It’s Amazing How Ominous Lighting Can Be
In the two years since STALKER 2 was announced (again), we’ve been pretty excited about it. Sure, the original STALKER games weren’t perfect–in fact, the first one reportedly had to be kept in development hell for a while because A-Life, the “living world simulation system”, led to NPCs beating the game before the player could–but their combination of unrelenting difficult gameplay, post-apocalyptic aesthetic, and just being really, really creepy made them incredibly memorable. Now we’re all looking forward to a sequel with next-gen graphics, more polished gameplay, and the kind of atmosphere that nightmares are made of.
See what we mean? Those lights, man… those lights. The crumbling and rotting environments are bad enough, but a town being reclaimed by nature could be more sad or peaceful than scary. It’s the lighting and soundscape that make this trailer so completely off-putting. If one 50-second clip insidePC Gaming the game’s engine has us this spooked, we can’t wait to see what the whole game will be like. STALKER 2 will be using a system called A-Life 2.0 to craft an ever-changing world, so the characters and mutants will be constantly interacting with each other and every playthrough will be unique. Sounds awesome to us. The game will also be using the Unreal Engine and will be released for Xbox Series X.
Eastern European horror games have a way of getting under your skin, but STALKER still stands out to us simply because it’s actually an adaptation. Few games based on novels and films are so effective, and the STALKER series is based on both a film (STALKER) and a novel (A Roadside Picnic). If this trailer leaves you with the need to fill the STALKER-shaped hole in your heart, consider checking both of them out. In the meantime…
“Welcome to The Zone — an area of exclusion around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant,” reads the press release. “Full of radiation, mutants and anomalies, it keeps drawing adventurers from beyond the perimeter.
Bounty hunters dwell deep into the Zone, driven by its treasures and mysteries. These people are known as stalkers.
Are you ready to become one of them?”
STALKER 2Â will be released for Xbox Series X|S and PC in 2021.
Is STALKER 2 on your wishlist? Let us know down in the comments, or hit us up on Twitter or Facebook.