'Stalker 2: Heart of 'Chornobyl' (Image: GSC Game World)
After 15 years in the making, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl has finally launched and is being received quite well minus a few hiccups.
The first game in the series, STALKER: Call of Pripyat, released in 2009, and although development for STALKER 2 was announced way back in 2010, the developer, GSC Game World, was met with many difficulties over the course of completing this game the past 15 years.
First, the game was canceled in 2012, the year it was originally meant to release, due to GSC Game World’s financial troubles. Later in 2018, the developer announced that STALKER 2 was back in development and was expected to release a few years later in 2021. However, this date got pushed back to 2022, and after experiencing a few more delays, fans finally got to load up the survival first-person shooter on Nov. 20 this year. The road has been long, but STALKER fans sure are glad to finally play STALKER 2 after all these years.
Fans were looking forward to this release so much, in fact, that within hours of the title launching on PC and Xbox Series X/S, there was a count of over 100,000 people playing the game simultaneously. Additionally, at this time, two weeks after the game’s release, STALKER 2 is still among Steam’s top sellers and has “Very Positive” reviews so far.
Despite the positive reception, STALKER 2 has been having some technical issues so far. One X user reported the game crashing every time they reached a particular location. Another user reported difficulties while using a controller on the PC version of the game. With a game 15 years in the making, it’s only natural that some of these issues might occur when you consider that development for the game originally began several console generations ago.
GSC Game World anticipated players to run into some issues as they said in their X post announcing the game’s overdue release “STALKER 2 is a massive game… there may still be rough edges: we literally haven’t released anything of this scale before.” The developer goes on to assure players that they are “absolutely committed to being here, monitoring your feedback, and quickly fixing any issues that need our attention.”
GSC Game World also announced in their post that there will be “free in-game content” releasing soon and that they would update fans in December. Regarding improving the game’s problems, they said they will be “working with hotfixes, following them out as precisely as possible, but as frequently as we can.” GSC Game World closed their statement by saying they have “big plans for the STALKER universe,” so fans can rest assured that the series won’t be going on another 15-year hiatus anytime soon.
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