GSC Game World has now adopted an approach that used to be used mainly by Ubisoft…

Remember the French publisher’s games from 7-9 years ago? For example, when Watch_Dogs was announced, the game looked incredibly beautiful. It was released in the Spring of 2014 after a significant delay, but it was nowhere near as graphically impressive as when we first saw it in action. (It is a typical case with cross-gen games: you have to shoot for the weakest hardware, usually the Nintendo Switch or the PlayStation 4/Xbox One duo.)

The earlier S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 teaser videos (before the Russian-Ukrainian war) were in-game footage, according to the Ukrainian studio. Still, if they did contain gameplay, those shots were from a very sophisticated and graphically pleasing vertical slice, and perhaps it was never intended for a full, ambitious, open-world game to look this nice. The situation was made worse by the situation in Ukraine and by Russian hackers targeting GSC Game World.

Even so, the game has relatively good graphics, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl beats the level of Dying Light 2: Stay Human (Techland’s game is suitable for comparison because of its open-world structure). The studio has brought the demo in playable form to Gamescom, and according to PCGamer, for example, the player can have a lot of freedom with many challenges (anomalies, mutant dogs, and lightning strikes…). This time, the natural effects are going to be extremely dangerous!

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has a new gameplay video, and it is perhaps the most real gameplay we’ve seen so far (no cutscenes, glorified shots, but shooting, fighting, weirdness, all the things you’d expect from the franchise). The game isn’t far off the mark, but the release has been quietly pushed to the first quarter of 2024 (January-March) on Xbox Series and PC. The Xbox Game Pass will also feature GSC Game World’s long-awaited game.

Source: WCCFTech