The history of the STALKER series, its developers, its offshoots, and the community of players who continue to modify the game and find new ways to play it today are all well worth talking about.These are all reasons against STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl Stack it up.
Think about it: Heart of Chernobyl was announced in 2018 with nothing but a logo and was originally slated to release sometime in 2021. To be honest, GSC Game World’s reputation makes it hard to believe that a real STALKER 2 is in development.In fact, the studio itself admitted that they announced the game That Find a publisher early, so really, it’s more of a statement of intent. Still, like many fans, I played along.
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It took over two years for the first trailer to emerge, which was predictably more of a tone than anything, and then another year before gameplay was revealed.
Looking back, it’s so funny that STALKER 2 is one of my most anticipated games of 2022, right up there with Elden Ring. At the beginning of 2022, the GSC postponed the competition to December of the same year. A month later, Russia invaded Ukraine. As a Ukrainian studio, it’s understandable that GSC had to put development on hold before managing to move to Prague and continue developing the game. Some of its members even joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which undoubtedly had an irreversible impact on the development of the game.
The impact of a war breaking out in the country where you live and work cannot be overstated, and I doubt the Stalker 2 GSC envisioned all those years ago will ever come to fruition. That might be enough to explain why the game doesn’t look like what we’ve seen in 2021.
In August, GSC released some footage showing gameplay to coincide with a demo at Gamescom. While the trailer is brief, it shows off enough random exploration, combat, some dialogue, handling exceptions, light inventory management, and plenty of what you can expect.
I haven’t played that demo, so I can only speak to other people’s impressions of it and the lens itself. This game looks like a distant cousin of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It seems to be more action-focused and doesn’t have much of the RPG and inventory management elements that the classic games are known for.
STALKER games are so scary that you never feel powerful in their world.you are always one Avoid death, one wrong move or a poor rationing decision that puts you in an irreversible situation. S.T.A.R.K.A. is a game that juggles the stakes. But that’s not the impression I got from the footage.
Of course, it remains to be seen how much STALKER 2 will draw from the classics, and it wouldn’t be fair to read too much into a brief trailer just to make the game look exciting. There’s no trailer that would certainly explain how laggy the game is. Jank has always been part of Stalker’s charm, not just because of its existence, but because of the vast potential it hid; proof that there are better games out there for those willing to put up with it.
There is also the element of visual degradation. But once again what we’re looking at is a game in development and a studio that’s been through hell. Sure, it doesn’t look as good as it was initially shown, but visuals have never been S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s strongest suit – despite its dated visuals, that’s how strong its atmosphere has always been.
As I write this in December 2023, STALKER 2 still doesn’t have a release date. For a period in the summer, we thought it might launch in December, but it was later quietly pushed back to the first quarter of 2024. The most important event in this development story is that GSC suffered more tragedies and the studio suffered huge losses. suffered a hacker attack in March, while its offices survived a fire in the summer.
We’re well beyond STALKER 2’s initial release, and I can only hope that it continues STALKER’s legacy, or at least becomes a compelling game in its own right.
