STALKER 2, officially STALKER 2: Heart of Chonobyl, is one of the most anticipated video games of 2023, although looking at its Steam file, you have many options to jump to 2024, as the expected launch month is December, within a year. However, this time we want to focus our attention on the latest trailer posted on the developer’s official YouTube channel, GSC Game World.

The STALKER saga takes place in an alternate timeline in which the second catastrophe that occurred in 2006 caused the appearance of monsters, mutants and phenomena that are difficult to explain in the Chernobyl zone, located in the Ukrainian city of Pripyat. In terms of gameplay, it’s a once-critical mix of shooter and survival horror that’s still quite popular fifteen years after the release of the original STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl title.

STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl had a prequel released in 2008, STALKER: Clear Sky, and a direct sequel that directly follows the events of the first game, STALKER: Call of Pripyat. GSC Game World announced in 2010 that STALKER 2 was in development., but said the work has had a turbulent trajectory, with cancellations and changes to the graphics engine. The Russian invasion of Ukraine didn’t help either, forcing the Ukrainian studio to move to the Czech Republic.

The trajectory of STALKER 2: Heart of Chonobyl is somewhat reminiscent of Duke Nukem Forever, although the GSC Game World title seems to end well. The future edition’s graphics are quite spectacular thanks to the use of Unreal Engine 5, the latest generation of the famous Epic Games engine. On the other hand, in addition to the question of time and expectations, the developer had to correct his intentions to introduce NFT a year ago.

It looks like the developers are trying hard to make the game not require a NASA computer since they are trying to minimum graphics card for this to work is 6GB GTX 1060 or 8GB RX 580. However, and while it’s a mild claim, if you look at the timeline, it’s no less true that the last five years have been one of the worst, if not the worst, times to buy hardware, especially when it comes to dedicated graphics.

We’ll see if STALKER 2: Heart of Chonobyl manages to live up to the expectations around it, which will be excessively high given the time we’ve had, and we’ll have to wait until it sees the light.