Stalker 2: Heart Of Chernobyl has released several new screenshots ahead of its April launch, showcasing one of the first games to fully utilise Unreal Engine 5.
Today (December 9), Reddit user Kenny_Prophet – who appears to be an employee at GSC Game World – has shared five new screenshots from Stalker 2.
The gritty survival game – set in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster – seems to have benefitted greatly from using Unreal Engine 5, as the screenshots reveal. One screenshot shows The Zone flourishing with much more nature and colour than visible in previous Stalker entries, while another two include shots of far more worn-down areas.
Then again, two of the screenshots give a preview of things that will look much more familiar to Stalker fans. One image displays an iconic anomaly – an unexplained and dangerous phenomenon that interferes with gravity itself – while another shows an infamously scary tunnel-dwelling enemy that first appeared in Stalker: Shadow Of Chernobyl.
While the high-quality screenshots – which you can view the rest of here – are likely made possible due to Unreal Engine 5, another new technology called Nanite will make actually running the game a bit more feasible. This technology only renders the visible parts of a game, allowing developers to implement high-resolution images without causing additional performance issues.
Unfortunately, the high-end graphics of Stalker 2 appear to come at a price. Earlier in the month it was revealed that Stalker 2 will take up 180GB of storage on Xbox platforms, while GSC Game World recommends 150GB of SSD space for PC players.
Stalker 2 is set to launch on April 28, 2022, and will be available on the Xbox Game Pass from day one.
In other news, Valve has pulled Myth Of Empires from Steam, after developers for Ark: Survival Evolved accused the game of stealing its source code. Angela Game – the studio behind Myth Of Empires – has denied the claims.