We haven’t gotten a whole lot of info about the upcoming FPS game STALKER 2 to date – since 2018, when word of the sequel first started making the rounds, we’ve had the barest glimpses at GSC Game World’s newest entry in the STALKER franchise. The latest was a brief in-engine trailer, and the developer has provided a bit of context for what we saw in that footage.
The teaser is less than a minute long, but long-time STALKER fans will recognise several enduring elements of the survival game series. There’s the tense atmosphere, the ruined setting, and the haunting guitar melodies that all help evoke that alien and lonely feeling of the Zone. The developers explain that the tune we hear is Life Line, a song by the Russian rock band Splean.
What we’re watching in the clip, GSC says, is the onset of an emission – it’s a phenomenon that’s figured heavily into STALKER’s world since early in the first game’s development, a powerful explosion of energy that can easily kill anything caught out in the open when it occurs.
Here’s the clip, in case you need a refresher:
The oncoming emission is why STALKER 2’s new protagonist, Skif, is scrambling to find a place to hide. He’s racing through the destroyed school that’s set on the outskirts of the town of Pripyat, which is where the people who worked in the Chernobyl nuclear plant lived and worked prior to the meltdown disaster.
GSC also gives us a cryptic hint about the trailer: “All things considered, it’s easy not to notice someone hiding in the shadows,” the studio writes in the latest update on Xbox.com. “He does look familiar, though…”
Having scrubbed through the 54 seconds of footage several times, we can’t find this person seemingly hiding in the shadows in the trailer’s spooky scenery. The hint suggests that it’s someone we’ll have met in one of the past STALKER titles, however.
There’s no firm STALKER 2 release date yet, but we’re hoping to see it this year. GSC Game World says it will be available on Xbox Game Pass on “day one” when it launches.