STALKER 2 has a final release date of November 20, after many delays. The development team at GSC Game World is currently polishing the game as much as possible ahead of that date, but they also have a plan for post-launch support that includes free updates and the announced story DLCs.
Moreover, three major features will be introduced to STALKER 2 after launch. The first is a technical one, hardware ray tracing, which Lead Producer Slava Lukyanenka told me is unlikely to be ready for November 20.
Slava Lukyanenka: We are going to have software ray tracing. As for hardware ray tracing, it's too early for us, but we are experimenting with that. We are trying to have it on the release date, but it is highly unlikely you will have it at launch. But NVIDIA DLSS will be there.
Lukyanenka is likely referring to Unreal Engine 5's Lumen here, which uses a software ray tracing technique that can optionally be augmented by hardware.
Two more features coming to STALKER 2 with post-launch updates are cross-platform mods and multiplayer. Lukyanenka and PR Specialist Zakhar Bocharov spoke at length about mods, hinting it won't be long until players get this functionality.
Slava Lukyanenka: STALKER is a known franchise not only because of the games but also because of the support from the mod community, which has thrived for the last 15 years, and we don't really want to abandon these people. So, after the release, I can't say when exactly, but we want to do it as close as possible to the release date, we will have the official mod support. We are cooking up some new, interesting initiatives for next year. We are striving to support both PC and console.
Zakhar Bocharov: Yeah, we're actually already supporting them with Mod.io in the original trilogy. I can't confirm whether it's going to be Mod.io or something else for STALKER 2. But the thing is, the modding scene is a little bit of a Wild West right now where you need to download files, replace files, et cetera, so we want to make it structured. There are certain ways on the market to make it structured: Steamworks, Mod.io, and others. We're exploring, we're playing for that, and we want to do it as close to release as possible, but we cannot just guarantee it's going to be on the release, but we are doing our best efforts to be there on time.
I got a lot less about multiplayer. GSC Game World always said it would add multiplayer post-launch, and that's still where they're at, it seems.
Zakhar Bocharov: It is supposed to be an update after the release. But for now, we're making the single player as polished as possible. Everything connected to multiplayer probably belongs to our post-launch phase, so we just don't have an update on that right now.
Further details will have to wait. From the sound of it, though, it's not coming soon after the launch of STALKER 2.
