S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Gets A New Trailer and More Screenshots

[GFreeman]

Premiered during a showcase on Bilibili streaming platform, this clip contains both cutscenes and location overview, giving a glimpse of in-game story and atmosphere. It's also the first time you can have a taste of the Ukrainian voiceover - the one to be available alongside the English one for everyone to enjoy. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl releases on PC and Xbox Series X/S on September 5, 2024. The game will be available on Game Pass day one, and pre-orders are opened on our website, as well as on Steam and GOG.

"Behold Her! The Zone blossoms, in her own resplendent yet enigmatic and twisted way: luring, gifting, and taking away. Speaking in many voices, both familiar and new. How far to the edge will you go in pursuit of what you seek?"

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[ZoneDymo]

Feel the need to keep saying this, remember who is behind this game....no, not the people who made the originals, but people we dont know, let by a guy responsible for the original group leaving the company.

So dont get all sympathetic and nostalgic....and certainly dont put any faith in this project, treat it as something completely new, treat it as a new company TRYING to do STALKER and thus take that with the much needed skepticism and pls...pls dont pre-order, dont preorder anything in general but certainly not this.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I don't buy games when they launch, at least I haven't for a long time. The STALKER games were some of the few that I paid full retail price when they came out.

Too bad there is no physical game disc with the STALKER 2 Ultimate Edition, otherwise I'd go out on a limb here and pre-order one. If the game is simply digital then I'll just wait a bit before picking up a copy on GoG. There's just something about physical media, to me, that makes digital seem inferior. At least if I get the game on GoG I can download the files to my side and not have to worry about needing a digital platform acting as a DRM just so I can play the game.

 

[Event Horizon]

Not going to preorder. Willing to not wait for sales if it's good though.

 

[riffraffy]

I'm not sure if I should pre-order or just wait the 8 more years for them to finally launch? It's never good when a company has a built in excuse like a war, evidently the bombs are falling on Prague too or wherever the headquarters are at now. Maybe they should take a page from the Russian's when they moved their industry east past the Urals and kept producing during the Great Patriotic War.

 

[phil6891]

IMO they delayed this to bundle it with Nvidia 50 series cards.

 

[silentbogo]

Feel the need to keep saying this, remember who is behind this game....no, not the people who made the originals, but people we dont know, let by a guy responsible for the original group leaving the company.

+1. As much as I want to be proud of Ukrainian gamedev industry, that's not the case I'm goint to place my bets on. Grygorovych certainly earned his reputation of a total jerk and semi-scammy manipulative asshole. I'd wait for a full release and at least couple patches just to consider buying it.
I'm sure with MS heavy stick the game will release on time, or with minimal delays... however I'm not sure at which state it will be released.
Back in a day even with THQ's asskicking it took them nearly a decade to finish the first game, and another half-a-decade to fix most (but not all) in-game issues.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Grygorovych certainly earned his reputation of a total jerk and semi-scammy manipulative asshole.

Sounds pretty classic...

I am more concerned about the trailer... Duga and Pripyat classic locations in which most probably both of us have been in person... it is small, I have a suspicion they still doesn't even have anything more than a tech demo content wise... ie... they already pretty much mapped it previously, only texture assets if needed, it precisely follows the old Stalker anomaly... maybe after year 2030.

 

[Nordic]

I would be happy with a modern day Chernobyl clone

 

[Easo]

As much as I want to I won't preorder this one - only after seeing reviews. I did previously say that my faith in this game is low to say the least, that hasn't changed.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

gagging for this but not gonna pre order. I really hope it IS good though

 

[Prima.Vera]

I could never dig into the first Stalker games. I just find the gameplay overly repetitive after a while, with the same ol same stuff to do.

 

[Dristun]

Still hope it will somehow recapture the bleak magic of the og trilogy but trailers haven't been very convincing. I don't mind all potential bugs and crashes, that's par for the course, like with Bethesda games, or Piranha Bytes stuff, but it needs to be atmospheric and weird in all the right ways. Not sure if its a day one purchase for me, need to see the actual gameplay from someone, or an extended preview.

 

[theouto]

Looking worse by the day!

 

[punani]

Yay looks to be on gamepass PC!

IMO they delayed this to bundle it with Nvidia 50 series cards.

Russian attack and war in Ukraine is the reason for the delay.

 

[FiRe]

I would be happy with a modern day Chernobyl clone

Chornobyl*, screw the Russian spelling of it

 

[LabRat 891]

I have a suspicion they still doesn't even have anything more than a tech demo content wise... ie... they already pretty much mapped it previously, only texture assets if needed, it precisely follows the old Stalker anomaly... maybe after year 2030.

That would be a reasonable 'gathered' presumption, If it wasn't for the Beta being leaked.
The game was largely done by the previous release date.

GSC was quite unhappy with the 'leak', and seem to have contracted w/ 3rd party services to get any content posted online about the leaked Beta, removed.
TBF the circumstances of the leak/hack, means the Beta was "stolen property", in a way.

Still...
This 'trailer' is more a teaser.
Usually the kind of thing we see when a game is a fraction complete.
Here though, it's odd. We've seen more detail and locales in previous trailers.

If anything, I'd be concerned they went back and started re-doing what they already had made (Ala, HL2 Leaked Beta -> HL2)

 

[Easo]

That would be a reasonable 'gathered' presumption, If it wasn't for the Beta being leaked..............

It was quite sad watching the crapshow of their own mistake (P2P, how does it work? Oh, that's how! F......) being blamed on "Russian hackers" (because of course) while all the leaks have slowly shown they have had issues from before the war.
Then they wasted time to "correct" the game to remove everything Russia related from it which I doubt helped in any way to actually deliver it, probably the opposite.

I dunno, I just can't see this doing actually well and I know any post-launch criticism will drown and be drowned in politics. Hope dies last, though.

 

[LabRat 891]

It was quite sad watching the crapshow of their own mistake (P2P, how does it work? Oh, that's how! F......) being blamed on "Russian hackers" (because of course) while all the leaks have slowly shown they have had issues from before the war.
Then they wasted time to "correct" the game to remove everything Russia related from it which I doubt helped in any way to actually deliver it, probably the opposite.

I dunno, I just can't see this doing actually well and I know any post-launch criticism will drown and be drowned in politics. Hope dies last, though.

Their handling of the issue, certainly deserves criticism.
Yes, they were negligent in security. However, accidentally leaving your back door unlocked, and having someone enter without permission, is still criminal on the perpetrators' part.

100% with ya on the 'time waste'.
Being UE5, I have hope that the STALKER community can turn the "PC" version of STALKER back into STALKER.
Which, will be it's own fun controversy; one to make The Hot Coffee Mod look like child's play.
[sardonic]I just can't wait for being called all sorts of terrible things for merely wanting the STALKERverse STALKER, not STALKER: Real World Problems Edition[/sardonic]

Don't discount that controversy being used to try and drive sales. Sans their re-release trilogy, this is the first STALKER title for the console kiddies too. -a rather manipulatable bunch.

Russian attack and war in Ukraine is the reason for the delay.

Rahm Emanuel - 2008

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.
It is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.

-like, partner w/ nVidia to keep your sales figures up on a game you know will not cannot meet community expectations.

 

[dj-electric]

Their handling of the issue, certainly deserves criticism.
Yes, they were negligent in security. However, accidentally leaving your back door unlocked, and having someone enter without permission, is still criminal on the perpetrators' part.

100% with ya on the 'time waste'.
Being UE5, I have hope that the STALKER community can turn the "PC" version of STALKER back into STALKER.
Which, will be it's own fun controversy; one to make The Hot Coffee Mod look like child's play.
[sardonic]I just can't wait for being called all sorts of terrible things for merely wanting the STALKERverse STALKER, not STALKER: Real World Problems Edition[/sardonic]

Don't discount that controversy being used to try and drive sales. Sans their re-release trilogy, this is the first STALKER title for the console kiddies too. -a rather manipulatable bunch.


Rahm Emanuel - 2008

-like, partner w/ nVidia to keep your sales figures up on a game you know will not cannot meet community expectations.

No f@$%ing way you just accused them of throwing the blame onto war for the sake of NVIDIA's profits while key figures of the studio went into actual war, and some have never returned nor will return from it. Developers had to dislocate and move over and over.
Educate yourself on the matter. Will save the embarrassment or at least the second hand ones we experience reading this..
TPU's community never seizes to catch me off-guard with their comments.

 

[LabRat 891]

No f@$%ing way you just accused them of throwing the blame onto war for the sake of NVIDIA's profits while key figures of the studio went into actual war, and some have never returned nor will return from it.
Educate yourself on the matter. Will save the embarrassment or at least the second hand ones we experience reading this..

Correct: I did not.
I believe you've gone off the reservation ("kneejerk'd") in your interpretation

What I'm saying is that,
given the uncontrollable delay due to extenuating circumstances, "why not?" delay a little more to help bolster sales figures.
nVidia's cards are "The Card" when it comes to 'marketable features'. It'd financially behoove both nVidia and GSC to try and coincide/bundle.

Even the 'decisions' I disagree with are not totally w/in their control.
Ex. Editing out Russian stuff.
(As a longtime STALKER fan) It looks stupid. But, I can only imagine the pressure(s) in their industry (esp. when primarily targeting 'western nations' for sales.)
'The West' is not alone in this. If a company were trying to sell an existing-franchise game to the Chinese market, they'd have to make 'changes and considerations' too.

None of these practical considerations 'look good' from the outside, though.

Nevertheless: A business is a business. War time and war torn, or not.

 

[64K]

I so much want this game to turn out good but it's been a turbulent ordeal since first announced 14 years ago. I am a bit skeptical about the outcome at this point.

 

[Nordic]

Chornobyl*, screw the Russian spelling of it

Typo's and mispellings happen. I am not the first nor the last

 

[ecomorph]

Can't wait to cheeki breeki.

Keeping expectations low, but maybe hits the spot if it's just out of sheer nostalgia

 

[Macro Device]

Typo's and mispellings happen. I am not the first nor the last

This is not a typo and not a misspelling. Ukrainians spell more than half things differently from Russians. Their black is «чорний», whereas we spell the same thing, «чёрный». It results in Chornobyl being the Ukrainian spelling and Chernobyl, the Russian one. As a lowkey philologist I agree with both spellings, yet the Ukrainian is all-around appropriate (you can use it both formally and informally), whereas the Russian is inappropriate on some formal and informal occasions. Grammatically, however, it's still correct. Pure politics. The same way it's no longer correct to spell the Ukrainian capital city, "Kiev" and the only valid spelling is "Kyiv." This has absolutely no linguistic reasoning, it's all political once again.

Speaking of the game itself, it's earned the title of «ждалкер» here in Post-USSR (ждать + сталкер [wait + stalker]) for a good reason. Not sure if we'll see the game in a somewhat playable state before 2028. IF EVER.