I had the option to convince his buddies to help me attack the bandits, negotiate with the bandits, or deal with it my own way. But a mission to rescue a stalker hostage from some bandits was surprisingly fun. Hanging out with Grouse, as described in a previous entry, wasn’t that great. So when I get to team up with people, it’s pretty exciting. Place these detectors inside of anomalies. I’ve been running back and forth for a while now, completing standard tasks for an assortment of indistinguishable hardasses. It’s a lonely world, with wide expanses of abandoned land, ruined buildings slumping slowly into the swamps, and strangely mutated creatures running in packs through the tall and rustling grasses. You spend a lot of time alone in Stalker: Call of Pripyat.