GSC Game World made Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl in what’s probably the harshest conditions any developer had to work under. With the Russian invasion looming over the developer, they had to not only delay the game multiple times, but also relocate the base of operations entirely. The fact that they even launched the game in whatever state is commendable.
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Was Anybody Really Expecting Stalker 2 To Not Be Broken?
Stalker 2 was always going to launch in this state.
While the game has had many issues, the developer committed to addressing them, and has already put out three patches till date. However, many have wondered why the game wasn’t further delayed to polish it up. No one would blame the studio, given the circumstances, but CEO Ievgen Grygorovych has said that further delaying it was not an option.
Stalker 2 Devs Did Not Want To Delay The Game Further
“It’s very hard to explain your state when you’re in a very intensive work process for many months until release, and you’re working over, over, over what you usually can do and in the highest possible stress and overwhelming period,” said Grygorovych in a conversation with Eurogamer.
“You have no energy at all and you decide – should we take one more marathon? And you just can’t say yes, let’s make one more marathon, because you’re already broken,” he continued.
“You’re so tired that you would just die if you say let’s run an additional marathon,” Grygorovych explained. “We didn’t have a chance to say let’s do it more. We just had a chance of ‘let’s do until this moment – the release date – as much as we can’.”
It’s evident that developing Stalker 2 under the conditions they did took a toll on the team. Circumstances led them to make the game in marathon sessions as they didn’t know what the next day would hold. After a point, the process had gotten too much for them, so they opted to stick to the launch date of November 20. Since then, there have been three patches addressing various issues in the game.
We recently reported that GSC Game World is aware that the A-Life 2.0 system contains a lot of bugs. The developer has promised that the system will be reworked in future updates.
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is the long-awaited follow-up to the apocalyptic first-person shooter. As a Stalker, you must venture into the deadly Exclusion Zone, contending with mutants and warring factions alike, in search of valuable artifacts.