Ievgen Grygorovych: As we perceive it, the Xbox Game Pass is an amazing opportunity to reach out to millions of interested players. In the case of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, we decided to bring an originally PC franchise to consoles. The presence of such a game in Game Pass guarantees attention from a very large number of players.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is an unusual game; it stands out from others and is, for many, an experiment in terms of their gaming tastes. But if players enjoy the universe, they tend to stick around for years. Allowing a huge new audience to try such a game for the price of a monthly subscription is a step that will surely invite many new stalkers to our cozy campfire.

We can imagine a lot of similar cases of getting additional spotlight for a lot of projects of different scales out there.

Ievgen Grygorovych: First, Xbox offers a significant advantage over PC: a consistent hardware configuration across all players. Leverage this by thoroughly understanding the hardware. Even simple tweaks can yield significant performance improvements.

Microsoft provided extensive support, not only for optimizing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 on Xbox Series X|S but also in other areas, such as best practices and knowledge sharing. The Advanced Technology Group worked closely with us, offering real-time assistance as if they were part of our team. Our most productive collaboration occurred when they visited our office to playtest, profile, and troubleshoot the game, helping us explore solutions. They also guided us in selecting the best approach for crash reporting, whether via a separate process, thread, or in-game integration.

Fortunately, we were able to focus on optimization during the final stages of development, with the Xbox Series S as our primary target for performance measurements. Our guiding principle was straightforward: if something didn’t work on Series S, we revisited the solution.

We also optimized CPU usage, leveraging Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) and fine-tuning thread affinities for game, rendering, and background tasks.

Ievgen Grygorovych: Honestly, it’s impossible to say. We don’t know the plans of the platform holders; we don’t know what the future holds. All we can work with is the hardware and the game we have right now.

Ievgen Grygorovych: Unreal Engine 5 features a suite of cutting-edge features that push the boundaries of what is possible in real-time graphics (Nanite, Lumen, Temporal Super Resolution, Virtual Shadow Maps, Niagara, and much more). Unreal Engine is known for its robust multi-platform support, which helped us to develop the game for both PC and Xbox platforms. The Editor is highly versatile, user-friendly, and customizable, which significantly enhances development efficiency.

All of this opens radically new possibilities for creating marvelous experiences for players out of the box. Many tools are ready to be used by artists and developers, and this helped us to concentrate on more project-specific, targeted features and optimizations.

Many Unreal Engine systems allow artists to work independently of developers (Anim systems, Materials, Profilers, Visual scripting, etc.), rapidly prototype their ideas freely, and present the results to colleagues, which strengthens our iterative design paradigm. The rich system of instruments impacted our workflow in a way that we could base our development plans on knowing exactly which particular things are lacking in the vanilla version and focus on that instead of reinventing the wheel each time.

UE has a rich battery of pre-implemented systems and instruments; learn them and try to
leverage the maximum from them, focus only on project-specific feature development, and let UE handle the rest. It really saves loads of time to go through the documentation and realize that many problems that you’ve encountered already have production-ready solutions.

Ievgen Grygorovych: Probably, after the release, the answer to this question will already be known. We hope that players enjoyed the continuation of the story arcs, including familiar characters. We put a lot of thought and work into the lore, even beyond the stories of the previous three games. 

Ievgen Grygorovych: Indeed, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is a difficult game, and it’s intended to be like this. The protagonist is small and expendable, and the Zone is big, dangerous, and almighty. That’s the essence of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and it won’t be S.T.A.L.K.E.R. otherwise.

I think the feeling of “justified difficulty” comes from the unique gameplay loop: the complexity of different needs is still here. Like previously, the player needs to think about what difficulties he will need to overcome to obtain the needed resources. The body conditions (bleeding, radiation, hunger, sleep, etc.) are all presented. Understanding your current goal (artifact hunting, attacking enemy territory, taking a quest, going underground, etc.) means understanding the needs (food, bandages, energy drink, etc.), what you will get (guns, armor, artifacts, etc.) and how you will make use out of it (selling, upgrading weapons, getting more resources, etc.). The player needs to monitor the parameters. Any debuff can be overcome with an item for a short time period – for example, the negative effects from the sleepy condition can be temporarily removed by an energy drink. But if you do not satisfy the needs of the character, the sum of all needs significantly complicates the gameplay. The negative parameters must be cared about. The game pacing is controlled by the player and his priorities. 

Ievgen Grygorovych: First and foremost, authenticity was important to us, and it was essential to make a true S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game. That’s why we focused a lot on the game world, atmosphere, and gameplay based on expeditions. We’ve succeeded in this, and it’s already clear that players enjoy it.

The game is also coming out in 2024, so, for example, there is a compass (which can be turned off), a reimagined yet still hardcore shooting system, gamepad controls, and a new interface. We paid close attention to ensuring that these improvements didn’t spoil our core formula.

Some things had to be left out. The game doesn’t have full health regeneration, character upgrades, or leveling. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Overall, authenticity for the series was our top priority, and the rest of the adjustments were made with great care.

Ievgen Grygorovych: We were fully focused on developing (and now supporting) the PC and Xbox Series X/S versions. 

Ievgen Grygorovych: We do not comment on leaks, rumors, or speculations. Again, the PC and Xbox Series X/S versions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 are the only ones we have developed and are supporting.