Will S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl Fulfill Expectations?
After numerous delays, the long-anticipated S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl is looking like it will finally be going to be released, on September 5, 2024. We can’t hold something against the developers, the GSC Game World company since the pushback was severely impacted by the war in Ukraine.
However, the fans of the franchise are biting their fingernails in the hope that this release date will prove to be the one when this video game will see the light of day. But even the most optimistic among them are worrying about how all this will impact the game.
And with so much time that has passed, they are wondering will S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl fulfill their expectations.
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Game Franchise
This franchise is incredibly popular with the fans of first-person shooters, and even more with the gamers who prefer survival horror games. The players are placed in an alternative reality, where the explosion of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant wasn’t the only event that happened.
After that, the second disaster occurred, and no one knew exactly the cause for that. We don’t know what the chances for that were, but for the amazing chances at other events, people often consult Wetten.com to find the best ones.
After the second event in Chernobyl, strange creatures appeared, and it is now the job of the player to find out what is going on.
They assume the identity of the Marked One, a person with no memory of what happened, but with a task to eliminate someone called Strelok. Everything is happening in the area known as the infamous Zone, territory adjacent to the ominous power plant.
This is the storyline of the first title, known as the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, which came out in 2007. After the success of this game, players had the joy of playing the prequel named S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky in 2008, and the sequel S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, which came out in 2010. It has been a long wait these past 14 years for a new title.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Problems With Development and Release
The original plan was to release the fourth game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl in 2012. The studio had problems and had to shut down the whole project. It was 2018 when the idea resurfaced, and the development restarted with the power of Unreal Engine 5.
The fans were overjoyed, as the studio was reviving this classic, and December of 2022 marked the return of the Zone to the gaming world. However, the war in Ukraine stopped it all.
It is a miracle that they continued their work, and through their Discord server the message was sent to the fans – S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is being released in Q1 2024. It is not something that stirred the gaming community as the release of Modern Warfare 3 did, but it was still big news.
Another postponement occurred, and we are keeping our fingers crossed that in the early days of September, we will have the chance to see something described as “the next chapter of the mega-popular game that the players expect”.
What Can We See in the Game Trailer?
The first glimpses at the game show us that it is a far more beautiful visual creation than the previous ones. The graphics are top-notch, and the setting is both grim and majestic. The trailer shows us the characters, stalkers, sitting around the campfire, sharing stories and experiences they had in the Zone.
We can see the battles with enemies and encounters with anomalies. But we can’t decide if we were more disturbed by the representation of a close encounter with a bloodsucker, or by a scene in which a man is dancing with himself to the tunes of a radio playing nearby.
All this shows us that the game will be deeply unsettling, with scenes that will make our skin crawl and enemies that relish the opportunity to jump-scare us.
The idea behind this game was to make an open-world game that would let the players explore and create their own stories. In 2012 that idea was a revolutionary one, but today not so much. And here lies the biggest problem that the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl will face.
It is not the constant delays or the fact that the game mechanics don’t look like they are ready yet. It is that their ideas waited for too long.
This game was a revolutionary idea back in the time, and simply trying to revoke the memorabilia of the gamers who played it 17 years ago is not their mission. It needs to offer some fresh new original stories that will generate new armies of fans.
Conclusion
A relic from old times, a classic that is a must-play for many, and a present that we have waited for too long. That is the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl, the fourth installment of the franchise. Since the last game from the series came out in 2010, some of the fans have given up hope of ever playing a sequel.
Now, they even have the date, and we are waiting to see what September will bring us, the continuation of a fairy tale, or the destruction of a loving memory.
