Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl has aged pretty well over the last decade, retaining all of its grim moodiness, but even depressing fields and bleak Soviet architecture can benefit from some modern bells and whistles. Stalker SoC Remaster is the first in what it creator, Strelokkkkk, hopes will be a trilogy of remaster mods, and judging by the tech trailer it's shaping up nicely.
The aim of the mod is to retain the vanilla Shadow of Chernobyl experience, but with modern additions like ray tracing, higher quality textures, enhanced god rays and a long list of improvements to both the environment and models.
While the AI, weapons and other features are being left alone, the weather overhaul and its accompanying 'epic blowouts' might still have an impact on your exploration of the Zone. Blowouts are massive releases of energy that look like terrifying red storms, and while they were cut from the game, modders eventually put them back in. The remaster beefs them up a bit.
Stalker SoC Remaster is coming soon, but in the meantime there are other overhauls and remasters that you can download now, like XpressTuning's Remaster Edition.
