STALKER 2 had a big presence at Gamescom 2023 despite being absent from the inaugural Opening Night Live show hosted by Geoff Keighley. A demo is playable on the show floor, allowing GSC Game World to gather feedback directly from fans, and the developers have also shared a new trailer that confirms yet another delay into Q1 2024 (as we had noticed from the updated fact sheet).
Evgeniy Grygorovych, Game Director on STALKER 2 and CEO at GSC Game World, was also hosted on the IGN Germany livestream yesterday. The lead developer answered various questions, including one regarding the impact of the decision to move to Unreal Engine 5 on the game.
It may sound like an ad, but actually, we believe that Unreal Engine 5 is the best possible solution for us because the features that it brings, the Nanite and Lumen systems, were the things we were lacking in STALKER 2. They were the right bricks to finish our game in the proper way.
Previously, we had reached a point where we had to decrease the quality of models and textures a lot. With Unreal Engine 5, we started working with the Epic team on implementing the technology in our game, and it became clear that it would allow us to do what we wanted. It wasn't very clear early on how well it was going to work, but now that it's production ready, it's very good. I think it was the right decision to move to Unreal Engine 5.
For us, it was also a new engine, as we hadn't done any game in Unreal Engine. We started from scratch with STALKER 2. It's very different from how developers usually work when they do sequels, where they take the basis and the engine from the previous games and make upgrades, adjustments, or add new features. Doing something from scratch on a new technology that didn't exist before, on new consoles that were launching, was very interesting and yet frustrating. I had a lot of fun.
The Unreal Engine 5 recently debuted in Immortals of Aveum, where it didn't exactly make the best impression. Interestingly, yesterday's STALKER 2 trailer also showed a fairly noticeable downgrade from earlier trailers. However, there are still around six months from the release, so GSC Game World could try to bring back that level of fidelity.
The game can now be pre-ordered on PC and Xbox Series S|X. It'll be included with the Game Pass subscription on day one. On PC, STALKER 2 was also included early on among the future games that would support NVIDIA's DLSS 3 (Frame Generation) technology.
A couple of days ago, the official Twitter account confirmed that multiplayer will be added post-launch with a free update.
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