S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

[Jenkem]

i heard the son of the stalker dev died for zelensky on /pol/ not sure if true or not

 

[toughasnails]

on /pol/ not sure if true or not

Bolded part contains the likely answer.

 

[Jenkem]

so it will be confirmed real in a week? damn.

 

[Joggerino]

Will pirate because of ChOrnobyl

 

[vibehunter]

Will Western journos now be giving this game a 10/10 for "solidarity with Ukraine"?

 

[cyborgboy95]

Music of the Storm
The thunder rolls and echoes in the head. It breaks through the samey and gray atmosphere of the Zone. Monotonous, constantly repeating, the rumble does not allow unwinding. It rolls once more, and more, and more.

But it doesn't distress and crush you or dispirit either. On the contrary, now you look onwards, carefully choose where you can step, where you can go. You are ready, at any moment you can repulse anyone you meet. Is it still the thunder, or the heartbeat that devoured all other sounds? What’s the difference? There is only one possible outcome, this soundtrack will also devour you.

Concentrate. Watch your back and go for your goal. Storming is here.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Xbox began cancelling STALKER 2 preorders due to release being postponed to "unconfirmed date in the future"
same shit as ShoC developement?

 

[ciox]

Music of the Storm
The thunder rolls and echoes in the head. It breaks through the samey and gray atmosphere of the Zone. Monotonous, constantly repeating, the rumble does not allow unwinding. It rolls once more, and more, and more.

But it doesn't distress and crush you or dispirit either. On the contrary, now you look onwards, carefully choose where you can step, where you can go. You are ready, at any moment you can repulse anyone you meet. Is it still the thunder, or the heartbeat that devoured all other sounds? What’s the difference? There is only one possible outcome, this soundtrack will also devour you.

Concentrate. Watch your back and go for your goal. Storming is here.

You WILL listen to the Alexey Omelchuk soundtrack, and you WILL be happy.

 

[notpl]

If you believe this game exists in any form - literally anything whatsoever, even just a working wireframe engine and a design doc - then I've got some crypto, NFTs, bridges, and magic beans to sell you.

 

[Tacgnol]

Xbox began cancelling STALKER 2 preorders due to release being postponed to "unconfirmed date in the future"
same shit as ShoC developement?

ShoC actually had a lot of alphas and betas created. GSC were just poorly managed and couldn't complete it into a coherent game. Plenty of in game footage actually materialised in the interim.

I don't think there is anything to actually show with this one.

 

[Jenkem]

just another money laundering scheme for the big zee

 

[Cassar]

Xbox began cancelling STALKER 2 preorders due to release being postponed to "unconfirmed date in the future"
same shit as ShoC developement?

ShoC actually had a lot of alphas and betas created. GSC were just poorly managed and couldn't complete it into a coherent game. Plenty of in game footage actually materialised in the interim.

I don't think there is anything to actually show with this one.

Yup. The first game was heavily marketed and anticipated and had a ton of materials shown every year. Ton of videos and ton of written previews.




This sequel just continues to feel fake. Zero real gameplay shown even before the war and now just sliping further and further away. Has the same feel as the other fake game that is the most wishlisted on steam, The Day Before.

 

[ADL]

This definitely was not here the other day when I checked to see what kind of choice discount I would get.
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/stalker-2-heart-of-chornobyl?hmb_source=search_bar

 

[Tacgnol]

Oh fuck. Sergei discovered early access.

 

[Wunderbar]

At least it would be easier to archive all the different builds of the game this time around.

 

[NecroLord]

Yeah,this looks dead.
I hope I am wrong,as I always liked Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat.
Let's see some gameplay,not typical "trailer" bullshit.

 

[Drakortha]

It's for the best..

 

[Tacgnol]

It's for the best..

Franchise should just be left to the community at this point.

 

[toughasnails]

^I'm surprised that we haven't seen some of the modders attempting a commercial "spiritual successor" of some sort. There was at least one major abortive attempt to go commercial that I can think of, Lost Alpha, but there was loads of drama around that project even without that.

There is also this which is made by an ex Stalker modder, I never tried it but it is supposed to be alright and is regularly updated.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1601970/Tunguska_The_Visitation/

 

[notpl]

^I'm surprised that we haven't seen some of the modders attempting a commercial "spiritual successor" of some sort. There was at least one major abortive attempt to go commercial that I can think of, Lost Alpha, but there was loads of drama around that project even without that.

There is also this which is made by an ex Stalker modder, I never tried it but it is supposed to be alright and is regularly updated.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1601970/Tunguska_The_Visitation/

Making a detailed simulationist FPS is a lot harder than making a retro unity RPG. Not something a team of 10-15 amateurs is going to pull off.

 

[Tacgnol]

At this point the stalker community is so experienced at using the engine (and have made their own enhanced source ports from the original source code), that they could conceivably just keep creating mods for the next couple of decades on the same engine.

I know Anomaly isn't everyone's cup of tea but the things they've done with their fork of OpenXR are extremely impressive from a technical perspective.

There is no reason the community won't keep adding to the engine. That's the great thing about engines going open source.

 

[None]

I wouldn't put too much faith in mods delivering what you want. Stalker is at it's best when you're discovering and exploring new things and the Stalker modding community has a problem with generating new content. Specifically I mean new game levels. If Stalker is a house, then modders have remodeled it 100 times already but no one has bothered to change the layout or add a new floor or rooms. Only a few actually have, like Lost Alpha and Stalker Soup. Last I checked, the latest craze in the Anomaly community was adding animations to every single item in the game. I've already scoured the entirety of the Zone multiple times, but now I can wait 3 seconds after using items for an animation to complete while I do it!

To be fair it isn't exactly easy and there is sparse (english) documentation out there on the process.

 

[toughasnails]

I don't even think the tools are the only or main problem. The community seems to have a lot of very capable code autists, but being great at tinkering with the engine, painstakingly replicating real life weapons, creating life-like animations doesn't mean that you are also capable of coming up with evocative new environments and realizing that idea into something that is on par with the OG locations level of detail and complexity wise. And this seems to create a cycle where, this being what the popular projects are all about, the new people who get into Stalker modding are attracted to it precisely for gun porn, "immersion", "realistic" systems... You are attracting and getting more code autists, not artists/level designers.

 

[Wunderbar]

Russian journalists got some inside info on the development of STALKER 2.

tl;dr

- the game won't be released in 2023, won't be released in 2024, likely won't be released even in 2025;
- there is no playable build of the game, the project is in the state of "constant rebuilding";
- after the war broke out a large amount of employees either left the company, or were fired (because they were russians);
- all of those guys who left actually kept their design ideas on how to make the game undocumented, they kept it in their heads;
- the development process is very chaotic and unfocused because project lead is Grigorovich;
- this galaxy brain genius doesn't write a proper design doc and doesn't maintain any records of what departed employees were working on;
- because of that the newcomers who were hired as a replacement had to start from scratch, they had no idea how to work with existing stuff;
- the employee turnover is very high - new devs arrive, realize what kind of clusterfuck they just got themselves into, and bail.

 

[Tacgnol]

- the development process is very chaotic and unfocused because project lead is Grigorovich;

What a shock.