After many years of waiting, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is finally out, though its journey to launch was bumpy.
Ievgen Grygorovych, the CEO of GSC Game World, explained that creating the game felt like an endless race, and by the end, they just couldn’t push any further. “You’re so tired that you would just die if you say, ‘Let’s run an additional [development] marathon,'” he mentioned in an interview. “We didn’t have a chance to say, ‘Let’s do it more.’ We just had a chance of, ‘Let’s do until this moment–the release date–as much as we can.'”
Despite the game’s rough start, there are hopes for updates and maybe even new stories in the future. They decided to release it in 2024 because the team was super tired from working long hours and didn’t want to delay it again.
Grygorovych shared how working under intense pressure, especially with the ongoing war in Ukraine, was incredibly tough. It was like running with no end in sight while dealing with constant stress and challenges.
Sometimes, we forget that games are made by people who face real-life struggles.
He was surprised that most of the media didn’t focus on the fact that the game was developed during a war, but rather on typical things like patches.
“It’s something so unimportant in the scale of the country, but they were talking about the game!” he commented on the coverage.
The war in Ukraine had a huge effect on Stalker 2’s creation. Russian attacks damaged their offices, forcing the team to leave Ukraine to continue their work.
Even the game’s name changed to reflect Ukraine’s spelling of Chornobyl instead of the Russian one. A documentary was made to show how hard it was to make a game while your home is at war.
In the early days of the invasion, Russian troops took over Pripyat, the city where the game is set, causing damage to the nuclear site and nearby areas. Thankfully, Ukraine now controls Pripyat again, and the War Game: The Making of Stalker 2 documentary reveals the hard times the team faced. Half of them moved to Prague, while others stayed in Kyiv, always worried about safety and longing for their homeland.
“It’s very important to remind people what’s going on [in Ukraine], because when there is something evil and you stop calling it out and mentioning it… it won’t help to stop it,” Gyrgorovych expressed. “One layer is we are making the game, and we want to entertain people and make it as good a game as possible. And second, it’s about what we can do for our homeland, because we are in a hard situation. I would love to stay in my country and live in my country and make games in my country, but it’s nearly impossible now.”
While Grygorovych was puzzled by the media’s lack of attention to the game’s context, his wife Mariia, who also works at GSC, was thrilled by the support from Ukrainian gamers. They flocked to the game, causing internet issues across the country.
“It’s a bad thing because the internet is important, but at the same time it’s like, ‘Whoa!'” Mariia said about the players’ response. “It touched everyone in the country.”
“For us and our team what’s most important is, for some people in Ukraine, they feel a little bit happier than they were before [the game’s] release,” she added. “We did something for our home country, something good for them.”
“It’s not perfect, we need to fix everything, it has some problems. But it’s a game! It’s a game with soul, with feelings there, with love there. Even the problems–you can’t fix them if you don’t have a game.”
