S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Announced, Coming to Consoles

GSC Game World announced yesterday that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is officially in development, and it will be coming to the PC and, this time, to consoles as well, though the website announcement failed to specify which consoles. It is scheduled for release in 2012.

“After the official sales of the series exceeded 4 million copies worldwide, we had no doubts left to start creating a new big game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe. This will be the next chapter of the mega-popular game players expect from us,” said Sergiy Grygorovych, CEO of GSC Game World, the Ukrainian developer behind the massively popular PC-based, FPS/RPG hybrid series.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was a major hit when it arrived on PCs in 2007. The game was an incredibly detailed, and challenging RPG/Shooter hybrid that took place in an alternate reality focused on the area surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

The game takes place in “The Zone,” the dead zone around the site of the nuclear disaster. The game was set in an open-world environment in which players took on the role of a mercenary, or a stalker, a person who hunts through the remains of the zone for valuable artifacts. He is amnesiac and can’t recall anything that happened to him before a major injury that he nearly died from. The only clues to his existence are a tattoo, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on his arm, and a note in his PDF that says, “Kill Strelok.”

The world of The Zone is a dangerous place, populated by mutated animals and people. It is also crawling with stalkers who will shoot on sight. There are clans, people to meet, and there area of the game world is relatively large, 30 kilometers square. It includes a recreation of the city of Pripyat, which is also featured prominently in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

The game was almost universally praised by critics, and featured excellent graphics, and an expansive storyline that featured multiple endings. Further expanding the popularity of the game were a set of expansion packs that greatly increased the game’s story, one Clear Sky, was a prequel while Call of Pripyat was a sequel. Neither, though, were significant enough to be considered proper full games. They were, as suggested above, expansion packs. So, the advent of a proper sequel should be exciting for fans of the series, but it also marks an excellent opportunity for console gamers to experience the unique world and gameplay style of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

The release date is a long way in the future, but the announcement of its development suggests that in a short amount of time gamers will be subjected to previews, screens, and trailers. It should be interesting to see what the game looks like with a new graphics engine, and a development that caters to PC and console gamers.