Kyiv-based games developer GSC Game World is aiming for a November 2024 release for their upcoming first-person shooter Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, pushed back from 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

The original Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl (stylised as ‘S.T.A.L.K.E.R’) was released in 2007. The open-world FPS involves players traversing the irradiated environments of ‘The Zone’ surrounding the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The game takes place in an alternate universe in which the plant fell victim to a second large-scale accident, which caused mutated creatures to spawn on the abandoned site. Players are given the freedom to explore the setting, accept tasks and quests from NPCs, and navigate the different groups claiming control of The Zone – not to mention the dangerous mutations roaming at large. The player progresses through different game areas, ultimately ending up within the power plant itself. Described as a ‘brave game’ upon its release, Stalker was commended for its shooting mechanics, its hardy enemies and its immersive depiction of a haunted wasteland. Fans were loyally awaiting a full sequel when, in 2018, the developers announced Stalker 2 for a projected April 2022 release. 

On 24th February 2022, Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border, but the GSC Game World team had already prepared for the worst. Stalker 2 lead producer Mariia Grygorovych describes how she arranged for buses to collect members of the development team from their offices in Kyiv, to drive them to the western border with their families, in hopes of escaping to safety. ‘Initially, we didn’t tell the team about these buses, because we didn’t want to scare people’, Grygorovych said. Members of staff who remained behind in Ukraine to join the military were said to be continuing work on Stalker 2 whenever possible, in between duties pertaining to the war effort. The staff who were able to evacuate ended up relocating to Prague in the Czech Republic, where they established a satellite studio to continue development work on the upcoming release. This operation involved building recording studios and motion capture sets from the ground up.  

In protest of Russia’s ongoing invasion, Stalker 2 is not set to be released in Russia despite its sizable Russian fanbase, and the former subtitle Shadow of Chernobyl has had its spelling subtly changed to Heart of Chornobyl, which is the Ukrainian romanisation of the name. Evgeniy Kulik, technical producer of Stalker 2, estimated that ‘maybe half’ of the game’s development team ‘is currently working under…constant threat’. However, Kulik believes it is important for the team to deliver on its promise to release Stalker 2, in a display of Ukraine’s refusal to submit to Russia, culturally as well as militarily. ‘We would like to remind the world that Ukraine is capable of doing great games once again,’ he said. ‘Games are part of the culture…(Stalker 2) is an important work to the world’. 

Despite Kulik’s optimistic outlook, the finished product is also set to embody an iteration of the development team from before the war shaped its current form; a tribute to what has since been lost. ‘To make this happen in the memory of those people’, said Kulik, alluding to colleagues such as Volodymyr Yehzov, who was a contributing developer on Stalker 2. He died at Bakhmut, and his colleagues wish to honour his life and work in the finished game whose release he did not live to see realised. ‘All those people worked really hard to make this happen and we should really push forward…and appreciate their effort,’ Kulik said. 

A documentary detailing the efforts to bring Stalker 2 to the world has been released on YouTube, named War Game: The Making of Stalker 2. Currently, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is set to be released on 20th November, 2024.

Read more Gaming News here:

The Game Awards 2023 Nominees Announced

What’s New In Football Manager 2024?

Minecraft Live 2023 Recap