No hot air here: now STALLKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl needs more years of development. I say years in the plural because the latest 2024 new window seems too close to me, and I’d put my money on fiscal year 2025, assuming GSC still has the same Xbox support they touted at Gamescom 2023. I was able to try out an early demo of the game with the developers, and despite its current issues, there’s a glimmer of hope. Although, I insist, this is a distant horizon.
Of course, my first encounter with STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl was not what I imagined. Using Unreal Engine 5 and the new A-Life 2.0 world simulation system, I was expecting a good feel here before testing it out with members of the development team, but again it was obvious when faced with reality and tricky development conditions: Many scenarios (from the demo ) lacks shading or detail in many textures, plus the NPC behavior reminds me of Fallout 3 or Skyrim. Walking in place or not turning around to talk to us as we approach are just a few examples.
I also can’t speak highly of the combat and gunplay, although I do see some more solid work being added to this early version in that regard. While ammo isn’t usually a very common element in the STALKER series, the modeling of the weapons and the feel of the gunplay are well done, although the impact on the enemies is modest (again, there are serious AI issues) and their impact on ours blow.
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There’s an invisible enemy that I can’t seem to hit with a shotgun blast from less than two meters away, and despite asking if I wasn’t using the right weapon, the GSC dev next to me insisted I could kill it . The reality was that the enemy shot me down and the game crashed, putting the character in an infinite loop of death animations that the game didn’t come out of until someone rebooted the powerful PC I was playing on. There was no option to resume the game, so I had to start the demo over. But in 30 minutes of testing, I had my PC crash and restart errors three times for various reasons, and I can assure you that the look on the developers’ faces clearly showed that this game is something they still want to show off.
At least on this last try I was able to try out some exploration, although the area you can move around is relatively small. Even with its current limitations, there’s no doubt that this title has a great feel to it, making Stalker one of the best shooters out there. Encounters with mutated creatures, predators, and even Stalkers put a smile on my face by the end.
I obviously couldn’t finish the demo (I don’t think much of the press in that room could, really), but it did raise a few questions for me: Why did they decide to show off the game like this? Why not take advantage of Microsoft’s vast resources and increase development teams in all aspects? I don’t want to be insensitive, the long history of the tremendous hardships this title is going through (wars, cyberattacks, the recent fire in the new offices) tells me over and over again that this isn’t like the final product we (hopefully) will see. But in the meantime, I have to answer to you, the reader, and ask you to take this first attempt at STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl as a reflection so that you know what to expect from a great game they are currently hoping to release in 2024 , but I believe it will be later.
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