Stalker 2 release date revealed and it's coming next year

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Here's when it's headed to Xbox and PC

The Stalker 2 release date is official after years of waiting, and it's coming your way next year.

The trailer is set the perspective of our new hero Skif, cutting between some sedate scenes around the campfire with some sorta-friendly faces, and Skif cutting through the many dangers of the containment zone: there are the other humans combing the abandoned region for treasures of course, but then there's also the anomalies that tear through the very fabric of reality - sometimes literally - and mutants lurking deep within mysterious research facilities.

The trailer goes in-depth with several aspects of the game and introduces some characters who seem like they'll be key to Skif's journey through Pripyat: that dark-haired guy who seems a little too eager to personify the containment zone is especially worrisome, but at least you'll have some pals to hang out with when you aren't busy fighting for your life. Showing stalkers at rest in relative safety between their expeditions was one of the best, subtle details from the original Stalker games, and it's good to see that developer GSC Game World is still invested in showing us these different sides of the zone.

The Stalker series of games (it's very loosely based on the Soviet art house sci-fi movie of the same name) began with Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl in 2007, and was followed by a prequel in 2008 and a sequel in 2010. Fans of Metro Exodus will almost certainly want to mark this release date in their calendars.  

With so much 4K content hitting the best streaming services nowadays, we've got our fingers crossed that some cracking OLED, QLED, and other top 4K TVs will be making appearances in our early coverage of the best Prime Day TV deals.

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.