Throughout Stalker 2, whether it's a main quest, a side mission, or just a random encounter with another person in The Zone, you'll often have a choice in how you interact with them. You can help them with their troubles, simply walk on by, or blast them in the face right then and there. One of the earliest encounters when this happens is with Squint during the main mission: A Needle in a Haystack.

He can be found in the windmill at the mission location on your map. Below, I'll walk you through both options in terms of how you can approach the mission and interact with Squint, as well as which is the better choice.

Helping Squint

If you decide to help Squint when you meet, you can speak without antagonizing him by choosing the “[Mission] What’s your escape plan?” dialogue choice and then the “[Mission] I’ll get your artifact” option. This will open up a separate side mission called Piece of Cake that will allow you to investigate the cave under the field and houses where he's hiding out. 

In this cave you'll find a bloodsucker, which you need a fair bit of ammo to kill, a body or two to loot, and some acid anomalies. Once you reach the acid anomalies, pull out your scanner and look for the artifact Squint wants. 

Upon finding it you can then head back to the windmill and hand it over to Squint to complete the mission. Alternatively, you can kill him in this moment, obtain the Ward Sensors yourself from his corpse, and keep the artifact too. This seems to be the only time you meet Squint, so there isn’t a major downside to doing this, unless you don’t want to spend your career as a stalker murdering people in cold blood.

Killing Squint

If you kill Squint straight away by choosing the “[Attack]” dialogue option, you'll be able to loot the Ward Sensors off of his body, search his hideout for any loot and items, and then keep or sell anything you don’t want. However, this will block off the side mission I mentioned earlier. 

This isn’t a huge deal as you can just head below the field into the cave and grab the artifact after killing Squint. So, if you aren’t too fussed about keeping your quest completion record clean then this is a potential option. Although, you can also complete the quest and then kill Squint anyway as mentioned above.

So should you help or kill Squint?

Helping or killing Squint doesn’t seem to matter too much in actuality, as you can get everything by approaching him either way. However, I would suggest you help Squint and refrain from killing him, in case he is lurking out in The Zone with more quests for you later in the game. 

The number of regular civilians or quest givers you kill could also affect which of the four endings you get in the game. Although I'm still testing this, if you don’t want to have a super negative ending, then maybe refrain from murdering everyone just in case, including Squint.