S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (series)/WMG

The next S.T.A.L.K.E.R game will have Strider from Call of Pripyat as the Player Character
With Strelok now having left the Zone his story has been pretty much wrapped up, but the ending monolgue for COP implies that Strider and his fellow Ex monolith fighters still have a mission of their own, the next game will have you playing as Strider, exploring more of the ruined city to reveal Montliths real purpose.
 * Jossed.

Aliens may be responsible for the Zone after all
Ok so the end of Shadow of Chernobyl tells us that C-Consiousness were the ones responsible for the anomalys and the 2nd incident, and that the alien interference is just a cover for this. But in Call of Pripyat there are a few hints that C-Consiousness may not have been in total control as was previously thought, for example:
 * The Zone is still active despite the fact that Strelok kills them all, if fact, it seems to become more unstable afterwards.
 * Monolith seem to be getting orders from somebody through they're recivers, but they're original masters are all dead. More intrigueing is the fact that they manage to give the millitary a run for its money, organising the inital ambush at the hospital and later during the evacuation, whoevers giving them orders seems well versed in milliarty stratagy, or can see more than others.
 * It is possible but some members of the original project are alive, or further that their consciousness is now within the noosphere and uses the antennas to communicate. As for the Monolith forces being being such a problem for the military: It is the Ukrainian military which is not known for being up to date or well equipped. The soldiers they are attacking are primarily pilots of helicopters, they have very basic combat training with only a couple of soldiers for possible escort. Any sort of ambush is a dangerous situation regardless of the composition of the enemy, add in that the enemy in that case had superior gear and numbers of course lead to them being curb stomped.
 * The rumours of the UFO over Yanov, this gets mentioned a few times and may have been the UAV but it's never really resoved.
 * Actually, north of the Ash Heap anomaly are the crashed remains of a UAV that starts a quest chain for some Strelok based story and gaining some decent gear.
 * There are WMGs in some russian forums claiming that UAV is NATO-made or Russia-made. So imagine an open war inside the Zone.
 * As for who the aliens are...
 * The Combine.
 * Gordon Freeman's dead, so we're screwed.
 * Not necessarily. I mean, we've got Strelok, and the rest of the veterans.
 * And Noah!
 * Read the books to find out.
 * The game takes inspiration from the books but is not based on them. It is found out in the game that The Zone is man made.

The bandits at the factory/lab are blind due to the radiation in the area
Seriously, there has to be an explanation for why the ones there are noticeably stupider than every other NPC in the game.

The game takes place in the Half Life universe
The SEVA Suit shares a voice with the HEV suit and "Gordon Freeman" appears. This Gordon appears to be older, and the Half Life PC should be in stasis in 2012, so I conclude that this "Gordon Freeman" is in-fact Gordon Freeman Senior. The Combine invasion will happen latter.
 * Alternately, it's already happening, and the Zone is just the first manifestation - the resonance cascade at Black Mesa may have somehow affected the C-Consciousness's experiments at Chernobyl.

The mercenaries have been hired to retrieve the
They spend most of Call of Pripyat watching the scientists or preparing for their expedition into the center of the Zone, and when they do mount the expedition, they really go all-out - without player intervention they'll even outnumber the surviving Monolith forces by the end of the game, and the mercs will effectively take over the city for themselves. Although there's a significant number of anomalies there, and the lack of looters means that there's still some useful stuff to be scavenged from the buildings, neither one of those things is really a good reason to mount a full-scale invasion. The, on the other hand, might be just what their mysterious benefactor is looking for.