GSC Game World has explained how they have set and tweaked the difficulty for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl.
In an interview with Windows Central, GSC explained how they limited influence from other newer games in informing how they would make this sequel. They said this:
“We had our core pillars of what Stalker should look like, and we went from there. Some parts may look similar to another game, but it’s not because we picked it out from there. We just build aspects that fit into Stalker. I think for us, we’re generally not oriented on building the game on the basis of something else.”
With that in mind, gamers who are new to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 need to understand that these games are immersive sims with difficulty set way high. You have limited ammo, and your weapons will break. That includes your knife and other hand weapons, as well as your guns.
You will not get an opportunity to pick up your weapons and gear back if you die, at all. The original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games date from the 2000s, when that kind of difficulty was uncommon, and that made this game an outlier. Even compared to the Bethesda titles it took inspiration from, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was hard to the point of being hostile to newcomers.
So, knowing where S.T.A.L.K.E.R came from, and how GSC looked at modern games to help bring their title up to date, what did GSC say about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl’s difficulty?
“At release, we’ll have three difficulties, but at “normal” difficulty, the game is already tuned to be really difficult. We have an even higher difficulty mode that doesn’t just make the gameplay more difficult, but also strips back HUD and UI elements.
I personally like to play Stalker 2 without the HUD. You start feeling yourself in the game. If you entered a firefight without the HUD and didn’t properly check your ammo, and realize you only have three bullets left in the magazine, it can be a very cool experience.
You can also optionally turn off the HUD on the lowest difficulty, though. The lowest difficulty is more like a story mode because we know a lot of players aren’t “hardcore” who are fans too, because of the atmosphere of the Chornobyl exclusion zone, and how it’s known around the world.”
So, GSC considers the lowest difficulty for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl as its story mode. We imagine that they maintain a certain baseline for difficulty that will still make it really hard for newcomers to get in. But, since the modern audience has an appetite for games with certain difficulties like the maso-core Soulsborne games or Escape from Tarkov, it will at least have a certain niche that may be enough to make it a success.
Unlike FromSoftware, GSC is known to make the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games dense with atmosphere and worldbuilding. And that world, which has no procedural generation, features a post-apocalyptic warzone with a distinct Ukrainian character.
With S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, GSC hopes to achieve multiple things all at once. One of them seems to be to popularize another different kind of extremely difficult video game, that will have you think about science, fiction, politics, and history, all in a way that’s seamless and way too real.
