ADDITIONAL TRIVIA: The player can kill the "quartet" commander before the emission, granting him additional gear and completely disrupting military comms. The terms "200" and "300" refer to wounded and dead soldiers respectively. The "Armored bastard" that the troops refer to at 3:15 is, in fact, the player. This voice line can play at any moment during the CNPP assault and will cause one or two helicopters to stop following their scripted paths and instead target the player. All helicopter radio transmissions heard in the other parts of the game (such as during the Agroprom factory assault) are the same ones as here. Matter of fact, all CNPP radio transmission were recorded first and then cut in order to make them usable in other parts of the game. The helicopters that pass over Pripyat in SoC are all scripted to crash into a building. If they had reached the CNPP too, the military might have won here. Not only that, but the crashing helicopters will actually Feature a squad of 4 BULAT-wearing soldiers getting out of it alive. They will stay near the Crashsite and call for backup, after which they will run around the Pripyat map for a bit before either attacking the player or dying to a Monolith sniper. All vehicles can be destroyed with a knife by the player. Hitting or shooting a helicopter while its landing will prevent it from spawning its infantry and cause it to fly away again.
Damn, truly a Zone veteran, I played the games many times, but never knew this. Guess I was just too busy staying alive in the hardest part of the game.
Man if I were any of those grunts seeing that I would sh!t myself and turn around and go back to base on foot not even caring if I got court martialed for abandoning the mission and my squadmates.
Damn, I was always in such a hurry to make it inside the NPP, I never really appreciated how big this operation was, or how much effort the devs put into it.
I can spend hours looking at the NPCs battling and never getting bored of it. While the main things are scripted, things always go down in a unique way.
Same, I never really had a chance to take some more times. The helicopter harrass you with one hit kill rocket all the time... you can damaged them with the sniper but cant take them good. I had already almost reach my 60kg limit so no rocket laucher possible... Plus BMP at the entrance and monolith and military veteran that can kill you in seconds...
holy shit and i thought this was just a bunch of stalker ai chaos and the heli chatter was just heli voicelines but it was actually a fully planned out operation
I didn't expect a gam from 2007 with such a unstable engine to feature such cool scripted events like this, you don't see anything like that on the 2 sequels it had afterwards too
Ehh, there *ARE* some cool scripted events that happen in Clear Sky & COP but they aren't really on the same level as the march through Pripyat to reach the CNPP in SOC. Most of the scripted events that happen in those two games are groups of allied & enemy npcs engaging each other. COP has the standoff with the remnants of the Monolith forces as you wait for the heli to land and some memorable parts such as the watershed task w/ the various faction agents present. (super jank, has broken and left me unable to join either Freedom or Duty later on). But yeah, I suspect the nightmare of getting the event to work (and subsequently seeing the heli's floating through the map) probably made the developers reconsider the scale of these events for the rest of the series. Though considering the spectacle of the Stalker 2 trailers, I'd be impressed if we didn't get something equally epic in the new game.
even if military are portrayed as corrup and heartless most of the times in the franchise, i can´t avoid feel sorrow for them been send to die in the middle of nowhere only to achieve something that doesn´t exists. excellent video
i've always loved the radio chat on the cnpp assault, even before finding out about the context of them. I found it so immersive how the radio comms start being filled with the soldiers all talking over eachother as the fight gets in full swing, it felt like i was witnessing something bigger than what i was actually seeing.
Some helis move in a veird way, nocliping through ground and objects, but still quite enjoyable from a game that old. Comms are completely on spot, they have set the bar high with this one. The fact, that we can see the aftermath of this battle in later iterations and mods is nothing short of amazing. I hope S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 HoC will be as good, with "relics from the past", like destroyed military equipment and remains of both monolith and military lying around, just like in the original trilogy.
The first time i made it into the CNPP when i first played this game, was a hell of a time, my SEVA suit on half, only 2 medkits, no antirads, and ony 90 bullets for the FN2000, it was really insane, and the fact that what i witnessed was just the late begining of the operation it really puts into perspective how much the Military and Monolith fought over. Just imagine how much happened all around while Strelok was inside dealing with the Monoliths, of course there was an emission, but remember that after that the military sended in another smaller attack. It would be really cool if in Stalker 2 they give some kind of like old-media type videos in-game that the players find and could show the entire operation going.
As soon as i saw what i was up against at the end my first playthrough, said screw it and restarted the game and then became a hoarder lol@@anomalousdugout9557
It was only after watching this video that the idea occurred to me that Operation Monolith was just a continuation of the ground operation, which we did not find in the active phase. As soon as we approach the CNPP, there is a lot of burning military equipment on the road with the corpses of soldiers, which is still burning, and there are also a lot of other burning military equipment scattered throughout the location. It is quite possible that the dispatch of combat helicopters and special forces was intended as a complement to the ground attack using armored personnel carriers and other equipment, which, as we saw, went very poorly. Moreover, the officer with the call sign “quartet” had to somehow get there in advance in order to lead the entire operation
Not only that but a few of the APCs made it through and are a pain in the ass to get past. I wonder just how far they had to move them through the zone to even get to the NPP. If they had some kind of military base near the zone, or if they were dropped with MI-8 transport helicopters or something nearby.
I might be wrong but when 097 is shot down it’s stated it’s from a guy on roof and in the stride trailer for stalker 2 there is a flashback to this battle where a helicopter is shot down by a guy with a rpg on the CNPP rooftop I think the scenes from stalker 2 will actually match up with heart of Chernobyl which makes me even more excited for stalker 2’s release
Now we need an analysis on whether the operation was planned well. From the radio chatter seems like monolith was wiped and only had successes with ambushes, but military lost that entire mechanised column at the main entrance and several choppers. Caught unprepared by the emission though. I had no idea most choppers managed to evacuate.
I suspect the operation's failure actually had little to do with planning. COP does a fairly adequate job of explaining that the issue with moving this many armed personal through the Zone is that, the Zone seems to react like a body with an infection. Anomalies crop up like white blood cells and EMP vehicles, unexpected & unprecedented blowouts happen, that sort of thing. It's a miracle anyone evacuated at all, considering the blowout & sea of anomalies that could exist in the air in addition to the ground.
@@ahealthkit2745 Yet military routinely flies helicopters into the zone, as far as yantar, and even further, to the brain scorcher in SoC. They also send in troops to the dark valley and agroprom, also partially by air, on mass and without issue. Their land invasion of the power plant also only encounters problems at the destination. So clearly operating vehicles by itself isn't the issue. The blowouts are controlled by the c-con as a defence mechanism, AFAIK that's canon. So could be the appearance of some anomalies.
It failed because the main ground force pushed ahead too quickly and left key support units back in pripyat and the air support side was delayed like 10 -20 minutes due to pripyat and the anomalies in the air.
@@blyatloregiver7950 hmm, what's your source on that? I think the destroyed btr group at the start of the cnpp level is a recon platoon, it might say so in the documents you pick up
This was really cool. All these years I've been playing this game and I never realized the level of detail that is happening in the background during the power plant fight. I actually feel really bad for shooting the soldiers during this sequence, they were putting up a brave fight. I've been to Quartet's command post many times, and always wondered about why it was there. Makes so much more sense now. This video seems like it took a ton of work to produce, thank you for making it!
In Lost Alpha I think the soldiers were friendly during the assault on NPP. You actually had to drive BTR and shoot them with the machine gun in BTR. Not sure why they made them enemies in the original game.
@@ee214verilogtutorial2 Because the development of the game took up to 7 years instead of the planned 3. The development budget was exhausted, and the publisher THQ demanded to speed up. Everything that needed improvement was mercilessly cut out. Repair mechanics, A-life, quests, mutants, cars... There was so much content that there was enough for two subsequent games.
I always thought it was a shame the working BTRs as enemies was only ever used in this mission, would have been cool if it had been used in some other areas.
I hope that stalker 2 will have more vechiles, btrs, mbts, flyable helis, etc. I dont have a good enough computer to run stalker 2 sadly, but im waiting for stalker 2
what an elaborate setpiece for a section in which you are essentially pushed to rush as fast as possible, this also goes for pripyat, it almost makes me sad to know these two maps are, essentially, as open world as all the ones that came before it, yet their content goes in a straight line unless you're really passionate about exploring mostly empty areas
Shadow of chernobyl is a work of art. Although I have played that game billion of times I didn't knew that military CNPP raid was done so well. I watched the whole thing literally like it was a real war movie.
To think that a bunch of nerds in blue hoodies with ak's lead by a merc with a scar made it to CNPP, it just insane , and its also how ironic they were wipe out by an emission to.
I simply love that video, cool idea and awesome execution. Apart from that, the amount of detail been put into that whole operation in game, which we only get a gist of, while actually fighting way in the plant. Partially, because of the action, and lack of real time translation. Whole operation actually looks well planned, and even with a lot of surprises soldiers had to overcome, might actually work out, if not this very sudden blowout. Again, awesome video, thanks for that brother.
This is a great video! Really operation Monolith is a very important page in the stalker lore. This is the turn around between the first trilogy and stalker 2
There was a video like this uploaded around 2 years ago, but it was taken down as the channel had posted NSFW content later. Thanks for making a suitable replacement, I love seeing the military AI in action
@@anomalousdugout9557 Speaking of language, how did you extract the voice lines from the game? I have been browsing the game files in search of them, but I just cannot find anything
Ukranian military personnel fate in the Zone has to be one of the saddest ones. Surely they must have the most casualties among all the Zone's factions, just think how many were lost at the border checkpoints alone when the first big emitions started. Or the ones send deep into the zone without knowing what they were getting into. And at the core, these guys just want to keep the Zone from engulfing their country, they don't have some borderline evil goal in mind like mercs ( kill for money ) or bandits. And if you follow dialogue from Call of Pripyat in the army base in Prypiat city they tell you just how much terrifying the Zone is to them. Can't help but sympathise with these guys.
@@billstrader4326 It brakes my heart when I go down to loot and I can see the ukranian flag. Luckly the uniforms don't look like the actual ukranian ones in the field and some mods, they speak russian and not ukranian, but still, its hard man. Especially since I am very pro Ukraine.
@@anomalousdugout9557 So true. The lore in these series is really deep. Especially I recall Lost Alpha ( you probably know about this one ), there was a military checkpoint in the Cordon, where the soldiers give you the option to use the main road and avoid a fight. If you talk to some of them they just say how they only want to get home to their wives. These poor guys man.
I had no idea all this action was happening off screen between the Military and Monolith, props to the SOC devs for adding this much attention to detail.
You know what, I will try and recreate Op. Monolith on ARMA3 engine to force my hardcore milsim community to play it. I think the devs put some really good effort oven creating a really based military planning that feels realistic enough for the game's universe. Of course It'll be a planned defeat, but my test subjects are experienced enough fighting hard mode IA that they will carry on even during the Blowout.
I must say,this is truly a good work from you anomalous bro,I really liked this .I was always curious about what they said all that time while i was trying to do my storyline back then.But this work shows not only what they say,but also show what they do.Great work man.Oh and,big thumbs up for the guy who was singing in the middle of the operation lol.
What i would give to have subtitles for NPC's in any stalker game. Not understanding most people adds another layer of the zone being an "alien" place. But I know i am missing out on so much of the world not getting to understand what anyone's saying while telling stories by the campfire
Clear Sky was supposed to have a similar such event for the final battle with Clear Sky soldiers battling the monolith to almost the last man. It is cut but the voice lines remain.
I'm ashamed that I never got to finish SoC in full, I was right after the bridge leading to the CNPP... Y'wanna know why I never finished the game? My last manual save was before disabling the brain scorcher and my last quicksave was right before some helicopters blow me up with missiles... Each time I quicksaved back, I'd die the next second. With no escape neither, I was low on ammo and medications anyway. I was already a dead man anyway so I just accepted that I die here. All because I didn't wanna go through disabling the scorcher again... It could have given me thrilling flashbacks for when we see this operation in STALKER 2 via flashbacks. And ironically I am proud of the PTSD Stalker has given me.
je me rendais pas compte a quelle point cette opération était énorme dans le jeu on rush juste on prête vraiment pas attention a tout c'est détail sinon merci pour la vidéo sa ma permis de mieux comprendre se bordel qu'est cette opération :)
If not for the emission, the military would have won this. Excellent use of Mi-24s, deploying small teams of elite infantry and then proceeding to provide them with heavy covering fire, with Quartet being quick to relay information between the various units as needed. After securing the exterior of the C.N.P.P. with both airmobile and motorised units (something which they are well on their way to accomplishing), their next target would have been the Scarcophagus itself, which would have been up to the infantry alone. They would have suffered heavy casualties, but I imagine that, as Strelok does, they would have been able to fight their way through to the Monolith Control Centre and the C-Consciousness pods I imagine that the military's overall objective here, as with their previous deep raids into the Zone, would have been to destroy the Monolith crystal itself, and as a result the Zone of Alienation surrounding it, with a nuclear weapon. Given the nature of the Zone, this might not have been possible, but the Zone would have become a much safer place regardless in the aftermath of a successful Operation Monolith. Something people seem to forget in this fandom is that the government has always been the "good guys" of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and Monolith has always been the "big bad".
Amazing how all this tuff is happening while you're running from cover to cover dodging bullets, accelerated bullets and rockets chuggin anti rad and redbulls LOL also i would have L O V E D a CG intro for COP with all the Stingray group "failing" and crashing all over the zone, idk why we did not get a CG intro in COP.
Never got around to playing STALKER (My pirated copy couldn't save properly) But I would have never guessed it was this advanced, It was released around 2007/8? Crazy advanced especially since it was a pretty small dev team if I remember correctly.
This might be an impossible request, but could you make video about all of the nimble quest in LA? It would be cool for newbies and those who are interested into the series as well as me who also had hard time finishing those quests xD
@@anomalousdugout9557 Love your vids man, if I didn't see your vids and a friend recommending me to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I wouldn't have been introduced to this great community and series :D
Interesting that at 7:42 Hawk calls it in as unidentified weaponry, whilst random Loners in Dark Valley actually name the Gauss Rifle correctly. How could they know about that?
I replayed the sequence multiple times and made a few dozen saves at key moments. There were hundreds of takes to get the final scenes to look great, so it took a lot of time indeed!