One of the best survivor horror games ever. The mood, aesthetic, and atmosphere hasn't been emulated successfully anywhere else. And I'll extend that to the game design, basically neglected by every other publisher in the market. There is a total sense of focused individuality and uniqueness to STALKER, and that goes a long way to making it so special.
I distinct memories purchasing Shadow of Chernobyl. Specifically, I was unemployed and living in a Balwyn (Melbourne eastern suburb), sharehousing with two good friends and unemployed. I was relying intently on welfare payments to cover my expenses and, on the day STALKER came out, I found myself at JB HiFi on Elizabeth Street scrounging literally every single last cent I had to my name to buy the collector's edition tin. I had to live off whatever I had in the pantry for about a week. I'd deferred school that year too, so I went full vidya NEET. I still have that tin, too.
I can imagine making a modern STALKER would be an expensive endeavor. Doable, but expensive. It's also fascinating to read what an up and down nightmare the development behind STALKER was. So much content cut.
For anybody interested in a thematically similar game, I highly recommend Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason. It's not an open world ARPG at all, instead linear and narrative based, but reminiscent of STALKER's exceedingly bleak Eastern European survival horror, with a nice supernatural surrealist twist.
EDIT: Regarding Metro, I've long been a bit soured by people talking it up as a STALKER-like game. It plays almost nothing like STALKER at all, even if it finds a similar mood. And I've long argued that 2033 in particular has stretches of fucking tragically terrible gameplay, easily critiqued for the exact same reasons modern Call of Duty cops a bad wrap; follow-the-NPC pacing, talk-at-you narrative, and some dreadfully dull encounters. Last Light, while more accessible, was a far better constructed game in my opinion, finding its own quality identity over 2033 lingering in STALKER's shadow.