While it may seem rather quaint and simplistic compared to modern hardcore tactical shooters likeEscape From Tarkov, it’s a matter of fact thatSTALKERwent above and beyond with its guns back in the day. That trend is primed to continue, too, ifSTALKER 2‘s new combat gameplay trailer is any indication.
In fact, GSC Game World has now takenSTALKER‘s handling of weapons to its logical extreme: rails, M-LOKs, and all the other customization goodness now rule supreme. As Smoking Barrels aptly shows, you can safely expectSTALKER 2to cater to the vast majority of your gunplay needs. Need to switch a weapon’s caliber to accommodate less exotic ammunition? For sure. Want to slap a snazzy underbarrel shotgun to a high-grade sniper rifle? Why not! The Zone’s your oyster, from the look of things.
STALKER 2: Smoking Barrel gameplay trailer shows us how guns and attachments work
In the broadest possible sense, we now have a pretty solid idea of howSTALKER 2‘s weapons will function:
Most of these things, granted, we did see coming. It’s still good to see them present and accounted for. In fact,STALKER 2is seemingly taking things further in the direction of the more hardcoreGAMMAandAnomalymods when it comes to gunplay. Classic, baselineSTALKERtitles only ever featured a single type of optics per weapon type (SUSATs for NATO arms, PVS-14 for Warsaw pact guns), a universal silencer, and two thematically appropriate underbarrel launchers.Heart of Chornobylhas already shown off a bevy of exotic attachments, on the other hand, and seems to have modernized the upgrading systems across the board.
In a Reddit thread discussing the featured Smoking Barrel trailer, GSC developers have also shared some information on howSTALKER 2‘s HUD will work. According to the community manager, the HUD can be fully customized depending on your preference, going so far as to only have an ammo counter and a health/stamina display shown at any given time.Since the oldSTALKERgames of yore had an era-appropriate crusty UI going on, this, too, is excellent news.
I would like to complain a tadabout the AI shown off in this trailer, however. In the trailer, none of the enemies appear to pose a serious threat and seemingly walk straight into Skif’s firing lines willy-nilly. Since we know thatA-Life plays a big part inSTALKER 2, I believe this is just trailer-tier AI being what it isfor demonstration purposes. The community manager, of course, claims this is the case, so that’s nice.
WithSTALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl”s November 20 release date drawing ever closer, it genuinely seems like we’ve finally entered GSC’s final marketing push. It’s worth remembering thatSTALKER 2suffered a whole slew of various pushbacks over the years, so it shouldn’t be strange if the community is still uncertain whether it’s finally coming out. I myself am still a tad cynical, but I can’t help but feel like the hype is finally on point. Let’s see how this pans out.
