Well, since we are talking about loot and food, then the second part of the gameplay comes into play, namely raids. Every morning we can choose one of the missions (mainly robberies of the NAR – local troops), or orders received from comrades or on the radio. The rest of the tasks can be outsourced to your colleagues or do nothing. Having moved to a certain location to complete the task, we are free to grab everything that is not nailed to the floor, and this is herbs, electrical elements, fuel, chemicals, cartridges and, in rare cases, guns. Soldiers roam the streets of Pripyat and its environs, and vile monsters are walking in the buildings, capable of teleporting through the walls. You can crawl around them or join the battle if you have weapons and ammunition at your disposal. True, the killing of people here affects the psyche of the hero, and there is a possibility that it will be greatly shaken if the genocide of the local army is often organized.
You might think that Chernobylite is too tuned in to pacifism, but no – the game has the means to raise the level of both physical and psychological health. Just take a sip of vodka and eat a salad.
In addition to enemies, there are interesting personalities on the map who can offer the hero barter for rations or equipment. After you decide that the task is completed and you have nothing else to do, open the teleport with peace of mind and fly back to the base. Here, the accumulated food is distributed between you and your assistants, their results are assessed and the rest itself. And so day after day. Very quickly, this whole system has a fat minus – the number of locations. There are few of them, they hardly change in any way, and we just crawl over the same places over and over again, and collect the same things. It can get bored very quickly, but fortunately, there are almost always instructions from colleagues.
By the way, about comrades – there are not very many of them in the game. We find literally everyone except Oliver in the zone, and then decide whether or not to join our team. Such characters not only complete missions and eat rations, but are also the main suppliers of side quests and the engines of the main plot. Everyone has their own goals in the zone, and helping them (or not), we develop relationships with them for the worse or better. In addition, they are also teachers for the main character. With their help, you can raise certain characteristics or get some very useful perks, such as increasing your inventory. Each such “lesson” is presented in the form of a small scene or exercise, which, of course, has a positive effect on the atmosphere.
The question of helping colleagues is not just a question “Accept the mission or not?” The game is very often asked to choose how to proceed, and these decisions sometimes go very far. Did you leave some vagabond who behaved unclearly for dead? Then he will turn out to be someone close to your potential friend, and you can never invite him to your group. And so literally at every step – the team will constantly discuss your decisions, along the way offering their options for resolving the situation.
But do not strain too hard over every crossroads. In Chernobylite there is an interesting system, when with the help of that very Chernobylite (and this is such a very radioactive mineral that is collected during the game) we can change the past, and for this we just need to … die! Death in this game is not the end: if you fell from bullets of villains or from the clutches of monsters, you will simply be transported to the corridor of events, where you will see all the important decisions you have made. By spending Chernobyl, you can change what you did, thereby triggering a different chain of events. And yes, it is not necessary to catch an olive tree to fix the past, because if you die on a mission, you will lose a certain part of your inventory. To make leaving painless, there is an option to build a chamber that will burn you without losing any loot. Very humane and tested by the professor himself.
