As broken as it may be in the first week of its release, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a veritable celebration of the franchise in all the ways that matter. Massive in breadth and complexity, and thoroughly enjoyable for a veteran Stalker, this game plays host to the largest bundle of content we've ever seen in a STALKER game, with a main quest to match its scope!

An impressive feat, to be sure, but the odds are good that you, too, are curious if the old beloved locations are available in STALKER 2. Places such as the Rookie Village in Cordon, the Yantar Ecologist FOB, and the X-16 Laboratory are downright iconic, though not immediately apparent on the overworld map. We've got some good news, and some bad news to share on this front, so read on.

Get your STALKER 2 Steam key here at 2Game!

STALKER 2 Map Overview + Visiting Old STALKER Game Locations

The most important bit to understand about STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl's Zone is that it's a massively revamped and reworked version of the original. The vast majority of the old games' locations are indeed back, but some of them are not, and there certainly are some surprising omissions as well.

Here's the full list of locations found in STALKER 2:

• Kordon
• Lesser Zone
• Garbage
• Rostok/100 Rads Bar
• Chemical Plant
• Burnt Forest
• Malachite
• Wild Island
• Duga Radar
• Cement Factory
• Zaton
• Yaniv
• Jupiter
• The Swamps
• Red Forest
• SIRCAA
• Cooling Towers
• The Generators
• Pripyat

Forget everything you remember about how the map was laid out in the old STALKER games, too. Huge chunks of it have been reworked to be closer to the real-world rendition of the Exclusion Zone, as well as to better accommodate new developments in the Zone. STALKER 2 does take place a full decade after Call of Pripyat, after all.

From the old trilogy, we can so far confirm that we've lost all of the following locations, possibly for good:

• Chornobyl NPP (Sarcophagus + Monolith HQ)
• Deserted Hospital

Everything else appears to be in place in STALKER 2, albeit often revamped to keep things interesting. Fret not, though: nostalgia comes in thick when visiting the old areas, and GSC Game World has done a tremendous job adapting this incredible bundle of weirdness for a new era.

Now, with the modding toolkit on the horizon and the inevitable process of patching things up, we've got no doubt STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl will become the delightful survival experience we all know it deserves to be.

Get your STALKER 2 Steam key here at 2Game!