When I spoke to developers at Gamescom th♓is year, my first question was alw꧅ays how they’re finding the convention. Almost all of the time, the answer was simple: It’s great to see so many people in one place, it’s great to show off their games, and it’s great to chat with fans.

For GSC Game World, the studio behind the long-awaited 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Stalker 2, though, I’m told it's a “mix of anxiety and excitement”.

“We’ve come here after a long period of time with no external feedback on the build,” says Slava Lukyanenka, lead producer on Stalker 2. “We’ve made several things that still need to be proven to the players. [We] need t🍸o gather that feedback.”

Now that the public has been able to play Stalker 2, he says the feedback has been positive and eased the team’s concerns. “People are praising that we have the game running on Xbox at 60fps,” says Lukyanenk🍌a, adding that the team was initially hesitant about sacrifici♍ng graphics to add a performance mode.

Over on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Series S, he admits that the game is currently running at around 25FPS (he later that he meant to say 35FPS in🌺 interviews), but notes there is “a lot of space for optimisation” still. He adds Xbox is helping them with this right now, and is confident that they will “see results” soon.

Stalker 2 And Its Many Release Dates

Of course, we can&r♔squo;t talk about Stalker 2 for long without addressing its constantly changing launch dat♎e.

This build of the game was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:initially set to launch i﷽n December 2022.💜 However, GSC is a Ukrainian studio, so development was forcibly put on hold following the invasion of the country by Russia in February of that year.

Despite this, development once again continued, pushing the game into 2024. Earlier this year, it was announced that it would be missing its September release date ♐and is now set for November 20. I𓂃 ask how confident the team i💮s that it will meet this deadline.

“Way more confident than we were with September,” Lukyanenka laughs. “This additional 20 weeks for polishing is essential [...] We're going to make the experience as pleasurable as possible, but the game is huge. The game has a lot of complicated systems, not only from the perspective of the gameplay but AI, also technical art. And this kind of complexity provides a lot of edge cases.”

I point out that I didn’t run into any issues with the demo I played before we spoke, which was also available on the show floor, to which Lukyanenka explains th✅at the opening portio꧙n of the game has been completely polished. As he once again emphasises - the game is big.

“To beat the game, you would need 25 to 40 hours,” he says. “I don't know the precise number, because the way we play the game is different than the players [...] But the world is huge. It’s 64 square kilometres.”

Optimisation and extensive testing are far from the only issues that have plagued Stalker 2’s development. Infamously, a version of Stalker 2 was announced in 2010, but fell apart soon after, leading to the original GSC Gamꦦe World’s closure ♔in 2011. The studio reformed in 2014 and restarted development entirely.

“I wasn't there when it was the original Stalker 2. That was… Oh, Jesus, 13 years ago,” says Lukyanenka. “In this period of time, I was just starting my career.”

The last game in the series, Stalker: Call of Pripyat, launched iꦆn 2009.

This version of Stalker 2 was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:shown off at t🐻he Xbox Games Showcase in 2020, and is a new project entirely. “For this version of Stalker 2, we are trying to retain all the key aspects of the original trilogy - atmosphere, story, characters, the way The Zone looks,” he expla🌟ins.

But beyond that, this game als🍸o has to make up for such a long absence. One way GSC Game World wants to do 🍌this is by thanking the fans who kept the series alive for so long. “We will put the emphasis on our players in the modding community,” says Lukyanenka. “Thanks to them, Stalker is still a known franchise after 15 years with no major release.”

Working With Xbox To Release Stalker 2

Through it all, GSC Game World has been able to set its own release dates. Despite a deal with Xbox that will make Stalker 2 a temporary Xbox console exclusive and available on Game Pass, I’m told that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Microsoft has never demanded a particular release window.

As soon as๊ I allude to the Xbo🌞x deal, PR manager Zakhar Bocharov hops in, eager to praise the company.

“You're not gonna believe this answer because it sounds like a total marketing answer, but Microsoft doesn't put any demands in terms of the release date or the content,” says Bocharov. “They're not our publishers. It's just the Game Pass deal.

“Personally, I never expected a corporation of this size to be so supportive,” he continues. “I can’t say the exact cases, but they helped in situations where they were not exactly supposed to. So they could easily [have said], ‘No, that's not on us. That's with you guys. Good luck. Figure it out’.”

In particular, Bocharov is confident that Xbox president Sarah Bond i🐈s personally a fan of the game, and also praises head of games Phil Spencer for being “very supportive and caring” towards the teamﷺ.

“I never expected a corporation to be this close to the developers who are in a bad situation,” says Bocharov. “It was spectacular. That's the professional connection we value a lot, because it would have been much different without them.”

In the past couple of years, GSC has certainly needed the support. We also touch on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the leak from last year, which relea📖sed gameplay f🤪ootage far sooner than intended.

Lukyanenka says that the team felt this on a personal level. “It's very unpleasant when someone enters your apartment without permission, takes something, and carries it away, Right?

“We're trying to stay positive in this kind of situation. Find something we can actually learn from it,” he adds. He admits that the team paid attention to the reaction to the leaked material, saying that sometimes, it was amusing - and even helpful.

Stalker 2’s Post-Launch Support

Now, if the November date ♔sticks, the end is finally in sight. But that doesn’t mean the devs will stop working on Stalker 2 anytime soon.

“After the release, we are going to provide support for modders. We are going to release the mod kit, so they’ll be able to continue to keep the Stalker franchise alive,” Lukyanenka tells me. “Then we are going to have several small, free DLC updates. [We'll have] hotfix[es] and patches. We are going to release two big story expansions.

“We still have a few interesting ideas on how we could move the Stalker universe further, but that's a topic for another time”.

I joke that they will probably want to rest at some point too, but even then, Lukyanenka is eager to boast about the team’s plans. “Perhaps we will, but we'll keep delivering for sure,” he says. “We don't want to make Stalker just a game that’s forgotten in a couple of weeks.

“We’ve learned this from the past. If we didn’t have a huge fanbase, if we didn’t have modders who kept the original trilogy alive, at this point, Stalker 2 would be a different game. S💯o we should respect all the players, all the fanbase, all of the modders. Therefore we want to support it after the 🐓release of Stalker 2 as well.”