What were you doing in 2010? To refresh your memory: Balkenende IV fell over the Uruzgan affair, Twente became national champions in the Eredivisie, it was the coldest year since 1996, but it had only just ended, and there were major concerns about the future of the climate. I myself had last gone on a ‘typical youthful holiday with friends’ and thus encountered ‘Cassias Finger’ from a balcony in Crete, I had just moved into my first house (yes, you could still do it alone back then!) and it was working.. .Yes, well, it’s been a year or two since Tweakers, that’s what it is. And oh yeah, Stalker 2 has been announced. It’s been fourteen years and the game still hasn’t been released, but now it’s finally on its way. I actually played it.

This trailer was published by GSC Game World last month. A trailer based on the playable content for Summer Game Fest has not yet been available.

To say that Stalker 2 has a checkered past is an understatement. You know part of that past: it stands to reason that the Russian invasion of Ukraine left its mark on the game’s development. When the war began, GSC Game World announced that development of Stalker 2 had been halted for the time being. In the summer of 2022, it was announced that development would continue, although many developers were forced to flee their homes and/or join the Ukrainian army. Development was transferred from Kyiv to Prague. This didn’t solve all the issues, as GSC Game World also suffered a lot from cyberattacks, with even an early version of the game being stolen and leaked. Despite this, GSC Game World announced in January, the last time the game was delayed, that Stalker should actually see the light of day on September 5 of this year.

This part of Stalker 2’s troubled development is just the tip of the iceberg, because things went wrong long before that. In fact, the game and the development studio behind it are no longer the same game or studio they were back in 2010. After Stalker 2 was announced, it quickly became clear that the project was very ambitious. GSC Game World tried to make the successor to Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl and Stalker: Call of Pripyat for multiple platforms at the same time and with a completely new engine. This led to financial problems and eventually the closure of GSC Game World.

Stalker 2’s name changed a bit, but eventually ended up being GSC Game World. The studio was revived in late 2014, and the developers announced in late 2018 that Stalker 2 was once again in development. It immediately became clear that all existing assets would no longer be used. The project was restarted and the game was scheduled to be made using Unreal Engine 4. Three years later, the game makers announced that the game would be updated to Unreal Engine 5 instead. It should now become clear what the long wait and all these permutations have achieved. It’s already clear that the naming of the game is a little different than it was fourteen years ago. GSC Game World banned the Russian spelling of “Chernobyl”, so the game has been known as Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl since 2022.