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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Inexplicably Announced For 2021
Rather abruptly, a website for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has appeared with an accompanying Facebook post announcing a 2021 release.
The website, which you can find here, is sparse on information beyond the title, a year of 2021, and an email address which had not responded to us yet at the time of writing. A separate Facebook post from Sergiy Grygorovych also appeared at the same time announcing the website launch.
Grygorovych is the founder of GSC Game World, the original developers of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. GSC Game World announced in the late 2000s that they were porting the series over to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but decided to move resources instead over to the creation of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 to make its 2012 release date. In December 2011, GSC Game World closed its doors for mysterious reasons, with the former S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 devs forming Vostok games. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was officially cancelled a few weeks later for, according to a Facebook post, problems getting the investors and rights holders to agree.
Now it seems like GSC Game World has returned to the series and is resuming or restarting development of the game. We have contacted the parties involved to try and trace back where exactly this game is coming from, but have yet to hear back. In the meantime, you should trace the lineage of the first title in the series, Shadow of Chernobyl, through our deep dive into the title here.
Our Take
I am kind of baffled by this announcement, but I'm definitely eager to find out more. The far off release date makes it sound like whatever this is just started development, so I doubt we'll find out for a while.
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