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Ігор Вишневський GameDev Eng
20 November 2024, 09:00
2024-11-20
What S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is sure to impress gamers and why they waited more than 14 years for the release: all the facts about the cult Ukrainian game, which is released today
Today is a «red date on the calendar» for gamers around the world: STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl — the continuation of the cult franchise from the Ukrainian studio GSC Game World — is scheduled to be released on this day. We will remind you that STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl for Microsoft Windows was released in 2007, so not much has passed between the releases, almost 18 years — a time that, in fact, separates a whole generation of people. But in the case of a game that significantly influenced not only the gaming environment, but also went far beyond its borders in its cultural and even political influence, we have every right to believe that it does not divide these generations, but unites them.
As for STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, the release has already been postponed so many times that it seems that everyone was just afraid to screw up until they pressed the appropriate buttons on their gadgets and launched the game. It is a joke and for statistics to draw whole encyclopedic graphs of the transfer of releases. The last time it was postponed was on June 25, when instead of the planned date of September 5, a new one was announced — November 20. And this date, in spite of everything, has come. So what do we have and what are we preparing for: we have collected everything important about the cult game that has been circulating in the media for the last time.
Today is a «red date on the calendar» for gamers around the world: STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl — the continuation of the cult franchise from the Ukrainian studio GSC Game World — is scheduled to be released on this day. We will remind you that STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl for Microsoft Windows was released in 2007, so not much has passed between the releases, almost 18 years — a time that, in fact, separates a whole generation of people. But in the case of a game that significantly influenced not only the gaming environment, but also went far beyond its borders in its cultural and even political influence, we have every right to believe that it does not divide these generations, but unites them.
As for STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, the release has already been postponed so many times that it seems that everyone was just afraid to screw up until they pressed the appropriate buttons on their gadgets and launched the game. It is a joke and for statistics to draw whole encyclopedic graphs of the transfer of releases. The last time it was postponed was on June 25, when instead of the planned date of September 5, a new one was announced — November 20. And this date, in spite of everything, has come. So what do we have and what are we preparing for: we have collected everything important about the cult game that has been circulating in the media for the last time.
What are we waiting for?
The hype is such that STALKER 2 was ranked first among paid games on Steam’s global chart even before its official release as of the beginning of this week, and was second only to the free-to-play Counter-Strike 2 overall.
On the last day of October, the founder of GSC Game World Serhii Hryhorovych confirmed that STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl will be released on time, and the company ordered an additional print run of the physical and collector’s edition of the game.
«There are so few bugs that it’s no longer a shame to release and it’s not scary to print,» he said less than a month ago.
Demo versions of STALKER 2: Shadow of Chornobyl presented at the exhibitions also received favorable reviews from specialized journalists and experts. This year alone, you can single out Summer Game Fest, Gamescom and Tokyo Game Show, which highlighted the upcoming gaming hit before its release.
In a comment to GamesRadar+, the developers stated that the team tried not to use so-called «procedural generation» and that all the buildings are created by hand, so there are no identical buildings or even the same rooms. The developers also claimed that the game will take about 100 hours of pure playtime to complete.
The game’s website is available for pre-order on Steam, Xbox, MS Store, Epic Games and Gog.com. Here are the game prices on Steam, listed by version:
We will remind that even before September the prices on Steam were much lower (899 UAH, 1199 UAH and 1599 UAH), but the GSC company raised them by 80%, bringing them closer to the prices in the Microsoft Store. So those users who pre-ordered long before the release were left with a significant profit.
The Xbox and MS Store are currently selling the game for $59.99, $79.99, and $109.99, respectively.
The official X-account of the game recently published the latest minimum and recommended requirements for this time:
The requirements for the game turned out to be a field for discussions, questions, suspicions and not always positive feedback. For example, after the first tests of Nvidia graphics cards in STALKER 2 at maximum settings were published, it was found that running in 4K with maximum settings of DLSS 3 with frame generation and super resolution increases the frame rate on GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards by an average of 2, 4 times. At the same time, the graphics show that even the flagship video card RTX 4090 cannot achieve an «honest» 60 frames per second at such settings without DLSS.
At the same time, a representative of GSC in the official Discord-community of the game reassured (or not) that the company indicated the system requirements taking into account upscaling and supersampling technologies, such as Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR.
«To achieve similar performance on the specified PC characteristics, TSR upscaling technology should be used at minimum settings. DLSS, TSR and their counterparts should be used to achieve the specified performance at medium, high and epic settings», — he noted.
Spoilers can be loved or hated, but they are there, and there is no getting around it. Here is one of them:
This is usually explained by the fact that some users receive their copies on physical media before the official release. Therefore, active testing of the game by individual bloggers and just gamers is already underway.
Release: Why So Long?
In an interview, the founder of the GSC company Serhii Hryhorovych spoke in detail about his interesting path in GameDev in the mid-90s, when, in fact, this term, which is characteristic of modern IT people, was not yet used too much, and the computer games themselves were sold on the «Petrivka» market. to Volodymyr Zolkin. During the years of the full-scale invasion, the latter gained special media attention for interviews with people much less attractive to Ukrainians — Russian prisoners of war. Those who wish can review the material, but we will not go into such a broad historical and biographical excursion. There is also a second part of it, if someone wants to know everything, or at least a lot, about the biography of Hryhorovych.
STALKER 2 was announced back in August 2010, and the release was promised in two years. But instead, in 2011, Hryhorovych made a rather controversial decision to disband the team and devote himself to his hobby — motorsports.
«I was 33 years old, and I just fired everyone in one day. He said — «I am very tired of you», — Serhii Hryhorovych explained his decision in the above interview.
We had to wait a long time for a loud announcement regarding the revival of work on STALKER 2: in 2018, Serhii Hryhorovych wrote about it on his Facebook and promised that the game would be released in 2021. Since then, despite the work on the game, its release has been systematically postponed. Actually, there were quite a lot of force majeure circumstances in this: first, the Covid-19 pandemic, then a full-scale invasion of the enemy, and in addition, there was also a fire in the Prague office, where a large part of the employees worked.
After the resumption of work, GSC Game World is managed by the brother of the company’s founder, Yevhen Hryhorovych. So the loudest game release this year will be associated with his managerial and entrepreneurial abilities.
At the same time, a really loud event took place in the GameDev market last fall. According to YouControl, Serhii Hryhorovych ceased to be the ultimate beneficial owner of GSC GAME WORLD GLOBAL LTD («GSK UKRAINE» LLC) as of September 22, 2023. He became Maksym Volodymyrovych Krippa, who also owns the e-sports organization NAVI, is the owner of numerous real estate objects and who — justifiably or not — is associated with online casinos. Currently, we do not know how much the new owner is operationally lost in the work of the company, because he adheres to the most non-public way of life and business.
By the way, Crippa’s real estate has also recently been involved in STALKER 2 advertising, at least the Parus business center near the Palace of Sports is illuminated with the game’s name.
Photo «Suspilnе»
How much was invested and how much was earned
Predictions are a thankless business, but there is definitely every reason to expect a very significant commercial success from the release, based both on the financial results after the release of the first STALKER, and on the sky-high expectations of the audience for the second part.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl release time in different parts of the globe
At the same time, using open data, it is difficult to name a clear and indisputable figure of funds that the game has already brought to its creators.
Forbes estimated that the first Shadow of Chernobyl game brought developers $18.3 million in revenue. While the entire series (+ STALKER: Clear Sky (2008) and STALKER: The Call of Pripyat (2009) — $34.1 million in revenue from sales of the product, which sold more than 33 million copies. For this edition, we used data from the analytical Gameanalytic service.
Data from the publisher of the game KOCH MEDIA for the summer of 2021, which the media still cite in the absence of more recent figures, indicated that at that time the first part of STALKER sold more than 15 million copies.
At the same time, both the sales figures and the profits from them differ in different reviews to such an extent that even a dumb question arises — have you confused anything. After all, the fact is that no one has officially disclosed this information for all this time.
The cost of development and the amount of invested funds is also a mystery. But analysts agreed that the first STALKER cost its creators about $5 million. The release of the second is estimated to be at least six times more expensive — $30-60 million. The founder of the NAVI team Oleksandr Kokhanovsky stated at the time that «STALKER 2 has the largest in the last 20 years budget for one game produced in Ukraine.
Ukrainian music in a Ukrainian game for world fans
An interesting and really well-developed marketing step is the presentation and popularization of many modern Ukrainian musical artists in the game. In theory, this should be an example of mutually beneficial cooperation, especially considering that the soundtracks really fit the gloomy Chernobyl locations and twists of the game plot.
The PlayUA publication has collected a selection of musical compositions included in «STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl». Among them are Anastimosa with the song «Chrysanthemums», the band «DK Energetik» with the composition «East Street», The Unsleeping and their song «Live», Kurs Valüt and its songNadra, Children of Engineers with the song «OMG», as well as «Pyryatyn». , Sasha Boole, ZWYNTAR, «Hliborob», Jonych (a project of the legendary Myroslav Kuvaldin from THE VYO) and many other artists. Attention was paid even to the classics of the Ukrainian extravaganza, such as Mykola Mozgovoi, because the song «Krai, my native krai» by him is played in the game.
The GSC Game World studio also made a partial cut of the soundtracks public on its channel. So you can enjoy the music in this video:
«Very cool position from the developers,» co-author Sasha Boole, a country musician who is currently in the Armed Forces, shared this video on his Facebook account.
Games are not outside of politics
During a full-scale war with Russia, neither sport, nor culture, nor the world of video games can be «outside of politics» — this, in particular, is proven by STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Although some figures, unfortunately, still try to sit on two chairs, condemning the war as such, but at the same time counting on the purchasing power of the Russian audience. But the game, which quite unequivocally demonstrates the patriotic spirit of Ukrainians, «triggered» the weak Russian officials.
No specific decisions regarding the game in the aggressor country have yet been made, but, for example, the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Anton Gorelkin, recently admitted that the game has every chance of being officially banned «behind the scenes».
«I don’t think it will happen based only on the fact that the developers of the video game support the ZSU. But I do not rule out that this will happen if, after its release, illegal information is found in the game content,» he threatened.
At the same time, Russian lawyer Mikhail Mushailov, commenting on the previous statement, explained that buyers of the game may face criminal punishment and advised them to refrain from buying it.
«If a person is properly informed from open sources that the funds from the purchase of the game will go to the needs of the Armed Forces, then I am afraid that law enforcement agencies may be interested in buyers,» he said.
We will remind that previously STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl was also a target for Russian hackers. So, in June 2023, the GSC Game World studio reported that there had been a large-scale leak of information related to the game: hostile hackers were able to find a vulnerability and used it for a long time.
In March 2023, we reported that Russian hackers first hacked GSC Game World’s Discord server and allegedly gained access to at least 30 GB of data from the alpha version of Stalker 2. They then blackmailed the developers, but the blackmail failed. Moreover, it caused a large-scale flash mob on the part of the Ukrainian community.
Better to play once than to read 100 times
Actually, today everything is in the hands of Ukrainian and global gamers — literally and figuratively. Finally, instead of articles, reviews and spoilers, there is an opportunity to test the real product.
In one of the Ukrainian companies, employees were even offered an additional day off in order to evaluate the game: it is enough to show the management a screenshot of their payment on Steam. We don’t know if this will become a trend, or if we will still have to sit down to play the game in the evenings (provided that the apartment is equipped with all the gadgets of energy independence during blackouts), but for all those who want it, it’s time to move from theory to practice.
Фейк про скасування релізу S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 у випадку нападу РФ на Україну підняв хайп в американському Twitter. Що пишуть користувачі
Фейкова новина про те, що через ймовірне вторгнення РФ в Україну продовження гри S. T. A. L. K. E. R. 2, розробленої українською геймстудією GSC Game World, може не вийти, викликала хайп в американському сегменті Twitter.
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