Again, this contains spoilers of the ending so:

Yeah so I just beat S:SoC and I gotta say...........What. The. Fuck?!

Seriously I feel like somewhere along the lines I missed a huge chunk of the game. I'll say this, after a while I stopped doing most of the side missions since they seemed pretty much useless, so I'm wondering if that's where I missed something.

So I beat the game and got the money ending at the Wish Granter....And to be perfectly honest I was really pissed because I thought "wow what a shitty ending to what was a pretty good game". So I looked up online and found out there's a "good ending". Looked up how to get it, and you needed to go to some guy about a guide and go back to the Lab?

When the hell was I supposed to find out about that? I don't remember any mention of that in my PDA or anything. So I found out there was a shortcut to get to the good ending without the decoder (gauss gun in the door...haha just wow at that). So I get the good ending and I get all this information spit at me from that scientist hologram, which was awesome....But it's like I learned something at the beginning of the game ran around killing people throughout the game and then got the whole story at the end.

I know Strelok was with Fang and Ghost through reading the stuff in my PDA but I don't know what the hell he's talking about, it's all new to me. So I'm utterly confused to crap and back, like where did all this come from?

I looked on Wiki at the story and it sounds awesome but I didn't get ANY of that in the game. I basically went through the game and got 10% of what I figure I was supposed too. Is the story that deeply engrained in the background where I can just go through without getting any of it?

The game was pretty awesome. But between the incessant bugs, and the fact that I didn't get any story it took a 5 Star game down to a 3 star game, maybe borderline 2 star.

So where did I miss everything?

*Mind you I watched the video of someone going back to the lab and meeting with Ghost and still feel that that's such a small part of what I missed.

*Oh and the cheat I used to get through the door without the decoder/key - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B1_nizEqg8

I got the quest in my PDA- I think it disappears when you go to Pripyat.
Basically, Strelok was trying to find a way to disable the C-Consciousness, but his face was scarred later on while he was hunting(after crossing the Brain Scorcher).
So he came back to The Guide, and on his way to the C-Consciousness again, he was rendered unconscious and his memories were lost because of an emission.
So then the Monolith gives him simple instructions(kill the Strelok), loads him in a death truck, and sends him on his way.
I'm not sure about the face scarring bit though

Yeah but see how could I have missed SO MUCH of the story?
Like it seems weird that you could play a game and miss, what I feel to be, 90% of the story. And I wasn't just rushing either I was taking my time.

Well, if you play the prequel... there's an even bigger mind fuck.

I have Clear Sky and plan on starting it soon, but is the story as hard to find as SoC?

....and on that note did anyone else have as much trouble as I did?