This New S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Trailer Needs A Content Warning For Animal Cruelty

GSC Game World has released a new trailer for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, and it’s quite a charmer.

As we indicated in our title, this trailer needs a content warning for animal cruelty. But we won’t pretend that’s only being introduced to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games now. Let’s remember the core premise behind the franchise; a second nuclear catastrophe occurred in Chornobyl in 2006, twenty years after the first one.

As a consequence of this nuclear mishap, a new place was created called the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, or the Zone for short. The Zone sees a lot of physical anomalies occurring on it every day, and those show up on this trailer too.

And yes, unfortunately, that does mean that any animals you run into in the Zone are going to be not nice, and in fact are likely to attack you. By its very premise, you will find yourself defending yourself against dogs and other creatures, and its either that or the game ends. Forget about petting the dogs here – there are no good boys and girls in the Zone.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the trailer itself. As GSC Game World had already revealed, there will be a new protagonist for this one. He seems to have been brought to the Zone against his will, and is struggling to find a way out.

The new protagonist runs into some hostile dogs, as I had already mentioned, but also some other hostile beings, the origins and abilities of which will likely be as much a mystery to everyone who goes into this for the first time. One creature looks humanoid, but has tentacles coming out of its mouth, and seems to have the ability to turn invisible, with some limits.

Another is a strange quadruped with an unsettling face that looks part dog, part pig, and part human. We’ve tried to take a screenshot of that one, and decided not to share it here. It is that genuinely unsettling.

And in fact, there’s a lot of strange and unsavory things to find in the Zone, new ways to go un-alive that bend the laws of physics. If you can imagine GSC Game World pulling inspiration from real world events, you can imagine how nightmarish this game could be.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl will be releasing on Q1 2024, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows, via Steam and Epic Games Store. It will also be Day One on Game Pass. If you’re up for it, you can watch the trailer below.