


Over the years, a lot of people have been drawn to the Zone, hoping to collect these Artifacts and sell them to the highest bidder. The physical laws of the universe have been weakened in the Zone, creating dangerous disturbances ("Anomalies") and mutating the wildlife but also creating Artifacts, valuable items retaining some of the properties of the Anomaly that spawned them. Since the second Chernobyl incident in 2012, the area surrounding ground zero (nicknamed "the Zone") has been quarantined by the Russian army. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is free-roaming, RPG/FPS hybrid set in a near future in the devastated wasteland around the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
