We spent a whole three hours in the zone and took a close look at the open world. The survival shooter exudes a pure stalker feeling, surprises us in many places and - more importantly - takes away some of our worries shortly before release.
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I breathe a sigh of relief as empty bullet casings roll onto the ground. My tension drops not only because the bloodsucker in front of me finally drops dead after I pumped my last magazine into him - but above all becauseplays really well!
made me worry about the survival shooter. A technically weak build and a meaningless demo left a bad aftertaste. And although colleague Dimi has already done so this year, I had to do it myself to dispel my doubts.
This time I spent three hours in the zone instead of 20 minutes. And what I saw makes me hopeful:Stalker 2 could not only be really big, but also really good.
Full Disclosure: All costs for the trip to Prague to the development studio, food and accommodation were covered by GSC Game World and Renaissance PR. There were no requirements for our reporting; we were able to play Chapters 1 and 2 of the preview build on a PC and freely explore the zone. To put it into perspective: The beginning of Chapter 2 was playable at gamescom 2023 and Chapter 1 at gamescom 2024. Taking your own screenshots was not permitted, so the images in the article come from the publisher or are screenshots from the B-roll provided.
Return to the zone
More than a year after the gamescom demo, I return to the contaminated zone of Stalker 2 - and the technical condition is hardly recognizable. The game runs much more smoothly, the weapons no longer warp towards the sky after every shot and in the three hours I only encountered minor (open world typical) glitches and one crash. I absolutely trust the developers to patch these little aches and pains before launch.
After the half-hour intro, Stalker 2 finally lets me into its open world. I wake up as a skif in the so-called Lesser Zone and my eyes first wander to the world map. It's huge. The starting area is only a small fraction in the south of the entire map.
