S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Announced and Teased, More Details Throughout 2020

[btarunr]

GSC Game World announced the second chapter and latest entry to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. The survival horror FPS made its debut in 2007 at a time when PC graphics were taking a technological leap. The Kiev-based game studio since dished out the "Clear Sky" prequel and "Call of Pripyat" sequel last decade, but has since been a recluse to the AAA gaming scene. The development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 appears to be already underway. The game will leverage Unreal Engine, and there's a fairly high possibility of it being Epic Games Store exclusive given its sweet revenue-sharing model that directs 88% of the sales to the game publisher.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 developers (or at least a Twitter handle claiming to represent them), posted two key tweets. One shows a teaser screenshot of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 in development; and another with a message from the developers to fans of the game franchise. "The second chapter of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. saga will be our most ambitious game so far. It will live to the legendary legacy," the statement reads. The developers didn't, however, state any timelines. "Consider it (the teaser screenshot and announcement) our humble present, with more to come in 2020," the statement concludes.



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[silentbogo]

Cheeki-breeki, mothatruckers, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is live!

Wouldn't trust anything coming from Grigorovich. The only reason the original Stalker even made it to release, is because they had THQ reps on-site kicking their ass for the entirety of development process. And all it took is >5 years to make it from prototype to half-assed game in dire need of 3 dozen patches to be playable.
Now, that he ran the company into the ground, broke all connections and lost all trust in the industry, and makes outrageous claims about Stalker 2 for the past 2 years - I doubt this will get anywhere, or if it does - it'll be a generic half-assed title on third-party engine like UE4, or nostalgia-induced abomination on "reworked" Xray Engine.
EDIT: it's alredy confirmed to be UE4.

 

[Arcdar]

Cheeki-breeki, mothatruckers, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is live!

Wouldn't trust anything coming from Grigorovich. The only reason the original Stalker even made it to release, is because they had THQ reps on-site kicking their ass for the entirety of development process. And all it took is >5 years to make it from prototype to half-assed game in dire need of 3 dozen patches to be playable.
Now, that he ran the company into the ground, broke all connections and lost all trust in the industry, and makes outrageous claims about Stalker 2 for the past 2 years - I doubt this will get anywhere, or if it does - it'll be a generic half-assed title on third-party engine like UE4, or nostalgia-induced abomination on "reworked" Xray Engine.
EDIT: it's alredy confirmed to be UE4.

sadly, exactly that.

I know the UE4 is a good tool and actually does a good Job if you put the Right minds to work with it, but the Xray Engine was one of the Thing smaking Stalker Special. Not out of the box. And yes, only after what felt like a Million Patches the game (and every "Sequel") was playable (None of them were enjoyable Right away) but once they were patched and you found the correct console commands to Change some of the graphics-settings they didn't have Sliders or Buttons for in the menu the game was Beautiful and the Feeling "inclusive" and great.

Sadly, just like you said, it wasn't because of the dev-team doing an amazing Job, but thanks to a lot of bug-Fixing and the community finding out what to do / what to Change to make the game as good as the dev's promised it might be / would be but didn't deliver on that.

With all community-stuff (high-res-texture reworks, community Patches, configs to improve Image Quality, added Features/etc.) and modern GFX-Cards Stalker still Looks good and feels good (just like Crysis and rage can ) but compared to other "great engines designed to run on hardware not available on release date" it's purely thanks to the community. Not the Producer. And thus it doesn't bode well to hear what they are about to do --- and that they drop what made it Special and went the "Pub-route" taking the UE4 and porting their textures into it -- and that's most likely what it'll be like. A storyline in between Stalker/ClearSky/CoP, imported and upscaled textures from 2007-2010 and some "ue4 magic" to make it look Fancy, but Nothing else.

Which makes me sad. Stalker is one of the games which I really enjoyed spending a lot of time in (again, after/with all Patches + community fixes for stuff the Producers didn't care About anymore after having to spend already massive Hours on Basic fixes for stuff that should have never made it into the release game --- some pre-access games work better than the final product of all three games of the Stalker series --- it's a bit an "early Anthem" which made it to release of version 2&3 even though 1 was already broken ))

 

[silentbogo]

Sadly, just like you said, it wasn't because of the dev-team doing an amazing Job, but thanks to a lot of bug-Fixing and the community finding out what to do / what to Change to make the game as good as the dev's promised it might be / would be but didn't deliver on that.

The biggest thing GSC has ever done for the community, was releasing a resource unpacker. That's the only reason there were any major patches at all and why S.T.A.L.K.E.R survived for that long. I used to be active on community forums back then and participated in some development/mods. Mostly it was fans and enthusiasts who combed through in-game LUA scripts and fixed most of their stupid mistakes (later incorporated in official patches). Just by reading comments in scripts and XML files you could see that most of scripting for STALKER 1 was outsourced to students-freelancers from all over Ukraine. Some scripts were broken to the point of being laughable. For example, the first bug I ever found was essentially a banal "division by zero". It all started cause I got very pissed off at the game crashing every 2-3min on Army Warehouses level. Got the unpacker, found the script that was throwing an exception in log, combed through all functions and found a part where they were performing some arithmetic on a var that could potentially be nil. Added 1 line for value check, and crashes were gone. I'm not even sure if this fix ever made it into an official patch...

 

[rtwjunkie]

This really is not to be believed. The number of times in the last 5 to 7 years we have been teased by “STALKER2” is beyond what I can count on fingers and toes.

Until something is actually for sale and people have actually bought and played it, I will regard any teasing as just that: a tease.

 

[LTUGamer]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: world after Corona apicalypse. Coming later this year, stay tuned

 

[Vayra86]

Look at the website. It looks like one big placeholder and its obviously not going to get expanded. Its just a frontpage with the usual tidbits on the bottom, and a few links to previous games.

The render 'screenshot' is also quite fun. Any kid can do this in photoshop.

Nice try, but we know what you are, Grigorovich. You remind me of the power plant boss in Chernobyl series. Denial even in the face of overwhelming evidence that you're full of shit.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I absolutely loved playing Clear Sky - too bad the faction system was incomplete or broken in some parts. I replayed the game a half dozen times, joining a different faction each time to see how you'd be received by the rest of the game world. Even the player patch that fixed a lot of the faction issues, it was still kind of broken, but it did improve upon it a lot. I think I was probably one of the minority that thought Clear Sky was a good game in the series.

Call of Pripyat was okay. It came back closer to the roots of SoC with the creepy atmosphere and underground labs and such, but I felt it was still kind of lacking in the story aspect.

I guess I'm curious as to how this one will play out, if it does see the light of day. I remember some of the things they wanted included in the first STALKER game that never made it in....who knows how this one will turn out.

 

[Easo]

This sounds too good to be true and I will believe it when i will see a gameplay trailer. As someone from ex-Soviet country the first game was THE best atmospheric trip I have ever played for obvious reasons.
I am going to be honest - they should have improved XRay engine instead, but I am fairly sure that development of version 2.0 would cost more than to license UE4.
And I am quite sad that the original team went to shit, with all the drama. Though then again, they way, way overpromised, it would have been the Witcher 3 of it's time if they really would have put in all what they said would have for the AI, like it being able to complete the story quests and actually beat you to the end, true "life". Imagine seeing a newbie from starter village actualy getting artefacts in Yantar, with upgraded gear, acquired not via scripted event, but actual, even if offline, XP.

 

[gamefoo21]

Finally...

A proper sequel!

Actually... I'll put this in HL3 category of will believe once I'm playing it.

 

[Octavean]

Finally...

A proper sequel!

Actually... I'll put this in HL3 category of will believe once I'm playing it.

You said it brother!

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Shame no x-ray engine. Makes me think it could be some generic fps game. Though that's not to say that UE hasn't been used to make some great games in the past but Im gonna reserve a supreme bucket load of judgement on this one.

One of the things that made stalker what it was was the game engine

 

[Mistral]

fairly high possibility of it being Epic Games Store exclusive

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: world after Corona apicalypse. Coming later this year, stay tuned

Considering who owns a large portion of Epic, that seems appropriate...

 

[rtwjunkie]

Considering who owns a large portion of Epic, that seems appropriate...

It’s too bad you’ve not bothered to learn what their actual business arrangement is. Hint: it doesn’t have anything to do with tencent having operational control or decision-making authority.

 

[Vayra86]

Considering who owns a large portion of Epic, that seems appropriate...

Man, get with the times... that is 2019's reality. Its 2020 now, people have gotten over it and the vast majority has a backlog on EGS consisting of free content. And gets lured into buying a game now and then. All is well in the world, the little crusade failed, let's move on.

 

[hat]

Get out of here, Stalker!

I said come in, don't stand there!

You can't go there!

Hello? Hello?

Marked One?! What the hell?!

What the heck are you bringing me in all this crap for?

Aw man, dog food is more valuable than this!

What is this shit?

...well, I can only hope this pans out. They'll definitely earn a sale from me... even if it is an EGS exclusive. I'd prefer it to be available on Steam, but Stalker is one game that would push me hard enough to sign up for EGS. Good hunting, Stalkers!

 

[Vayra86]

Guys... GSC World, last released game: 2011.

What employer has its staff not releasing product for NINE years?

 

[silentbogo]

What employer has its staff not releasing product for NINE years?

The onle that basically has no employees. GSC went bankrupt, but Grigorovich ketp their IP.
"Studio" re-opened in 2012, but I'm not even sure who works there (37 employees listed on LinkedIn, half of which are supporting staff, marketing and community managers). The old crew split up in several independent studios(one of which made Survarium and abominable Fear the Wolves), while the new generation of talented devs is probably working at either Crytek Kiev or the new shiny Ubisoft office.
BTW, GSC did Cossacks 3 (remake of their first game on ) back in 2016. That's the only title since their re-opening.
Grigorovich basically uses "STALKER 2" tease every time people forget GSC exists. First "leaks" happened right after reopening and before the official announcement, then there was a second flood of rumors right before Cossacks 3 release, then it was an "official" announcement in 2018 (with nothing but crude concept art), and now we basically have a rehash of the same thing from 2018.

 

[hat]

Well, let's just hope for the best, yeah?

 

[Super XP]

Well, let's just hope for the best, yeah?

According to S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 twitter feed, I think it might end up being one of the best FPS games of 2021. Hopefully they can pull it off, it's been a very long time coming.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2

www.stalker2.com

Also liked Stalker in this order:
Chadow of Chernobyl (Awesome)
Call of Pripyat (Awesome)
Clear Sky (Didn't like this as much as the the other 2) Seemed unfinished.

 

[hat]

In what way did Clear Sky seem unfinished? If anything, Call of Pripyat would be unfinished in my opinion. Seemed like there were a lot of loose ends yet. Who was the merc's client? Strider never really found out about himself, either... and Strelok just up and leaves the Zone? What was this critical information he had? If not the c-consciousness, who's really in control?

Seems like there's always more questions than answers. Hopefully Stalker 2 answers these and presents more questions for Stalker 3...

 

[Super XP]

In what way did Clear Sky seem unfinished? If anything, Call of Pripyat would be unfinished in my opinion. Seemed like there were a lot of loose ends yet. Who was the merc's client? Strider never really found out about himself, either... and Strelok just up and leaves the Zone? What was this critical information he had? If not the c-consciousness, who's really in control?

Seems like there's always more questions than answers. Hopefully Stalker 2 answers these and presents more questions for Stalker 3...

Clear Sky just felt buggy for me, especially in the swampy areas & unfinished.
But I put up with the thing because I like the game and its concept. And I also want to support the dev's so they can bring us a Stalker 2 Trilogy then Stalker 3 Trilogy and may be a Stalker Prequel Trilogy and so on and so forth

Playing Metro Exodus right now, simply stunning.

 

[silentbogo]

In what way did Clear Sky seem unfinished? If anything, Call of Pripyat would be unfinished in my opinion.

They were all unfinished, if you look at them objectively.
Shadow of Chernobyl had nearly half of its locations/monsters/weapons/gameplay removed before release due to lack of progress and buggyness.
Clear Sky only got some publicity for being a DX10 showcase, but also suffered from content "hack and slash", even though it reused most of the stuff from SOC (including removed locations mentioned above) and had a nice head start in terms of engine and content. Basically it was what SOC was supposed to be, if it was nearing finishing stages (but still not finished).
Call of Pripyat in its essence is a DLC, not a full game. They took whatever was cut from Clear Sky and glued it together with boring side quests and repetitive backtracking.

Clear Sky was definitely a better one of these three, but neither came even close to a finished game.

 

[Ahhzz]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is Coming to Xbox Series X - Xbox Wire

The debut trailer of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is out, and we are happy to share this moment with our players and fans all around the world. We sincerely hope you were both delighted and surprised during the Xbox Game Showcase, as that was the ultimate goal that we aimed for. From the very beginning of...

news.xbox.com

Awesome looking video, not too pleased about that Day One XCock instead of all platforms, but it will be on PC at some point.

 

[Super XP]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is Coming to Xbox Series X - Xbox Wire

The debut trailer of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is out, and we are happy to share this moment with our players and fans all around the world. We sincerely hope you were both delighted and surprised during the Xbox Game Showcase, as that was the ultimate goal that we aimed for. From the very beginning of...

news.xbox.com

Awesome looking video, not too pleased about that Day One XCock instead of all platforms, but it will be on PC at some point.

Metro Exodus was amazing, game play, story and graphics. I hope STALKER2 is even better and the AI is above the rest.

And it better be available on PC via Steam or have a choice on which platform we want to utilize.