I don't know if you've seen the maps used for the Lost Alpha mod for STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (ShoC) but compared to those in vanilla ShoC, they are anywhere between two to four times larger. While the guys who put together the mod added some of their own maps, they used many of the maps from the ShoC 1935 build so you can see that the game was intended to be much broader in scope.
I remember some comment about the GSC team initially wanting to map the entire 30kmē area of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone but of course we know how that turned out and they must have made some significant changes to the story to facilitate that (particularly considering the in game idea that you transition from Pripyat to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant from south to north when in the real world it's north to south).
I also vaguely recall that their original idea was that you actually had to sneak into the Cordon area from a separate map i.e. you would start in a "beginning" map and then infiltrate the Cordon map to locate Sidorovich.
Still love the game although I am playing it in modded form and as mentioned, 10 years after it was released (I've played it at least once every year - I'm an obsessed fanboy haha!) But yes, for an "aftermath of the Cold War era" vibe, it hits a lot of the right notes.
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