New Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl details - duration, story DLC, mod support, Microsoft's influence, performance and A-Life 2.0 system details

During the Gamescom 2024 exhibition journalists of Wccftech portal talked to representatives of GSC Game World, who told a few important facts about the long-awaited shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl.

Here's What We Know

The conversation was attended by the lead producer of S.T.A.L.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Slava Lukyanenko and community manager Zakhar Bocharov.

We have collected the most important and interesting theses from their interviews

• At gamescom 2023, the developers collected the opinions of gamers and experts about the Stalker 2 demo and made a lot of changes to the game based on them. For example, they improved the AI, adjusted the behavior of NPCs, improved the dialogue system, and it is because of this additional amount of work and it was decided to postpone the release of the game;
• Microsoft actively helps the Ukrainian studio in the development of the shooter, but is not its publisher and does not impose its opinion on the developers about their actions. All decisions are made exclusively by GSC Game World;
• on Xbox Series X Stalker 2 will have two modes: 60 FPS with not the highest quality graphics and, conversely, 30 FPS, but with 4K resolution, ray tracing and other graphical improvements;
• the studio is actively working on optimising the game for the weak Xbox Series S console, so far they managed to achieve a performance of 25 FPS, but the work continues;
• the PC version will support NVIDIA DLSS and software ray tracing. Hardware ray tracing is still being tested, but is unlikely to be finalised at the time of the game's release;
• The A-Life 2.0 system ensures that interesting and unexpected events will constantly occur in the Zone, generated by the AI based on the player's location and recent actions, and these events do not require the direct involvement of the protagonist. For example, NPCs can find an Anomaly, approach it, start fighting, then another NPC will approach and events will develop in an unexpected way;
• one detailed playthrough of Heart of Chornobyl will take 25-40 hours, but it is impossible to see all the content in one playthrough because of the non-linear nature of the game;
• Stalker 2 will have three endings, not four, as previously announced;
• support for custom modifications will appear in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl shortly after the game's release;
• the developers have confirmed plans to release several story add-ons, but before that there will be several major free updates that will not only fix bugs, but also add new content;
• GSC Game World's team consists of approximately 430 employees;
• in the remaining time before release, the developers are busy polishing the game and improving its technical state.

When We Can Expect It

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl will be released on November 20 on PC and Xbox Series, the shooter will immediately appear in the Xbox Game Pass catalogue.

Source: Wccftech