Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl hands-on preview and interview – ‘our team is 99% Ukrainian’ --[Reported by Umva mag]

From the adversity of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine emerges one of the most ambitious, and scary, open world games of the year.

Irrespective of its qualities as a game, the mere fact that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl exists is nothing short of a miracle. In fact, it’s fair to say that the first numbered sequel to 2007’s much-loved first person shooter survival horror has not had the smoothest of development schedules.

Like the original (along with 2008’s prequel Clear Sky and 2009’s pseudo-sequel Call Of Pripyat), Stalker 2 is made by Ukrainian developer GSC Game World. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 the studio was forced to relocate from Kyiv to Prague.

Staff were given the chance to stay in Kyiv, an option which over 100 took, and GSC Game World has continued to pay them if they elect to go and fight to defend their country. Inevitably and tragically, some have subsequently been lost to the conflict.

The original Stalker games generated a massive fanbase in Russia but, understandably, GSC Game World has announced that Stalker 2 won’t be sold in Russia. And if Russians do manage to get hold of the game, they will find that unlike the previous Stalker games it has no Russian voiceover option – only English and Ukrainian. Pointedly, the Chornobyl in the game’s title is the Ukrainian spelling of what was previously known as Heart Of Chernobyl.

Stalker 2 is more than just a game, it’s a symbol of a national culture which is under threat of being completely wiped out. But that isn’t a concept with which GSC Game World is unfamiliar, as explained in a documentary entitled War Game, which the company made about the making of the game. Given that the 1986 Chornobyl disaster led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reestablishment of Ukraine as a nation in its own right, the original Stalker played its role in forging the modern Ukrainian identity.

In the GSC Game World studio in Prague, we spoke to Ievgen Grygorovych, CEO and Stalker 2’s game director. He described how events in Ukraine have to an extent shaped Stalker 2: ‘When we started making Stalker 2, we hadn’t thought a lot about the importance of our identity or culture: we were just living in a normal world.’

‘But it changed a lot after the full-scale invasion, and for every Ukrainian – and our team is 99% Ukrainians – for us it changed the priority of where our identity was, why it is important and how it is important.

‘It affected us, and what we were doing in the creative process, and also affected the game in the context that we found that bringing more Ukrainian culture into this game was more important for us at this point. All those changes were not connected to the war: they were connected to the way we have been changed because of these events.’

Grygorovych touched on the practicalities of making a game with a development team split across two countries, pointing out that since COVID, much of the team’s collaborative processes had taken place using Slack or Zoom, rather than in-person. But: ‘We didn’t divide like a developer that has two different offices. We have one team, that works on one project, and everyone is located in different places, but it’s still one studio.’

So what makes Stalker 2 stand out from other survival horror games? ‘It’s a very hard question, because everything in Stalker 2 makes it special for me. I believe that it’s a game which is very different from other games I’m playing — I find it unique. We knew that we wanted to make this game good, and for it to be a sequel to Stalker 1.

‘After Stalker 1, we wanted to make something more modern and better, and in this case we just stuck to making a design and making the story of this game without looking at other games, but just what fit and was good for Stalker 2. I think that a lot of things in it are not done in the usual way as compared to other games.’

Grygorovych acknowledged that the game world was the starting point for Stalker 2: ‘The map is huge – one of the biggest in any game. And considering most open world games have some sort of mechanic to shrink time and space, using carthorses or grappling hooks, or anything that allows you to fly faster, those just shrink big maps to smaller ones, like you’re using the metro. In Stalker 2 you don’t have any transport or way to move quicker; you just have your feet. You can sprint, but you have a limit to your stamina. That also makes the map bigger for the player.

‘So I believe we have one of the biggest maps. It maybe was slightly not so smart a decision to make the map this big, because it required much more time to fill it with content and to make it different with level design, narrative design, and game design, and it’s really hard to fill all that space. We did it: we spent hundreds of thousands of hours of creative work doing so with a lot of people.’

Grygorovych confirmed that post-launch, we can expect to see a modding scene emerge like the existing one that feeds off the previous Stalker games and means that they are still played today.

‘We are bringing a world with systematic design mechanics, and modders can take that blank sheet and put in new stories and content, because it is system-based. We have handcrafted level art and level design, but not the game mechanics. We will do a lot to make modders successful after we release the game. It will require a lot of work to make it happen, but we think it’s important,’ he says.

We played Stalker 2 for over two hours: from the start, working our way through what was effectively a tutorial chapter (although, commendably, it still managed to feel pretty open world, despite steering you from point to point) and into the second chapter of its storyline, which fully demonstrated the game’s free-form nature.

The initial set-up has been similar in all the games so far, with fortune hunters named Stalkers descending on the Zone around Chornobyl, in order to look for rare and valuable artefacts that have appeared after a second, more mysterious, disaster affected the area and killed or mutated all the humans and animals present.

The action started with us – playing a rookie Stalker – and a friend in a lorry, driving up to and breaching the Zone. The initial plan being to gather data on anomalies within the Zone, using a large scanner, with us going in and remaining in radio contact with our handler outside the Zone.

Instantly, a feeling of strong nostalgia came into play: there was a similar frisson to being back in the madness of the Zone as the one we experienced playing the original Stalker. If anything, Stalker 2’s setting is even harsher than the original game; we were soon having to negotiate various types of anomalies that would zap us with energy or burn us, while negotiating high-radiation fields to collect artifacts that, when equipped on our armour, shield us from some of the more dangerous effects of the anomalies.

Having gathered some data and dealt with a number of tricky enemies – such as fast-moving, semi-invisible humanoids that we could hear running at us but not see until the last minute – we headed to a bunker to rendezvous with a scientist, who had further data we needed. Naturally, someone had beaten us to the punch – he was dead, but we found his laptop with the required information.

Leaving the bunker, and having helpfully scavenged some better weaponry and ammo (in true Stalker fashion, ammo is super-scarce), we forged ahead, before a showdown with some other Stalkers headed by an unsavoury character called Solder. Outnumbered and outgunned, a cut scene kicked in: we had been left for dead for Solder, with pretty much all of our kit, including our anomaly scanner, taken.

Cue the end of the tutorial and the point at which Stalker 2 proper began. Heading off in search of a nearby village called Zalissya, the game threw plenty of random occurrences at us along the way. It often proved judicious to employ stealth to avoid conflict, but there were also plenty of bodies to loot for precious ammo, healing items, and guns. As so, as we yomped towards the hamlet, our confidence grew.

When we arrived there, we found a grim but nevertheless welcome conurbation, populated by over-the-top characters belonging to various factions: bandits, paramilitary Wardens, specialists in weaponry and provisions, and so forth. First stop was the bar, where we acquired several leads in our main story quest to find Solder, as well as a welter of side missions.

One of those involved climbing a radio tower to acquire the sniper rifle that a Stalker, who owed money to everyone, had stashed there. Naturally, instead of giving the sniper rifle to the bandits, as previously agreed, we betrayed them – thinning them out from the top of the water tower before finishing them all off on the ground.

Helpfully, we discovered some bodies in the adjacent field that could be looted, along with one of the bandits who was near death. After persuading the feckless Stalker to pay his debt to the bar’s landlord (thereby earning ourselves some money) we looted the stalker’s house and found some healing items, so doubled back to heal the dying man. This triggered an assault by a pack of mutant dogs but, luckily, our new friend helped us deal with them and, once again, we started to feel a bit more at home in the Zone.

Various quests then emerged which would advance the main story, and we swiftly learned that preparation and recon was essential before embarking on anything in Stalker 2. Like its predecessor, it’s an actual survival game and the character you play has no special abilities, although collecting the right artifacts can at least mitigate the dangerous effects of the anomalies.

Stalker 2 is about as open world a game as you can get and one in which you’ll do well to survive, let alone thrive. Yet it’s full of personality and, despite having no qualms about lapsing into fantasy at any point, oddly believable.

It may not be the most cutting-edge game out there: despite being crafted in Unreal Engine 5 it doesn’t break new grounds in terms of graphics (although it looks perfectly serviceable). But it absolutely drips with atmosphere and personality; some of the characters you meet will tend towards the cartoonish, but they’re all at least memorable.

If roaming about an evocatively scary open world environment, populated by over-the-top chancers and mutated wildlife, while being so outgunned you have to rely on your wits more than your weapons, sounds like fun then you’ll love Stalker 2. It has more than enough personality and atmosphere to perpetuate the legend kicked off by the original game and is immediately one of this autumn’s most exciting new games.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: GSC Game World
Developer: GSC Game World
Release Date: 20th November 2024
Age Rating: 18

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