the series, could even potentially make you think the new game is not for you, so we wouldn’t really advise it unless you have 75 hours spare and are hell-bent on hoovering up the lore. The Stalker games are classics but that also comes with the caveat that the quality of life mechanics we sometimes take for granted these days may not always be present. Doom is a fantastic game but if you have only ever played Doom Eternal do you need to go back?

Of course, if you play and love Stalker 2 and feel as though you haven’t had enough of its universe once you have completed it, then you have all the bonus content of the earlier games to go and consume, safe in the knowledge that, at the current run rate, it could be 2040 before we get Stalker 3.

So our overall advice would be, that you will benefit more from a knowledge and experience of the older games, but certainly do not feel as though you need to play them all in order.