Following Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl's recent delay to November , developer GSC Game World has rewarded patient fans with a new 35-minute deep dive into the post-apocalyptic horror shooter sequel - showcasing a mission across its bleak, beautiful open-world. Stalker 2's "huge" world - officially known as the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone - consists of 20 regions, each with its own residents, anomalies, and nature. It's also said to feature few barriers, meaning players are free explore locations as they choose - with the goal being to "give the feeling of freedom, to give the feeling of loneliness, to give the feeling of anxiety".
While GSC's deep dive offers a good look at Stalker 2's strikingly varied enviromental work, the bulk of it is focused on the swamp - a formerly inhabited region, free of Stalkers but home to many other dangers, that plays host to a quest in which players must disable deadly, repurposed psi-beacons in order to reach the Clear Sky base. As the quest played out, GSC emphasises the freeform nature of its mission design, explaining that it's impossible to see all content and every character in a single playthrough - players will get a slightly different story, slightly different quests, and meet different people depending on the choices they make. Some of those choices might be tied to missions - at one point we see the player opting to approach a key location from the comparative safety of a rat-infested wine cellar rather than the potentially deadlier o.