GSC Game World announced that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has moved from its Q1 2024 release plan, to have a final release date of September 5th, 2024. While we don't know yet how it will run on Steam Deck or desktop Linux with Proton, it's likely to be one of the most popular releases on PC this year so it's worth keeping an eye on.
Speaking about the delay, GSC said "While there is absolutely no way to make another delay sound less dim, we decided to be clear about our reasons to postpone the game for the sake of yet another wave of polishing". Continuing they mentioned showing it off at Gamescom 2023 to a small set of people, but it showed the game needed more time in the oven for technical issues to be solved.
![YouTube Thumbnail](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/cache/youtube_thumbs/0d7468dd999d2555e011eebbbf571c9d.jpg)
Direct Link
You can also see their previous trailer below:
![YouTube Thumbnail](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/cache/youtube_thumbs/04af652b1c31e25e03abed950ef42f86.jpg)
Direct Link
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is available for pre-order via:
So if you've not played the originals, you've now got a bit of extra time to jump into them and they all work on Linux desktop with Proton. Some work okay on Steam Deck too. Although, for Call of Pripyat, you may get a better experience with OpenXRay.
It's worth noting also that recently the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game engine OpenXRay got taken down on GitHub, but it was later reinstated since the DMCA was fraudulent and GSC actually gave it their blessing. Nice to see another company look after their players and understand projects like that are actually good for their older games.
Will this be something you'll be checking out at release? Let me know in the comments.
The original was, by far, my favorite, being more open world, although, I did think they got better and better throughout the series.
I'm super excited for #2! I hope it runs well! I'd consider buying it a little after release (I wanna make sure it's good on Linux first)
Last edited by denyasis on 16 January 2024 at 7:11 pm UTC
I'm sure it will turn out quite good, but I somehow doubt it will live up to its full potential.
With the war in Ukraine constantly wrecking havoc on the countries energy and internet structure, food and many other commodities being scarce and living in a state of permanent insecurity, all of these factors must have been very detrimental to the development cycle and the teams mental wellbeing.
One has to wonder if this really is going to be the same STALKER 2 as if this damn unnecessary war never happened.
I did enjoy Stalker Anomaly and mods. Might reboot up a new game sometime soon.
That guy's doing well to play the guitar with gloves on in the first video
![](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/templates/default/images/emoticons/whistle.png)
Quoting: GuestThe company is not in Ukraine. Its in Czechia.Oh, so they relocated to Prague. I didn't know that. Guess I have to read more gaming news.
![](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/templates/default/images/emoticons/whistle.png)
See more from me