STALKER 2 is real, and it’s promising. I can confirm as much after having had the chance to try a brief demo of Episode 1 during Gamescom 2024. This sequel has had to go through an untold number of hurdles, starting with the cancellation of the original project (announced in 2010) and the disbandment of Ukrainian developer GSC Game World.
Thankfully, after a few years, the studio was reformed. After making the real-time strategy game Cossacks 3, the team went on to make STALKER 2 at long last. However, the troubles were far from over, starting with the Russian invasion of Ukraine that forced them to stop development for a while and relocate to Prague, and there was even an office fire at some point.
The game is now basically complete, however, and it also looked fairly polished from what little I played. Granted, it would be impossible to even attempt to judge a game this big after a half-hour session where players were also left to understand the mechanics on their own. Still, the Unreal Engine 5-powered visuals certainly look great, and the atmosphere is top-notch.
After the hands-on, I chatted with Lead Producer Slava Lukyanenka and PR Specialist Zakhar Bocharov to discuss the game’s short road to release. As a reminder, STALKER 2 will launch on PC and Xbox Series S|X on November 20, and it will be available on Game Pass from day one.
First of all, I wanted to ask how the team is doing. It would be a big understatement to say you’ve been through a lot. Now that you are so close to the finish line, what does it feel like?
Slava Lukyanenka: I would say there’s all kinds of anxiety and excitement. We are preparing both versions of the game, including a build for Microsoft, because we need to pass through the certification for the Xbox version, and we need to do it in advance. Starting yesterday, we also started to receive public opinions from Gamescom, and it was pure anxiety.
Currently, it’s slightly changing because we see the reception and we see that actually people like what we are delivering. Having this kind of feedback from the fans is something that reinforces the team spirit.
Last year, at Gamescom 2023, you allowed people to play STALKER 2 for the first time. How did last year’s hands-on allow you to gather feedback, and what did you improve based on that feedback?
Slava Lukyanenka: We had a lot to process. We were observing what the majority of the players were feeling. We also had a strike team discussing their impressions daily on what the players were doing in the demo and what they talked about. Based on that, we reshaped the way AI performs their actions, how they choose their targets, and how they fight against the player. Most essentially, we have redone the dialogue system, so talking to other NPCs became, I would say, more fluid and more natural. I guess there were many more tiny things that improved, too.
Performance, too, I’d wager.
Slava Lukyanenka: Yes, but that is something that we didn’t just gather from the users’ feedback. We just knew it had to be done. If you play on Xbox Series X, you will see the console version running at 60 frames per second, which is proof of all the efforts of our team in terms of performance.
Zakhar Bocharov: I must say that the overall feedback that we had from last year’s event had a big impact on our decision to postpone STALKER 2 because it was the first time people played it. All of them said it was a true STALKER experience, shaping up nicely, but still needed some time in an oven. Since we don’t have a publisher and it actually, of course, costs us money, but we don’t have a publisher, so we have a certain degree of freedom of deciding when to release. So that was really useful in terms of gathering this feedback together to actually improve the game, postpone, and take time to polish certain things. We’re super glad that we actually showed it, that people played it, and that we learned there were certain ways to go to improve on our way to release.
You’ve said that you are self-publishing, but you do have a partnership with Microsoft.
Zakhar Bocharov: That’s right. That’s a Game Pass partnership and Microsoft is not pushing us in any way to release on any date or just put the content out of the game or something like that. Actually, Microsoft, they are super supportive of us. We didn’t exactly ask someone from Microsoft to be our friends, but Sarah Bond is obviously a friend of the game. Phil (Spencer) was super supportive, all the teams from Microsoft were. They didn’t put any additional pressure on us. So basically, we’re self-publishing, and then we have a Game Pass deal with Microsoft.
Did they help you with the optimization of the Xbox versions?
Slava Lukyanenka: Well, our team is mature enough to take care of many aspects of the game themselves. Yet, the Xbox team knows best how the Xbox performs and what’s better to do in a case like we need to go deeper into the optimization. The Microsoft team visited several times, providing essential expertise on what else we could do that we didn’t think of. It’s not over yet. Aside from Xbox Series X, we’re still working on optimization for Xbox Series S. It’s going well, and the Xbox team is contributing a lot.
I guess the Xbox Series S is the toughest platform to optimize for because it’s weaker than the others.
Slava Lukyanenka: In our case, it’s quite achievable. On Xbox Series X, we have two available modes. One of them is Performance Mode, where the game is running with 60 FPS and slightly different graphics than in Quality Mode, which looks super awesome with all the reflections and high-resolution textures, but runs at 30 FPS. We are trying to achieve a similar experience on Xbox Series S by combining these two approaches.
Does that mean it will run at 30 FPS on the Xbox Series S with the same settings as the X’s 60 FPS mode?
Slava Lukyanenka: Not yet. So far, we have it at 25ish FPS on the Xbox Series S, but we still have space to optimize.
On the PC side, you’re working with NVIDIA, right?
Slava Lukyanenka: Yes. We are going to have software ray tracing. As for hardware ray tracing, it’s too early for us, but we are experimenting with that. We are trying to have it on the release date, but it is highly unlikely you will have it at launch. But NVIDIA DLSS will be there.
Okay, let’s talk about the game itself. Have you shared an estimate of how long it will take to complete STALKER 2 on average?
Slava Lukyanenka: So far, I can judge only through the playthroughs me and my colleagues I had my colleagues had, but you know, when we play, we are way different from each other, as we are focusing on different stuff. I would say it will take approximately 25 to 40 hours to beat the game, and yet, within one playthrough, you won’t see all the content we have because the story is nonlinear, and your decisions impact what you’re going to see and some locations will change based on the decisions you made. So, I would say that to beat the game once, it will take 25 to 40 hours. But to see the whole game, you would need several playthroughs.
I know you confirmed that there will be several endings to the story. Can you share how many?
Zakhar Bocharov: I think it was just confirmed yesterday on IGN, so it’s super fresh. It will be three.
On the game’s Steam page, it says that you’ll support mods. Can you discuss that?
Slava Lukyanenka: Yeah. STALKER is a known franchise not only because of the games but also because of the support from the mod community, which has thrived for the last 15 years, and we don’t really want to abandon these people. So, after the release, I can’t say when exactly, but we want to do it as close as possible to the release date, we will have the official mod support. We are cooking up some new, interesting initiatives for next year.
Are you going to distribute the mod tools?
Slava Lukyanenka: Yes.
Will players be able to download mods in STALKER 2, or is it going to be out of the game like most PC mods?
Slava Lukyanenka: That’s something to be defined, but we are striving to support both PC and console.
Zakhar Bocharov: Yeah, we’re actually already supporting them with Mod.io in the original trilogy. I can’t confirm whether it’s going to be Mod.io or something else for STALKER 2. But the thing is, the modding scene is a little bit of a Wild West right now where you need to download files, replace files, et cetera, so we want to make it structured. There are certain ways on the market to make it structured: Steamworks, Mod.io, and others. We’re exploring, we’re playing for that, and we want to do it as close to release as possible, but we cannot just guarantee it’s going to be on the release, but we are doing our best efforts to be there on time.
You also mentioned multiplayer support coming after release. What else can you say about it, if anything? How long after the release, and what would it be like?
Zakhar Bocharov: I don’t think we have many updates on that side. We are now fully concentrated on single player.
Is it still planned to be relatively soon after release?
Zakhar Bocharov: It is supposed to be an update after the release.
A free update?
Zakhar Bocharov: Yes. But for now, we’re making the single player as polished as possible. Everything connected to multiplayer probably belongs to our post-launch phase, so we just don’t have an update on that right now.
Okay. Putting aside the multiplayer topic, are you going to continue to improve STALKER 2 post-launch with new features?
Slava Lukyanenka: First of all, we are going to have to do the story DLCs. These will be huge story DLCs which would expand on the story of the characters and the zone itself. Before the DLCs are released, we will provide several free updates for all players. You shouldn’t expect any cut quests because we are not cutting anything from the story. Yet, there are a few things that our team wants to deliver, but we know they’re tiny things that will be very nice for the players, but they can wait till the post-release. So, you can expect several free updates along with the patches and bug fixes.
Zakhar Bocharov: We’re crafting a game that we really hope, and we’re working hard on that, will not be a game to be forgotten two weeks after release. As Slava said, we’re going to support it. At the moment, we’re doing our best efforts to polish the game. If there is anything not quite there, of course, we’re going to fix it post-launch just to make it technically better. At the same time, we plan to support this game for a while, so it’s not just something to be released and forgotten.
Obviously, the three DLCs are part of this plan to keep it updated. Probably, part of our efforts will be dedicated to the technical stage until the release, and then we’re going to continue with free updates and DLCs in the future.
What are you doing with the additional time you have with this last two-month delay?
Slava Lukyanenka: It’s specifically to improve polish. During this period, we are fully focusing on fixes and optimization. We are not adding anything new; we just want to make sure that the players will get the best experience on the release date, so that’s why we needed this additional amount of time.
Zakhar Bocharov: And to spend some more money on that as well, because it’s a big team and we’re basically financing the game ourselves, so it’s also additional expenses for us. That’s the other side of the delays that not everyone talks about
Slava Lukyanenka: Everything comes at a price.
That’s why publishers often say no, just release the game.
Zakhar Bocharov: Probably yes, so not having a publisher is nice. We can spend more money *laughs*.
How big is the team at GSC Game World right now?
Zakhar Bocharov: 430 plus. New members come in constantly; I think it was 430 plus when I checked last time, so somewhere around there, all working on one game.
That’s more than I expected. I mean, CD PROJEKT has fewer developers working on the new The Witcher game.
Zakhar Bocharov: Do you want a fun fact? This guy (Slava) worked on Cyberpunk 2077.
Interesting. What can you tell me about the A-Life 2.0 AI system? What kind of behaviors will fans notice while playing STALKER 2
Slava Lukyanenka: In every region, with some slight exceptions, you may run into encounters that will be generated based on where you are, what’s happening around you, and what happened before. Let’s say that a couple of NPCs go near an Anomaly, they start to fight each other, another NPC someone steps in the fight and dies. You can observe all that. But this part of A-Life is quite simple because it’s based on the generic components: NPC, mutant, Anomaly. There are also special encounters, which are little bit tiny stories, and all of them have their own specifics, and they’ll be able to be more interesting, I would say, showing off how the AI works. There can be quite unexpected events.
Can you help NPCs during these encounters?
Slava Lukyanenka: Typically, it’s something about finding someone’s stash. These are simple tasks. Every Stalker scattered stashes across the zone to keep their stuff. Maybe someone sends you there to pick it up, yet something happens along the way or around the stash. That is one of the examples of the short stories you’ll encounter in the world.
Thank you a lot for your time.
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