I told you so!

Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 25-08-2023
Online Games Bay

This news creates mixed feelings in me - I want to make a smug face and repeat "I told you so!" and at the same time I wish this news was not true. Yes, it is Stalker 2 again. Yes, it’s bad news again. No, I’m not surprised. During the Gamescom 2023 a new trailer of the title was shown and... let’s just say it wasn’t received well.

During the Gamescom 2023, GSC Game World presented a new trailer from their (supposedly) upcoming game Stalker 2, which, btw. was postponed again, this time until first quarter of 2024. In this trailer, we can see bits of the gameplay (finally!) and it is easy to tell that they are from the gameplay because they look significantly worse than everything we were shown so far.

To be honest, the graphic side is one of the least important factors for me when it comes to games. I had a ton and a half fun playing games that barely have any graphics (like Mini Metro, Fly Corp or DEFCON), I can even enjoy games that are text-based. But the one thing that bothers me about developers like GSC Game World, CD Projekt Red and many others is the lying. They show you flashy animations and will lie straight into your face that this is exactly what their game looks like.

And GSC did exactly that - almost 2 years ago, I wrote an article that you can check out right here, about people, who have serious discussions about game features when all they saw so far were just screenshots of concept art and pre-rendered animations. Yes, they failed to notice that the camera work in the videos was not moving like the player would move, they failed to notice that the screenshots looked too good to be rendered objects in a game that is nowhere near being finished.

Now, after the new trailer, we can clearly see that the game looks nothing like the animations we were shown before - it looks like a mod of one of the old Stalker games, not like something that was created recently. So what was the reaction of hardcore fans? "It’s just an early build", "it’s a console version" and "it’s a mixture of old and new footage". So, a company that is about to publish their most anticipated game after years of development, which is (supposedly) close to being finished, which they already being selling for the last 3 years, cannot find a good bit of footage to show off during the Gamescom? That is the reality you live in? Are other people in that reality, or is it your personal thing?

I can’t even remember how many times I said it in previous articles about Stalker 2 - if the game is about to have a premiere, why we haven’t seen any in-game footage yet? Why the game that we haven’t seen any in-games footage was being sold by GSC for the last 3 years? Why are people arguing about the game that they haven’t even seen yet? And why am I naked while writing those articles? But I digress a bit...

Even if the trailer shown during Gamescom 2023 was just an unfortunate compilation of old and new footage, even if the game will finally be published in 2024, for me, this title has all the red flags of potential disaster. I said it in early 2021 Why Stalker 2 will most likely fail and I’m afraid I was right almost 3 years ago. Nothing that GSC shown us since then changed my mind. And it is sad because I enjoyed every single Stalker game so far (even the Clear Sky, but not as much as the others).

04-09-2023