So you just spent 20 hours on a bender playing STALKER2, and for some reason or another, the game has just crashed on you. Unfortunately, it was autosaving at the time as well for whatever reason. Now when you load it back up you are treated to a wonderful grayed out LOAD GAME button with all three slots empty.

Worry not, for the Zone will rescue your memories!:

1. Make a backup of all of your save data located in C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Stalker2

2. Navigate to \Stalker2\Saved\STEAM\SaveGames\Data

3. Press NEW GAME.

4. Pick a slot different from your last saved slot, E.g: Slot 1 -> Slot 2.

5. Hold SPACE to skip the entire intro.

6. Press SAVE GAME. Go into the folder, and then press F2 to "rename" the file. Press CTRL+A and then CTRL+C to copy the whole name. Delete the file that was just created (i.e: 5435ED5C41453C3AB70FCAB3066CA96A.sav).

7. Rename an older .sav file (possibly corrupt) just below the latest save file to the hash/name of the newly formed .sav.

8. Press LOAD GAME and try to load the only save file that is there.

9. If it returns you to the helicopter/intro cutscene, it means that save file is corrupt.

10. Delete the sav (both), do it again, going down the list.

11. Eventually, one of your save files won't be corrupt, and the game will load with your old data and you won't lose 20+ hours of progress.

You're welcome Stalker! This anomaly is called LIFE-SAVER.