GSC Game World doesn’t mind that the games were released more than ten years ago: the Ukrainian team will improve them just for that.
GSC Game World has announced that S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat will be updated. These will receive some kind of next-gen patch, but on consoles, and not this year, but next year. However, the studio has quietly added that they plan to update the PC versions as well! While it’s still very early to ask the developers what exactly to expect, a few things will probably be in the update…
It’s likely that the cutscenes will be in higher resolution, the visuals will be improved, the performance will be better, and of course support for controllers will be included, as they have become more and more common over the last decade and a half. Playing with an Xbox controller or DualSense would be unusual in any of the early S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, but GSC Game World will probably work on that as well. The other change on PC will probably be Steam Achievements. So if you collect them, you might want to install the update later. Just don’t end up with a regression.
The studio’s announcement was very secretive, so no specifics were given, but the team has already revealed that it will reveal the content of the update in early 2025. That’s a week and a half away, so it’s not too far off. At that time, the studio will also be able to tell us what the two add-ons for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl and the additional DLCs will contain. If we had to guess, they might tell us all during a big live broadcast, so fans of the franchise will be in for a treat.
We’d like to add that the PlayStation 5 version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl will probably be officially confirmed by GSC Game World at the same time, as the game is currently only available on Xbox Series and PC.
Source: PCGamer
