Pick up the artifact and head to the opposite end of the direction you came from. This will lead you to a ladder you can use to exit the cave. You will now be tasked with going back to Squint, who will still be at the top of the mill.

Heart of Chernobyl does not have a standard tutorial before throwing players into danger. Instead, it approaches the game with a form of trial by fire. Players will have explanations appear on-screen,

STALKER 2’s solid gunplay picks up a lot of the slack in its combat’s faults. Whipping around a decked-out assault rifle with a nice red dot sight to make headshots easy, or pumping shells into a mutant from a fully modded shotgun and slowing its charge with their impact had me looking forward to those high-stakes, kill-or-be-killed situations.