Zoned out until November 20th
Image credit: GSC Game World
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, the beautifully grotty sci-fi shooter sequel from Ukrainian studio GSC Game World, has been delayed once again. It’s a relatively good-spirited delay, though: first off, it’s not that long, with the previously planned September 5th launch pushed back just a few weeks to November 20th. There’s also clever little in-universe announcement video (one which gives the fourth wall a study kick on its way out), and an accompanying promise of a meaty “developer deep dive video”, set to reveal much more of the game’s radioactive hellscape on August 12th.
“We know you might be tired of waiting, and we truly appreciate your patience”, reads the English-language announcement post on Xitter. “These two additional months will give us the chance to fix more “unexpected anomalies” (or simply “bugs”, as you call them)”.
To sate our appetites for schlepping through an overgrown Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and firing rusty AKs at psychic beasts, the deep dive video will include “exclusive interviews, lots of new footage, and a full video walkthrough of one of the game quests”. Neat! When August 12th comes it’ll release on “Xbox media channels”, which I assume means, like, YouTube, and not some kind of terrestrial TV channel I’ve not heard of where Master Chief presents the 6 ‘o’ clock news.
In all seriousness, I’ve been well up for more S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 for ages. I adore the atmosphere of the older S.T.A.L.K.E.R.s, but have always bounced off their hardcore Eurojank, so the notion of having the same world built with updated production values is a intensely compelling one. You can’t argue with taking more time to polish, either – even if it does mean that “Final Release Date” trailer didn’t age particularly well, naming-wise.
GSC have also been forced to deal with far worse than a handful of software bugs. Staff from the Kyiv-based studio were relocated to Prague in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion, and early S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 development materials have been stolen and released by apparent Russian hacking groups. Also in 2022, designer Volodymyr Yezhov, who had previously worked on the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, was killed while defending the city of Bakhmut as a volunteer soldier.
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