The game, which the Ukrainian studio GSC Game World is now planning to release in 2023, will only have Ukrainian and English voice acting. Also S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will be subtitled in 16 languages, including Russian. This information was published on the official website of the game
The fact that the game’s release date was moved from December 8, 2022 to 2023 became known on June 13. GSC Game World PR-manager Zakhar Bocharov confirmed this information to PC Gamer.
In March, GSC Game World moved to Prague because of the war. In the same month the studio changed the name of the game from Chernobyl to the Ukrainian transliteration Chornobyl.
In April GSC Game World raised over 800 thousand dollars for the Ukrainian army. All funds (after taxes and game store commission) were donated to the «Come Back Alive» charity fund.
The GSC for Ukraine game charity sale lasted from April 4th to 11th on Steam, GOG, HumbleBundle, Fanatical, Greenmangaming and GamersGate. Those who wished to join could buy any game from the studio (except for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 pre-order).
What is known about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl
The game will be the largest and most ambitious project of GSC Game World. It will be made on the new engine Unreal Engine 5, the number of words in the script has already exceeded 350 thousand, the area of the open world should be 64 square kilometers. The developers expect that the users will need more than 100 hours for several passes of the game.
The game will have a non-linear plot that will directly depend on the actions of the player. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 can be completed in different ways, and the user’s decisions will affect the state of the world and lead to different endings.
Another key innovation is «one of the greatest open worlds» instead of linked individual locations. The action of the game will take place both in a new location, as well as in locations known from previous games.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is independent of the other games in the series — it means that players who have not played the previous games do not need to know their storyline (but the team advises passing all games of the series «for a complete immersion»).
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will be a temporary Microsoft exclusive, it will be released on PC and the new Xbox Series X — it will not be released on current-gen consoles.
In June 2021, GSC Game World released a five-minute gameplay trailer for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. The trailer shows the «Duga» radar station and Chornobyl-2, and one of its characters was the character of the creator of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series Serhiy Grygorovych.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl gameplay trailer was the most popular gameplay trailer at the Microsoft and Bethesda conference. On June 13, the day of the conference, it was viewed by about 800,000 users. Currently, the number of views is 2.7 million.
