5 REASONS STALKER 2 FAILED

5 reasons Stalker 2 failed

Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 25-05-2025
Online Games Bay

Six months since the premiere of Stalker 2, the title dropped to about 6,000 users in weekly peaks, which means about 4% of those who played the game in November still roam the Zone, which is not a great success. Here are 5 reasons the game failed, and none of them has anything to do with the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Stalker 2 was announced in 2020 and just 4 years and several delays later it has debuted in November 2024. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 did not help in the production of the game, the circumstances were hardly perfect to concentrate on the job when there are missiles flying above your head. Yet, the quick drain of the active players in Stalker 2 had, in my opinion, very little to do with the war itself.

Of course, you can still stumble upon people defending Stalker 2 atrocious level of technical issues with the umbrella term "it was made during the war" and explaining that we should cut some slack to the developers. I agree that some of the issues the game has could be explained by the circumstances, although according to GSC Game World, they did move most of the staff to other countries (like Lithuania, Czech Republic, Poland) after the invasion, which should elevate some pressure.

But the problems of the game started way, way before the Russian invasion, on the early steps of the development. It is understandable that some technical issues will occur, even in perfect work conditions, but some of the ideas behind Stalker 2 were of the "swing and miss" kind.

So why Stalker 2 had failed? Losing 90% of the player base in the first 3 months of the lifespan is bad, in some cases the players might never come back. Here are the 5 main reasons why.

1. Technical issues

Every single Stalker game in the past was a buggy mess on premiere, so there were very few people expecting Stalker 2 to be perfect. And it wasn’t. To be fair, six months and several large patches later, it still is far from being perfect. There are some, on the surface, small problems like compiling shaders for about 10 minutes on each and every start of the game. And that is after over an hour or so on the first run.

When you start the game, the graphics look fine, but then again not as well as you would expect after downloading 150GB of content. But the graphic side is not that important (at least for me), unless... Unless you visit one of the bases (especially Rostok and Zalissya) and find out that the optimization is virtually non-existent in Stalker 2. My computer crashed twice (to the blue screen) when I was running into Zalissya because the game was unable to load all the objects at the same time. And that happened AFTER patch 1.4, so I can only imagine what it looked like at the premiere.

But you don’t have to run to discover that optimization is lacking, in Rostok where there are a lot of buildings, some of them could disappear and reappear in front of you, some will load when you are close to them, a streetlight will suddenly pop up a meter away from you, because the game just got round to it. When you are in the middle of nowhere, the problem is hardly ever present, but the bases seem to be a huge challenge for Stalker 2.

There are several different technical problems with the game, the optimization, f.e. I had to play some part of it without sound, because the game could not find the device in the system. All of this made some people just give up or to postpone playing Stalker 2 until it will reach an acceptable level. And so far it has not.

2. Open world

The change of the game concept from a story-driven location to open world was a well-received innovation, but quite few people were sceptical it will be a step in the right direction. There are dozens of games with an open world that is vast and empty and Stalker 2, more or less, joined that list. The map is much larger than in the previous games, but it was achieved by spreading the locations further from each other. And between those locations, there is basically very little to discover or worth seeing.

To say that the map in Stalker 2 is an empty shell would be an understatement. Of course, in a sort-of post-apocalyptic setting the place is expected to be lifeless and empty, but the problem lays elsewhere. In all previous games there were locations spread across the map of the Zone, empty buildings, abandoned industrial zones, etc. and few havens, where you could feel relatively safe and worry only about the other people.

But the huge difference in Stalker 2 is that you can feel relatively safe anywhere away from the buildings. For example, in the first Stalker game when you reached Rostok you were more or less safe, but the moment you step out in any direction you were almost guaranteed you will stumble upon some mutants that will attack you on the spot, which made every trip a huge risk. In Stalker 2 it is hard to find any mutants away from the buildings. The anomalies that could trap you are, for some unknown reason, located mostly over the roads and crossings and are rarely seen anywhere else.

Very early in the game, I spent 2 in-game days and 2 nights just walking around the map without entering any compounds or buildings. I got through about 80% of the map and throughout this time I was in danger about 4 times (once I walked too close to the base and was shot at, twice bloodsuckers tried to attack me, but I just run long enough for them to give up, once had to hide from a storm). I cannot imagine doing that in any other Stalker game, there were always dogs or boars roaming some parts of the maps, so it would be impossible to just walk around and not use your weapons even once.

And there is another layer to that problem - the world in Stalker 2 is not really that open. There are hundreds of visible and invisible walls that prevent you from moving freely around the map. During my walkabout the map, I was planning to visit Pripyat, but was unable because the only bridge leading to town offers a huge dosage of radiation. You can never swim across the river, most of the bridges are destroyed or irradiated, there are huge scarps preventing you from going f.e. from Lesser Zone to Cordon, unless you unlock a crossing.

3. Changes in the basic concept

One of the changes made to the game especially surprised the players, and not in a good way - lack of night vision. Yes, the game in which you will have to operate at nights, have no options of night vision. That questionable change was rebalanced by nights that often are bright enough that you can walk around even without using your flashlight. Some people might see that as a plus, but a lot are disappointed, because night vision was one of the most important gear you would look for in other games, especially since you often have to walk through underground places without any light.

The factions system that was present in previous games is more or less kept in Stalker 2, but with some changes - since time has passed, the factions have changed. In older games they were well-developed, Duty tried to destroy the Zone, Freedom tried to preserve the Zone, scientists were trying to understand the Zone, Monolith was a cult glorifying the Zone. In Stalker 2 the number of factions was increased to 12, but they became more or less indistinguishable from each other. They have some structures, they have some compounds, they have some key people, but to be honest I could not even remember some of their names or what their goal is.

Stalker 2 was supposed to have A-Life system, which would make the Zone a constantly changing environment due to ongoing wars between the factions, the system is nowhere to be seen in the game, but what is more, even a simpler version of that concept was present in the previous games, and it never really worked, so I have no clue why should it work here. Even if the system would work, it would be a bit pointless, since the factions are barely distinguishable from each other. Instead, we have a spawn system that is a bit broken, so enemies can spawn out of nowhere or disappear without explanation.

The main story and the side missions in Stalker 2 are unfortunately one of the weaker points of the whole game - while previous games had a broadly described goals for you that left a lot to imagination (f.e. "find Strelok", "find out what happened to crews of crashed helicopters", "find out what happened to stalkers that disappeared"), Stalker 2 is all about micromanagement. You get a list of very specific "tasks", which are not much fun to follow (f.e. "go to this place", "enter the building", "talk to this guy").

Also, most of the missions are extremely boring and repetitive ("go there and bring me that thing", "go there and kill those guys"). Or quite opposite, f.e. in Rostok I was given the task to bring back a suitcase that was... on the roof of the building next door. That mission was 2 minutes of pure fun.

One feature that was interesting in Stalker 2 were the storms, which unlike emissions, might kill you, but you might be lucky and survive. During the storm, it is wise to hide in some building because lightnings strike randomly and deadly, but you have some chances to survive. This puts some extra strain on the player, when caught in the middle of nowhere by a sudden storm, you might be in trouble. On the other hand, it means that you will lose some of the daytime waiting for the storm to end.

4. Game balance

The game balance is one of the biggest problems with Stalker 2 - the wear and tear of your gear was sped up to the point, that is it better for you not to take up any side missions, because you will lose money completing them. For example, I got a short mission to just pick up a box from a nearby location, I was gone from the base for about 4-5 in-game hours. During the time, every bit of my gear lost few percent of the condition, even the guns that I did not shoot even once during that trip. The cost of restoring the condition to 100% costed me a few hundred credits, the ammo I have used to kill the mutants was about another few hundred credits and I got paid about 1,500 credits, so at the end I wasn’t even sure if I broke even on the whole thing.

And situations like that keep repeating - I entered a compound, where there is stash hidden, had to kill some mutants to get there, use medkits and anti-radiation drugs only to find that the "stash" was in fact few bullets, bandage and bottle of vodka. In many cases, the stashes are not even worth getting through the obstacles on the way. Same story with random encounters - I was attacked by a group of stalkers in Burnt Forest, killed all 7 of them, used about 60 bullets, only to find out that all of their inventories and guns contained about 20 bullets all together.

In all other Stalker games bloodsuckers were one of the scariest mutants you can stumble upon, because they are able to become almost invisible while they attack, so the first meeting with that particular enemy was really scary. In Stalker 2 you are introduced to a bloodsucker very early in the game, and you will stumble upon them on regular basis, which (just like with deathclaws in Fallout 4) diminish the fear factor through the over-exposition of what once was a rare opponent. To be honest, I was completely bored with bloodsuckers being the only enemy around, because in Stalker 2 they are turned into bullet-sponges and there is not a single upside of fighting them. You will lose bullets, most likely medkits, will find a disappointing stash as a reward, with just few bullets inside.

Even the combat against human enemies is not that great in Stalker 2 - in random events you can be attacked by groups of stalkers, who will spot you from a great distance, will shoot you through walls, will spot you through the walls. If you attack a compound, all the flaws of AI will show up - sooner or later they will try a frontal attack, they will repeat that attack until they all are dead. While fighting in the open, the biggest problem is to actually spot the enemies, while they have no problem spotting you. Clearly the trees and the bushed work as one-way mirrors in Stalker 2.

And there is another problem with the environment - the day / night cycle and the storms. For some reason, the time runs in Stalker 2 much faster than you would expect - there is enough daylight to visit two nearby locations before you will need to head back to the base. Of course, you can operate during the night, but without night vision it could be tricky. To make things worse, if you fall asleep in the bed, you cannot set the time you want to wake up, so while you were planning to start your day early in the morning, you might wake up at 9 or 10 am. Or the opposite - you go to sleep to skip until daytime, but you wake up at 4 am and still has few hours of waiting ahead of you. Similar story with the storms, if you hide in a building and not risk being struck by a lightning you might lose several hours of the daylight.

While the weather system and the changes of the lighting during the day might look great, I had examples of having an emission and three storms within 2 in-game days, which means I had hardly enough time to visit a single location between the nights, which is another balance problem.

5. Time

The timing for Stalker 2 development was terrible - not only the Russian invasion have put unbelievable strain on the team, but also the titles that were published in recent times made this game even less likely to succeed. The Metro games, Fallout 4 revival, Chernobylite and quite few others have the same vibe as Stalker used to have, but they are just a bit better. Just like I predicted a few years back, the developers of Stalker 2 will have to come up with something spectacular to revive the series, and what they have published is far from what could have been expected from the game.

I predicted that they will either make a game that will appeal to the veteran players of the series or will try to modernize it to find a new audience. What Stalker 2 has to offer is basically a very improved Stalker: Call of Pripyat. The map is bigger, the graphic side is a bit better, but it is still the same game, which is fine. I loved Stalker: Call of Pripyat, will still play it in the future, I guess, but the times moved on and Stalker 2 did not.

The improvements that they made to the user interface are more annoying than helpful, the NPCs are just annoying with repetition of the same lines, the emptiness of the map is quite obvious, the missions are really uninspired. Even after several delays and few patches, Stalker 2 is still far from being comfortably playable, not to mention there were no improvements to the gameplay in six months since the premiere.

If you overlook the technical issues, Stalker 2 is a fine game, it looks ok, in some parts it looks good, it still offers the eerie feeling of walking around the Zone, but the game development has moved on with other things that are missing here. You can play The Forest and get the same vibe, but be able to build your whole base, you can play Chernobylite and get the same eerie feeling, you can play mods to old Stalker games that offer much more options, while Stalker 2 is stuck in the past with a bit underwhelming game development.

17-06-2025

5 reasons Stalker 2 failed comments

I forced myself to get to the boss fight in a bunker under Pripyat and when I realised I have no weapons to get through his armor I just gave up. The game is a huge disappointment!
Hyu (21-08-2025 10:07:00)

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