Hi, as per title. Will there be a preload of the game before 20 November? I have not been able to find any info on this.

Some "Just trust me bro" folks on reddit say GSC remarked as a "maybe" was mentioned. But given devs in general, it either happens or not. Not about holding people in suspense. Plus, the big brains in the company would rather crap on the fans by telling them, the fan content now belongs to the company. Rather than do anything useful I guess.

Such as....look at what fans made and make a better version of the best stuff available. Instead of making the decision to make the literal opposite.

If anyone needs an example, look no further than the pile of crap version on console systems. Now think.....does making this 4th game on a console REALLY seem a good idea....again?

A History of Violence (2005) - How Do You F*ck That Up?(ignore the violent part...focus on the befuddlement)

I can't recall any game having been preloadable on gog, I'm not sure how they would even do it being DRM free since they would have to add some sort of DRM to restrict the launch times.

Well technically games come in chunks here, if on Windows, so why not withhold the .exe chunk and maybe some other(s) if last day work is being done on those parts.

Wasn't Empire of Ants preloaded?

Is a preload something you would want to do, when you would have to download a release patch 2/3 of the size of the game anyway?

None of this makes any sense - please cite some sources - or at least elaborate beyond what you have said. CP2077 as i recall. Didnt have it then, but I think they simply held back the exe download (as suggested in the comment below yours).

Not sure what he mean by "preload". Guess some people got a very slow connection, so they admire a 24h or whatelse "predownload-phase". Yes it is true, Stalker 2 seems to "use" up to 160 GB for the launch version, which would be my biggest game file i ever had... and i own a lot of games... so this is indeed extra large. There will be addons coming out at some point, so we can expect it to reach up to 200 GB at its final stage, which is on par with the Top 10 of the biggest games i know of.

Albeit, indeed... its not so much use having a preload because i guess there could be a "day one final patch" right at the launch and it could still be huge. If a system is not having enough of space left then it is not even possible adding a patch, as it may need hundreds of GB "free space".

Another thing which will have to be considered, Stalker 2 is demanding on PC specs, clearly.

https://www.techpowerup.com/328748/gsc-game-world-releases-final-s-t-a-l-k-e-r-2-heart-of-chornobyl-system-requirements

The "minimum and low spec" is about half the performance a PS5 got, which is still suitable for a lot of gaming PCs and laptops, but with this specs Stalker 2 can only be played at 30 FPS with low details on 1080P.... surely not enjoyable on a shooter... it is more of a emergency than a "fun gameplay".

The medium spec is about the performance of a PS5, the details are low but at least it can be played at 60 FPS on 1080P. The gameplay is surely suitable at this spec but still not nearly maxed out.

The high spec is about the performance a PS5 Pro got. With this spec it can be played with 60 FPS and even some improved graphic settings, which are surely tasty.

The epic specs... well that one can allow the maximum in experience but the performance required is about equal to my current PC, this is clearly the minority who got the required hardware.

Regarding what we know so far, Stalker 2 is a good or even great game, it looks promising... but it surely is demanding on the hardware.

O_o

Based on a post detailing in-depth development of the game (that I cannot for the life of me find currently!!!)... it will be abysmal...

The long and short of said post was - the CEO of GSC was a drunk who abused the workers. Development was handed over to some casino owner... among just some things surrounding the game.

Here's a video where during a showcase you get insta-killed with a ''You Died'' screen. 1 year old.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEV6_3bESoc

It sure looks good, but gameplay-wise, story-wise... it will be a another Aquanox 3.

It is very difficult to be "neutral" on this site or anything "close to it" and i do not want to spread stuff i am not 99% sure about, or at least it would feel right to me.

The facts are: The GSC studio have had up to 200 employees in their "prime time"... at the time the legendary Cossacks and "Stalker classic" games (of which Shadow of Chernobyl was the first of this series) has been created. Nowadays... firstly, the studio is not even at their "home location" and secondly the studio is probably down to around 20 "core developers"... but there could be many external devs i do not know. There are surely a lot of issues on many spots but it is clear... no one from the "official media" want to show those issues to the public, so most people can only guess.

Whatever, it surely is difficult for them to reach the "previous level" any time soon and if they manage to hand out a work at the level of the classics, but with modern technology... it would be a true herculean feat. Perhaps... on launch, despite those many years it has been in dev already with many delays, it could in some way almost become as "bland" as Aquanox 3... which was indeed with "modern graphics" but neither with heart nor soul: Possible but so far nothing is known to me.

What is known, Stalker 2 which is actually the 4. in the series and partially named after the first in the series... is not a new development. The issue simply is, a story almost no one knows and i think most people do not want to know it because they got in mind "it all started at... we know the date, which is not really the case". I can not even become specific because the whole matter is way to sensitive and it will start to become political... and in the end all we truly want is simply a good or even great game. Looking at the problematic background... just as is said, it would be a herculean feat.

I still can say, at around 2012, Grigorovich, the first CEO of GSC, which was already working on Stalker 2 at this time... was dissolving his studio due to personal reasons. However... the staff that has been "left in the cold" tried to continue with their work with Yavorsky in the new lead. Although they got financial troubles... so they was looking for investors everywhere... even Moskau was involved. There was even more troubles because the "Intellectual property rights" of the "Stalker" series was still held by "Grigorovich" and he obviously did not want to cooperate with the "old team trying to continue without him". I think they had a big clash and the old CEO simply had in mind to get ride of the old staff. Ultimately there was simply a lot of troubles which was even leading to a... for many years... shattered studio which has been closed at this point for several years. In 2014 (which was a very troublesome year... but it seems new investors has been found due to western involvement) they decided to reopen the studio with around 40 devs... and the next work was a Cossacks remake known as "Cossacks 3". After is has been done in 2018 they somehow was able to solve those "property rights issue" and they decided to continue with the Stalker 2 development (which have had around 2 year of dev-time up to this point) and yeah... 4 years later a new critical situation has happened, so they had to "move" their studio to a new location. What was happening there exactly... at this new location... i can not say. What is certain, in total 6 years Stalker has been in dev at this point and the team has been "reduced" to the probably smallest team in existence. Now, after another 2 years, so a total of 8 years dev time, the release seems finally happening. No clue what did happen at the "most troublesome years" ever... but it surely can be said there is probably no studio with so many obstacles being laid down on their path and i think... this matter should be honored and i hope they are able to "raise themself" once again from the ashes that have been caused by... a lot of obstacles.

So, 1 year ago stuff and a bad CEO - tells us what exactly?

To my knowledge people who had preview versions where very satisfied with the games first hours they where able to play and called it a stable and well working game.
The question is, if it will work this way for the whole time.

I won't buy it on launch day, but more because my gaming pc will be replaced sometime next year and my current one is just a bit above min requirements.

Took me way, way too long to find that post, but find it I did!
Link.

This is new to me. o_O
The only preview video that I was aware of was the one that I posted earlier.

Since I had to trudge through several news threads to find that post, I also read / glanced at some other posts - and what struck me as odd was that many people are actually hopeful for this game. :/

Interesting take.
My main issue can be summarised in 1 sentence - there is not one single game, which had a troublesome development cycle, that turned out great or even good. (Atleast that I'm aware of.)

After all the troubles, all the obstacles that the people behind this game have gone through -- there's just no way it can be any good.

Look at the aforementioned Aquanox 3, look at Thief (2014), look at the development of Descent (2019) (For context - you could pre-order this game and it was advertised for many, many years, before the plug for it was eventually pulled - nothing ever came of it.), look at Duke Nukem: Forever, look at Vampires: Bloodlines the masquarade 2. Should I go on?

When mimimi closed their doors people bowed in respect.
Allow me to quote Warhammer: That it would. I hope that to be the case, but I'll remain skeptic.

You are posting utter drivel.

Some German gaming magazines where able to play the first 3h not long ago and liked what they saw.

What they described could be seen as a bit janky for more US related people though. Leaving you with little information and and stuff.

Btw, I got problems trusting information about GSC, that is related to Ukraine, from Russian sources for some reason...




Btw, define turning out good or great.
Buggy release? Quite common for troubled development, but some might get around that one.
Turning out great later on? Not uncommon.

Talking about the later we can even use Cyberpunk as an example. Release was troubled for sure. But what it is now...



And MIMIMI closed the doors, because they where unable to make enough money with their games to produce the type of games they made with the quality they wanted.
Not sure how you try to turn that into an example related to the other things you said.

Ok, didn't know that.

You mean the poster or the sources he listed? That was a surprising exception. Most games don't turn around like that.

Ok, yeah, that was a mistake on my part! For some reason I misremembered and thought that the reason they closed doors was because of crunch and bad working conditions... just to be sure I searched for the thread and first post I read was: The fact that mimimi produced stellar games, not terrible sequels with year long development cycles also, somehow eluded me...
For some reason i mixed them in as an example for a bad company that atleast had the decency to say ''enough is enough''.
Total screw-up on my part. :S