S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is without doubt one of the biggest releases of the year. Releasing on the back of years and years of anticipation, and having gone through an insanely tumultuous development cycle that saw developer GSC Game World having to grapple with Russia’s invasion of its home country of Ukraine, the long-awaited open world first-person shooter has looked increasingly promising, which means our excitement has continued to build. As such, here, as we count the days down to its release, we’re going to go over a few key details that you should know about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2– starting with key information for those who intend to play the game on PC.
LOW AND MEDIUM PC REQUIREMENTS
Every second of footage that we have seen of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has made it abundantly clear that the horror shooter is going to be a graphical powerhouse, so it’s no surprise that its PC version has some pretty steep requirements, even on the lowest settings. For starters, an SSD and a whopping 160 GB of free storage space are requirements across the board.
Other than that, on low settings (which will run the game at 1080p and 30 FPS), you’ll need either an i7-7700K or Ryzen 5 1600X, along with either a 6 GB GeForce GTX 1060 or an 8 GB Radeon RX 580. On medium settings, to play at 1080p and 60 FPS, you’ll need either an i7-9700K or a Ryzen 7 3700X, and either a GeForce RTX 2070 Super, an RTX 4060, or a Radeon RX 5700 XT. On both low and medium presets, you’ll also require 16 GB of RAM.
HIGH AND EPIC PC REQUIREMENTS
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl will let PC players play the game at the highest possible settings. The High preset, which is the recommended one, will run the game at 1440p and 60 FPS, you will need either an i7-11700 or a Ryzen 7 5800X, along with either a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, an RTX 4070, or a Radeon RX 6800 XT. Meanwhile, on Epic settings, you’ll be able to run the game at 4K and 60+ FPS, and will need either an i7-13700KF or a Ryzen 7 7700X, and either a GeForce RTX 4080 or a Radeon RX 7900 XTX. On both High and Epic settings, you’ll also need 32 GB of RAM.
XBOX STORAGE REQUIREMENTS
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is clearly going to be a massive game, not just in terms of the size of its open world (which is an eye-watering 60-plus square kilometers big), but also, clearly, with its graphical and technical ambitions. That’s plainly evident in its massive 160 GB storage requirements on PC (among other things), and unsurprisingly, the game has similarly high storage requirements on console. Pre-loading for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 went live not too long ago, at which point it emerged that the game requires 147 GB of free storage space on Xbox Series X/S- so make sure you have ample space free.
DLSS 3 SUPPORT
Let’s stick with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s technical bullet points a little while longer, because clearly, there’s a lot to talk about on this front. For instance, Nvidia has officially confirmed that the game’s PC version will launch with support for DLSS 3 with Frame Generation and Super Resolution. Thanks to DLSS 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will boast an average of 2.4x performance improvements for GeForce RTX 40 Series cards, with frame rates on RTX 4090, for instance, surpassing 120 FPS. Additionally, PC players will also be able to utilize Nvidia Reflex, allowing for up to 45 percent latency reductions.
MOD SUPPORT ON XBOX
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series has always boasted a thriving and active modding community, and even though the series is coming back after a long hiatus, developer GSC Game World has confirmed it doesn’t intend to abandon that franchise tradition. Speaking recently with YouTube channel Radio Times Gaming, GSC Game World’s technical producer Yevhenii Kulyk confirmed that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will feature full mod support on Xbox Series X/S as well, with a pretty extensive toolset at that. Kulyk said, “We are basically creating and preparing a big toolkit that will provide the mod makers with all necessary tools to create mods from the smallest ones, to like, big total conversions.”
XBOX SERIES S PERFORMANCE
GSC Game World has confirmed a few times that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will feature 30 FPS and 60 FPS options on Xbox Series X, but what can players expect on Microsoft’s less powerful current-gen console? Details are a little murkier on the Xbox Series S front, but GSC Game World’s lead producer Slava Lukyanenka did say in an interview with Wccftech back in September that, at the time, the game was running at about 35 FPS on the Xbox Series S, and that the studio was still making improvements and optimizations. Hopefully, that means we can expect stable, consistent frame rates on the lower-end console.
DIFFICULTY OPTIONS
It goes without saying that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is going to be a challenging game – refusing to hold players’ hands even in the slightest is what the series has always been known for, after all – but the upcoming shooter will still allow players to customize their experience’s difficulty. The game will feature three difficulty options, though you can expect it to be pretty hard even on Normal difficulty, as the developer confirmed in an interview with Windows Central. Then there’s a higher difficulty, which “doesn’t just make the gameplay more difficult, but also strips back HUD and UI elements”, as the studio puts it.
MAIN STORY LENGTH
Clearly, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is going to be a massive game, not just in size and scope, but also in terms of its runtime. Speaking in an interview with Gamersky, GSC Game World revealed that the shooter’s main story is going to be about 40 hours long. Meanwhile, previously, the studio has said that players can put well over a hundred hours into the game, depending on how much they engage with all of its optional content, which, of course, also includes multiple endings and repeat playthroughs.
WEAPON BALLISTICS
We’ve spoken extensively about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s gameplay in past features, which is why we’ve focused on other elements here, but there is one particular detail worth going over that we haven’t previously covered. An extensive gameplay deep dive in August revealed that the game will tout realistic ballistic simulations, which means every single shot you fire will be influenced by factors such as distance, wind speed, what weapon you’re using, and whether or not your target has armour equipped. As is the case with pretty much everything else in this game, firefights will demand attention.
POST-LAUNCH PLANS
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is going to keep players busy for a while after its release, given its size and scale, but developer GSC Game World still has more content that it intends to deliver. That will include two post-launch expansions that will be covered by a season pass, as confirmed by the studio as part of the aforementioned gameplay deep dive in August. Details on what these expansions will entail, how sizeable each of them will be, or when they will launch haven’t yet been announced, however.
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