In what I have convinced myself is the studio's Christmas gift to me specifically, GSC Game World has announced that it's updating Stalker. No not Stalker 2, the old Stalkers: Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat.
In an encyclical on X, "The Everything App," GSC announced that the classic Stalker games would all be getting a whizzy "next-gen patch" on consoles in 2025. Clean-living PC gamers like you and I don't care about that, of course, but we do care about what it said next: "We know you've asked us to update the PC versions of the original Stalker games, and we also plan to do that."
The еnd of the year message from the GSC Game World team about plans for 2025. pic.twitter.com/vxzNWXIoccDecember 20, 2024
Which is, well, a little sparse on detail, sure, but I don't think I'm speculating wildly if I say it probably means the mod-cons of the console ports getting brought over to PC. I have to imagine it means stuff like higher-resolution cutscenes, nicer visuals and performance, and controller support. That last one might sound a little blasphemous to the Stalker old-heads out there but, frankly, I like playing games on my TV and Steam Deck too much to care.
I'd also bet it means the old Stalkers get achievements on Steam, which either doesn't matter to you at all if you're of sound mind, or matters a great deal if you're like me (broken).
But that is, I stress, just supposition on my part, and GSC is maddeningly vague in its announcement about just what the updates will contain. What it's more specific about is the reveal of its Stalker 2 content roadmap, which it says will be unveiled "at the beginning of 2025."
Presumably, that means we'll hear a bit more about the "two additional expansions and any future DLC" currently mentioned as part of Stalker 2's season pass, but I'm honestly more interested to hear updates about what GSC is fixing to include in future patches. The game's busted A-Life system only started twitching back to life in yesterday's huge 1.1 patch, and I think GSC probably has a lot more work planned for future updates to get the game into proper shape.
