Stalker 2 modder ramps up the violence with two mods that turn the Zone into a blood-soaked grindhouse flick

GSC Game World’s Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is surprisingly tame when it comes to its video game violence. While the finally-working A-Life mechanic brings additional life to the open-world Zone after numerous patches, the developer has never added additional violence in post-launch support.

Well, with the arrival of the game’s ModKit last month, one Stalker 2 modder is going there with a duo of mods designed to bring buckets of blood to the apocalyptic Zone for more realistic, and more satisfying, combat.

Stalker 2 gets way more violent

Created by modder Shaytech, two Stalker 2 mods have been released to increase the level of violence across the open-world game. Available via the user’s Nexus Mods profile, the mods are actually focused on providing more realism to the zone.

The first mod, titled Bloodsplats, changes the environmental blood textures available in the game depending on the weapon an enemy is hit with. If an enemy is hit with a small-calibre pistol bullet, the bloodsplat on the wall behind them will be small. However, if you crack a rival Stalker with a sniper shot, that texture will be significantly bigger.

The mod adds the following:

• New blood textures
• Chance to spawn bloodsplats based on bullet type
• Different size bloodsplats for each bullet type
• Different max distance for each bullet type
• Random bloodsplat minimum sizes based on bullet type
• And more

Alongside the Bloodsplats mod, Shaytech has also released an additional Impacts mod which “changes flesh impacts to be more visceral” and add “more blood, more mist, [and] better duration”. With this mod installed, hitting an enemy with a bullet results in more noticeable blood effects during combat.

Additionally, the mod also changes how bullet holes appear on an enemy’s body that change depending on the size of the bullet and changes how much blood squirts out of a body depending on where they’re shot.

Both of the mods are also compatible with another awesome Stalker 2 mod: Cinematic Bullet Impacts. This mod “enhances firefights by increasing the lifetime of bullet impact particles” and also keeps particles such as dust lingering in the air for longer after nearby cover gets hit with stray bullets.

Unlike Stalker Anomoly, there’s still no dismemberment mod for Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, but with the extensive mod kit now in players’ hands, that could come to the game sometime in the future. (Come on, guys!)