S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2's release has understandably been pushed to 2023

First-person survival horror shooter Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl has been delayed into 2023, developers GSC Game World have revealed in a new trailer shared on Twitter. The game’s name has also changed to the Ukrainian language spelling of Chernobyl. Watch the trailer below.

GSC Game World tweeted a video dev diary showing footage from the destructive Russian strikes on Kyiv, some of which reached within a mile of the company’s offices. The video highlights the daily struggles of the developers, whether they were able to evacuate from Kyiv or were trapped in their homes. Some appear to have been working on the game under very compromised and dangerous circumstances. Other staff have joined the Ukrainian armed forces or volunteered in other ways.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s voice director, Andrii Maksiuta, is shown running to a bomb shelter. As narrative designer Dariia Tsepkova says from the corridor she’s worked in for three months: “It’s not easy to write violent quests when there’s a war outside your window.” Animator Oleksandr Levchenko, from the besieged city of Mariupol, has had no contact with his parents since the start of the war. “It is an indescribable horrible feeling, not knowing whether your loved ones are alive,” he says.

The release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was pushed back to December earlier this year, prior to the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine in February. Given what’s been going on in GSC Game World’s home country for more than a hundred days now, I'm sure everyone understands this second delay. It was only at the end of last month that the developers said they’d resumed active development on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, with some GSC Game World staff relocating to Prague in the Czech Republic to continue working.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl will be out sometime in 2023. You can find it on Steam and the Epic Games Store for £50/$60/€60.