Over the past couple of weeks, the editorial team here at 2Game has been hard at work prepping things up for the inevitable release of GSC Game World's STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Much has already been said and shown about the game, of course, but its pedigree means that STALKER 2 is a lot of things to a lot of people, and you yourself might not have seen a whole lot of gameplay just yet.
That's where we come into the picture. Over the next couple of sections, we've summarized just about everything we know about STALKER 2's gameplay. Further, we've gone and featured all the major gameplay trailers, too, courtesy of GSC Game World itself!
The most intriguing bit of STALKER proper has always, always been its A-Life AI system. This was, for all intents and purposes, one of the first relatively mainstream titles of the late aughts to come with an AI system so advanced that it makes its own ecosystem of sorts.
Packs of dogs roam around and take down other mutants or NPCs outright, leading to situations where you may find yourself losing out on quests and loot due to aggressive enemies. Groups of bandits leave one level and load up into another to wreck your day. Entire factions attempt to wipe out their adversaries in desperate clashes deep in the irradiated forests of Chornobyl.
Generally, it's just this sense that the Zone lives on without the player intervening all the time. This is, judging by everything we've seen so far, fully retained and expounded upon.
Far as features go, Heart of Chornobyl is seemingly deeply interested in keeping everything that the veteran fans know from the old games. Deep gear customization systems? Check. Free-form interaction with the Zone, its NPCs, mutants, and animals? Check check. A deeply engrossing and atmospheric exploration experience that is in equal parts a horror and a survival game? Check, check, and check.
Once again, we'll be using our bolts to assess anomalies. Geiger counters will still be going positively insane as we draw closer to Chornobyl proper, too, except this time it's all happening in higher fidelity than ever before.
Make no mistake, though, STALKER 2's learned some lessons from the very games that it's inspired over the years, too.
Notably, some inspiration is drawn from the various STALKER mods that have popped up over the years, but Escape From Tarkov is also an obvious cue. Item use animations have, indeed, made their way into STALKER 2, and it seems like we're even getting some world interaction animations for the first time ever.
Like, for example, the ability to sit down at a campsite and enjoy the vibes for a little while. Or, heck, maybe even play a guitar yourself? Much to look forward to, that's for sure.
The biggest question we have at this time, mind, is to what extent A-Life may or may not be present in the game. The original titles infamously only had the very bare bones of A-Life until modders brought it back into the picture, and we're hoping that the same thing doesn't happen here, all over again.
We will say that one of GSC's community managers straight-up references certain events from the Gamescom demo as driven by A-Life: "Players can not recognize the difference between just AI of the enemies and the general A-Life Zone simulation. There were situations, where players reached a bandit's camp to fight them, but then, thanks to A-Life the stalker group decided to join the fight. Also that was funny to see the person running from the bloodsucker till the nearest stalker campfire. So the stalkers help the player to eliminate bloodsucker."
Interesting stuff, that's for sure, though we'll need to wait and see how the whole thing pans out in the end.
Over the past couple of weeks, the editorial team here at 2Game has been hard at work prepping things up for the inevitable release of GSC Game World’s STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Much has already been said and shown about the game, of course, but its pedigree means that STALKER 2 is a lot […]
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