Gunplay seems very bulletspongy

It is S.T.A.L.K.E.R… you compare it to fallout, is fallout not bulletspongy? This isn’t a PvP game, it is an open world RPG…

weapons seem very static and weightless

??

general atmosphere is dull

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AI enemies just run around like imbeciles and spray into the general direction of the player

Have you ever played a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. title? SoC had literally revolutionary AI, where NPCs behaved in ways never before seen in video games prior, such as intelligently grouping, splitting up and flanking, scouring an area in a human-like-way instead of just walking to wherever you were and then giving up when you aren’t there, taking cover, reinforcing and covering each other, and applying grenades in actually useful ways. I mean yes, it was still a 2007 game, it definitely wasn’t perfect, and there was loads of wonkiness and weird NPC behavior that you could exploit, but at the time it was mind-blowing. Clear Skies took this idea even further and applied it faction-wide to the entire map, and suddenly you were dropped into a highly dynamic full scale war with shifting fronts and struggles over strategic objectives. Amazing AI is one thing that the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. titles are known for.

You can hear in the video ~1:24, an AI yells “Cover me, I’ll hide”. I’m guessing they included in this clip to hint and signal that this game will have the same kind of focus on great AI mechanics. In some of the indoor clips, you can see that the AI are actually taking cover during the fire fight instead of moving around. Even if they took the NPC AI code from Call of Pripyat and just directly shoved it into this game, it would 1) be nothing like what you just described and 2) be head and shoulders above NPC AI in even recent titles… I’d love to see some significant improvements and iteration still, though.

It just makes it look like this game was made for the sake of having a sequel

Hurray! Exactly what everyone was asking for! We just want more original S.T.A.L.K.E.R., yes, correct.