GSC Game World
STALKER 2: Game development in the middle of a war is extremely dangerous
First a pandemic, and then the war in Ukraine: the developers of STALKER 2 share what it’s been like working on the game through it all.
Dinga Bakaba (Arkane Studios) said that making a video game is always difficult, regardless of whether you are a large studio of 300 people or a small one of only 3. If your country is at war, it adds such extreme conditions that this process becomes a true feat, and that is precisely what the members of GSC Game World, creators of STALKER 2, wanted to capture in an almost 90-minute documentary about the difficulties that they had to go through during the invasion of their country, Ukraine, by the Russian army.
“Subconsciously, we were ready to die,” they say. Of course, nothing is exaggerated, since in fact one of the members of the Ukrainian studio, Volodymyr Yezhov, died in the conflict 2 years ago. Others enlisted in the ranks of the army of the former republic of the USSR, now independent and still suffering the consequences of war.
Obviously, all this has had a negative impact on the development of STALKER 2, which has suffered numerous delays, with GSC Game World having been victims of a hack - according to them, by Russian pirates - and even a fire in the studio.
STALKER 2, the toughest development in recent years
“Personally, STALKER 2 is the biggest and most complex video game of my life,” creative director Mariia Grygorovych says in the video. “It was very ambitious from the beginning, but it has ended up becoming a challenge. It’s extremely important, and extremely personal, it’s a game made under the most stressful conditions possible. That includes the pandemic, relocation, cyber attacks, and above all, the war ravaging our country”.
Throughout the development, the studio was fully aware of what was happening in Ukraine, as it could not be otherwise, and they even made subtle but very clear demands. One of them was to change the title of the game, since the subtitle, Heart of Chernobyl, became Heart of Chornobyl, a slight change that represents the name of this famous place in the local language.
Fortunately, everything seems to indicate that the release date of STALKER 2 is final, this being November 20, 2024. The game will come to Xbox Series and PC, being available from its first day on the market in the Xbox Game Pass catalog.
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