The word “against all odds” has deteriorated a lot in its development, but we suppose it has never been more appropriate than in the story of Stalker 2.
As we walk around the GSC Game Global offices in Prague, it’s impossible not to feel deeply helpless at the step the game took to become something even playable, without thinking about something truly incredible.
The offices are disused, hastily built and covered in Ukrainian art. Each and every terrain is a reminder of the backdrop against which the game takes place, the invasion of Russia, as members of the worker group scan their fingerprints to enter and tour the tower studio.
“It didn’t reach our studio, but the metro station we took to get to and from work,” a member of a group of workers mentions nonchalantly, referring to one of the rocket attacks that the city of kyiv suffered. On a shelf linking some artists, a mini escape board from the Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi train station shows live updates from home.
So how is it possible to put together a game of this scale, with this level of expectation, under those big cases? Well, against all possible outsiders, they have done it. How do *they* really feel?
“Everyone asks this question: my answer is an extreme level of anxiety,” manager and manufacturer Slava Lukyanenka tells us.
As we chat about our experience with the game, we can almost see Lukyanenka mentally taking notes and comments in the middle of the conversation. Those last few weeks before the sport gets underway are so important that, frankly, it’s fantastic that we’ve even been invited to play games in the early hours of the sport.
The introduction of the game, which we did for the first time in June, did not generate the best first impact of the month. Now we’ll look at the general framework of what the game was going for, playing it in a loud, glorious environment and with time constraints didn’t fit well with what Stalker 2 is trying to achieve.
This month, things were different. In a dark, scorching room, shadowed by Prague’s beautiful era-era exterior, we’re instantly immersed in the game’s first-person survival story. Then, a shorter initial bankruptcy, configuring the warnings, the shape of the scenario and the degree of the problem, let us enter into what was seen globally.
Here, Stalker 2 becomes a much more modern first-person role-playing game. The first few missions introduce us to the many warnings provided on this planet. Not only are we competing with human enemies who can tear us apart before we know it, but otherworldly anomalies lurk in the fields around the exclusion zone. The game briefly establishes that you are at constant risk. The generation that takes the marked paths instead of going in a straight line will probably fall into the hell that you will encounter, there is no guard anywhere.
The game has the mentality of a hardcore PC game, but is also being marketed to a modern target audience with different expectations than the Stalker enthusiasts who have waited until later. Lukyanenka explains that the frenzy and anger between creating a modern sport with modern trappings and maintaining that opposite tone in the world is something the group constantly struggles with.
“We have some disagreements about simple things, like whether we need to color a staircase or not,” Lukyanenka says. “It shouldn’t be colored in the Zone, but at the same time, people need guidance to interact with something. We face these challenges all the time. At the end of the day, only playtesting and player reaction show us what the path will be.
“Sometimes this bothers some players, at the same time, we know that a lot of things that players may perceive as ‘you didn’t highlight this, why?’ You have to learn it yourself.”
We stumbled upon one of those colored staircases during our first side quest. As we approach one of the few remaining properties, we see three countries shooting at a fourth secret user inside. We don’t have any context as to who is the good guy and the bad guy here, so we punt and run the three outdoors. Good guess, we’re given a side quest to rescue the seeker’s friend from a warehouse further up the street.
In any other RPG, this can be a temporary build for the quest system, as well as showing players that quests can have no mandatory objectives to build a simpler future. In Stalker 2, it used to be a lesson in how few bullets it takes to leave you in a group.
We sneak out to the right of the warehouse, hidden by brick walls. Stalker’s UI is extremely sparse, and the main indicator that we’ve been spotted normally is a bullet to the skull. Then, sneaking to the back of the warehouse, we find the aforementioned straight flush and head to the control of a chimney. Unfortunately, the gang of enemies lurking around the base briefly spot us and simply attack us.
When we finally complete the quest, it is because we have been completely cruel in shooting. A couple of excellent photographs, dissimulate, a couple of excellent photographs, dissimulate. There’s room to unload a clip on one enemy, as you swoop in to shoot another. Each and every exit you build must be well thought out, otherwise you will die. Even if you feel strong, have discovered an excellent weapon, and have valuable medicines, if you play with the difference, you will feel humiliated in no time.
All of this made what is basically a surprisingly pedestrian-looking mission much more interesting. The invention of medications for adolescents is both exciting. A shotgun, even damaged, was a great blessing. It’s no longer difficult to see how a sport created through so much sadness has sadness so tightly woven into its fabric. It is a change that is possibly unusual in video games with this level of presentation.
The PC version we saw was impressive. The yellowish glow of the year in the area almost offsets the ominous ticking of the Geiger counter. There are serene frames from Stalker 2 that look like a quaint ride simulator. This tense calm is a wonderful counterbalance to the irritating “I can’t believe I’m alive” shootout.
It is during these types of walks that we discover a random frame in a cabin. The frame, which has some loose parts scattered around it, is famous. In this case, it is Vasko Hurly Burly. We have no idea who Vasko is, I’ve never been told about Vasko before, but our imaginations begin to work with who this user was, what their position on this planet was, and how they ended up right here. It’s a used trick, but by naming every NPC, even random dead bodies, it makes the world feel much more lived-in.
“It’s not just a random person, it’s someone who has a history, a desire, an affiliation, it feels more natural,” Lukyanenka says.
Generation Stalker 2 is fed up with the pitfalls of modern, less hardcore alternative titles, with its positioning on Game Pass and the commercial momentum it has gained from Microsoft, it might have been easy to think the game would be modernized to replicate the target market. much better, but we are informed that maintaining the spirit and sadness of the new was the key to progress.
“That was one of the key pillars,” Lukyanenka explains. “This game is known as something that survived for years through modders and the PC community, we can’t just give up and forget that it was an extreme shooter, we have to respect it.” . “We can’t modify it or have it any other way, or it won’t be Stalker 2, it’ll just be another game.”
We wonder if Stalker 2’s fortunes might encourage an untapped stream of hardcore shooters in its wake. “I hope so!” Lukyanenka says excitedly. “We can only hope for that. I know of several games that are also in development that will take a similar approach to what we do. When you put it in my head, I can’t stop thinking about it. “I would expect that.”
When we concluded our demo, it was very difficult not to notice everything that happened in the studio in those few years. On the one hand, the builders probably want their work to stand on its own, and not have every communication focused on everything that has happened, on the other, we are sitting meters from the scene of the tragedy. an immense business home, a home that was unlikely to divide the government. 10 heartbreaking problems the group has experienced in recent times.
“Real-world circumstances have changed more than you think,” Lukyanenka reflects. “We had to adapt to every challenge we had in real life. A year ago when we had the fire it unified us, but it also changed the course of some things. He asked us to rethink what we should do and what we should not do. We gave up some ideas and expanded on others.
“In the original game, we had an arena where you could fight other Stalkers or people from other factions, when we had the fire we had to restore the work we did before. Arena was almost removed because we couldn’t get it out of our repository, we tried again and again. One of our developers spent a few extra nights selecting each file to revive it, and now it will be there.”
We are prepared to have the general match in our hands, in what were a remarkable few hours. It’s foolish to believe that most studios make even a worthy game these days, but for GSC Game Global to emerge from the literal rubble in its hometown, with something so promising, is incredibly inspiring.
As for the Stalker era, we’re told that the licensing age is “just the beginning” and that the modding roots that launched the careers of many now racing in Stalker 2 will be revered.
“[Modding] is planned for one of our first patches, we already have connections and requests from people working on Stalker 1. We will do our best to meet their needs as soon as we finish with the base game.”
