Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl PS5 interview – ‘it’s not a propaganda thing, it’s a Ukrainian thing’

No video game has been made under more difficult circumstances than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, as we speak to Ukrainian developer GSC Game World about the new PS5 version.

Whenever reviewing a game, or even just previewing it, we always try to be aware that we’re critiquing the work of dozens, if not hundreds, of people, who have been working for years on the same project. Normally, we have little or no idea under what circumstances they may have been labouring but developer GSC Game World was founded in Kyiv, so you can imagine the last few years have not been easy…

Since the Russian invasion of their country, GSC Game World has relocated to the Czech Republic and, somehow, managed to release S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 last year on Xbox Series X/S and PC. It had some notable problems with bugs but was otherwise well received and now it’s coming to PlayStation 5 this November, including dedicated support for the PS5 Pro.

We didn’t get time to play the PlayStation 5 version at Gamescom last month, but we did talk to producer Yevhenii Kulyk and communications director Zakhar Bocharov about the new release and how video games have become an important cultural export for Ukraine.

GC: I feel anything I can say here would be shallow or trivial, given you’ve been making a video game in the middle of a war, but let’s give this a go. How do you feel about the game now, almost a year after launch? Has the bug situation been fully resolved?

YK: We’re constantly improving the game, we’re constantly dealing with those anomalies, as we call them. We’ve already released five major patches for the game and we’re constantly working on improvements for stability and performance optimisations. Other than that, we are already adding new content and features to the game.

GC: Did you anticipate the problems you had prior to launch? Was there any thought of delaying the release or did that become a purely financial decision?

YK: Let’s not forget about the technology. Because we released such a big game, with such complex mechanics, with such a big open world. So, we did see some bugs and when people experienced the game by themselves it might cause some problems, but in our case we are working closely with our community; we’re communicating a lot with them. And, of course, we are fixing issues that are reported.

ZB: If I may add to that. I think, with all honesty, after all the delays we had, and after the relocation, and after everything, I think it was just the point of no return, in terms of the team was working excessively hard. Probably it was about… we couldn’t just allow another delay. For a variety of reasons, including the people, caring about the team – people were on the verge of not being able to work as effectively. So it just needed to be released at that moment.

GC: Bugs at launch are not an uncommon problem, especially for PC-orientated games, but it seems to me the trick is to keep your fans informed and to communicate with them as much as possible. Do you think yours are reasonably happy at the moment?

ZB: I think we have our own way of communicating with the community. For us, and within this company… this may sound like marketing bulls*** [laughs] but it’s an extremely heart-warming and caring company to work at. A lot of people say that, but if you watch War Game – the documentary about our relocation and the history of this development – during the period of the massive layoffs in the industry, and hardship in the industry, our leadership team decided to relocate people and their family out of the country, because they cared. It cost a lot, it’s complicated, it’s complex logistics.

Also, the same kind of relationship, we try to get it going outside. And our way to approach the community is like talking to them as friends, potentially. Although obviously we’re not friends… but it’s a different kind of relationship. And they were noticeably unhappy about certain things upon release. I think we were given a lot of credit for the circumstances we were in. It’s super hard circumstances, to be honest.

GC: It’s hard to imagine it being any worse.

ZB: [laughs] Hopefully not. But it’s like… we know we owe them certain things and probably they genuinely believe that, because the way we communicate it throughout the period of delays and throughout the period of development they genuinely believe that we gonna do things right after the release. And we released five major patches in nine months, and numerous smaller ones.

So that clearly shows dedication to fixing things. It costs money, it costs time. But it’s something that continues development, continues support of the game. And we think we’re catching up nicely, but for some people they still seem unhappy with certain things missing and we try to give them the things they’re asking for as well.

GC: They’re gamers, they’d be unhappy if they weren’t unhappy.

ZB: [laughs]

GC: Is the PS5 version your most important milestone post-launch? Are you confident of that launching in a good state?

YK: We have several dedicated teams that are constantly developing something new, but our main focus for now is to deliver the best player experience on the new platform, PlayStation 5. So we’re coming to both consoles, both base PlayStation 5 and, of course, Pro version, which is receiving some updates for the graphics and for the performance.

And we’re excited about the weapons, because the DualSense controller provides us with a lot of amazing features, that we may utilise to provide more experience and new ways to explore the Zone in your hand, with your fingertips, via your ears… this a really amazing platform.

GC: I’d like to talk more generally about the Ukrainian development community, if you don’t mind. I remember I interviewed an Ukrainian indie developer not long after the invasion started and I was trying to do research and I didn’t realise just how many developers there were In Ukraine. But also… I was talking earlier to the developers of Onimusha… do you know that series?

ZB: Yes, yes.

GC: I said to them how lucky they were to be able to make games about their own culture, because nowhere else other than the US really gets the chance to do that. But your game has become a major export now, of Ukrainian identity and culture.

ZB: It’s a multi-layered question! [laughs] Me personally, I think this identity-sharing thing is happening in the gaming industry in general, not just with soft culture, like Expedition 33 is probably…

GC: Yes! It’s so unapologetically French.

ZB: Yes, unmistakably! And I think with Onimusha, it’s a game about Japan made by Japanese people. We also have an example like Ghost Of Tsushima, which was a game about Japan made by North American people. We have Mafia: The Old Country, which is a game about Italy made by Czech people. That’s where it gets a little bit tricky for me, personally. Because I think they’re all crafted with real, real love.

With S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 it’s about the setting, obviously. It was a Ukrainian game straight from the beginning. The thing is – this is actually not my thought, but I heard it from the team – you’re given your identity at birth and you basically live with your identity and your identity kinda tangles with yourself. It’s part of your identification, that goes to a point where you probably cannot divide it.

And suddenly a force appears that says, ‘Hey, you know what? We want to destroy your identity.’ And that’s the point where your identity becomes more important and you realise that it was there and now you need to protect it and probably you need to do something critical to show it to everyone before anything potentially extremely bad happens.

You want to acknowledge once more that your identity is a part of you and want probably to show to everyone out there, ‘Hello! Some attention is needed here.’ Certain game development landscapes, I think they had a more rapid development at certain times. In Ukraine, game development was a little bit of a Wild West thing for quite some times. It sometimes happens in Eastern Europe, to be honest. And so we’re catching up rapidly but there are always examples, like The Witcher made for Poland.

GC: Yes, Poland has become very prominent for video games.

ZB: Exactly, Poland is a really good example. Or Expedition 33 for France and everything else we mentioned already. So S.T.A.L.K.E.R., definitely now… probably no one wanted it to this degree, but it now carries the unannounced mission of actually showing Ukrainian culture through our games, because it was the most prominent game being developed during the hardest times.

It was supposed to be a game about Ukraine, set in Chornobyl, but after that, other people started saying, this game probably should be good and it probably should be representative of Ukraine. That put some additional pressure on us, but I think there definitely was a feeling of celebration in Ukraine when the release happened. I mean, the internet wasn’t working on that day, in our country.

GC: Because of the game?

ZB: Yes, it was down because everyone was downloading the game. We should have done a pre-download… we didn’t, that’s on us. But anyway, I think even governmental structures themselves, without us asking, they showed a certain degree of attention towards the game, and they also called S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 a soft power in spreading the Ukrainian culture.

I mean, there are some obvious things: it is based on Chornobyl, with photogrammetry – we went to Chornobyl to scan things.

GC: I met some of your guys, years and years ago, when they were working on the first game, and they were proudly showing me all these photos from Chornobyl. And all they had on was like a heavy jumper and a face mask.

ZB: [laughs] They did! They used photogrammetry technology to do that, just from the photos. But now it’s much more advanced. You can hear Ukrainian music from the indie bands, there’s like 400+ tracks in the game. You can hear it on the radio in-game. There is a checklist of facts that make this a an Ukrainian game but at the same time, there was never an ambition of carrying the flag so high, initially.

But it just happened so that we needed to stay with the pace of what was happening and with the understanding of the hardships of the situation and so it just happened that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 at the moment is the Ukrainian game, I guess. And it’s probably a little bit too cocky, and probably a little bit too early, to say that, but it seems like the mission of actually gaining attention, gaming-wise, towards the Ukrainian game development scene, it definitely was – the way I see it – accomplished to a certain degree. And probably I should stop here…

GC: Don’t worry, I think that’s all totally reasonable. The point I was going to make – because I didn’t review it, I haven’t played it that much – is how much you were able to incorporate a reaction to the war in the narrative of the game… if that’s even something you wanted to do.

ZB: We revised the story and it wasn’t straightforwardly anti-Russian.

GC: You would be completely within you rights to make it propaganda. I think back to the movies coming out of Hollywood during the Second World War or when the US was using Superman and Bugs Bunny to sell war bonds.

ZB: The idea of going in that direction, it was never the case. The idea was to ignite interest towards something, with showing it and genuinely getting you interested. If not for the war, this would’ve been quite different in terms of… it could have been like an Expedition 33. I dunno why I am sticking to that example.

GC: I think it’s a good example. What I like about that game is they’re wearing stripey tops and berets. They were proud to be French and for everyone to know that they were French.

ZB: Right! Right! But at the same time, it’s like… celebrating your identity feels slightly different when it’s celebrating your identity under the conditions of this identity is being potentially destroyed.

GC: I’m sure. How does that influence what you’re going to do next? Do you plan to do something that’s a little more forthright in its attitude? Because you’ve got every right to be angry.

ZB: For GSC, the company is actually 30 years old. And it’s had 18+ games released, in different IPs. The most popular ones are Cossacks and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and basically it was always about our leadership’s passion of doing great games and of doing these games in Ukraine. Because 99% of the people in the company are Ukrainian.

So, I think the goal is just to continue making… these games are profoundly Ukrainian. I mean, it’s literally called Cossacks. [laughs] So they were profoundly Ukrainian for quite some time before the war and I think the idea is to continue doing the same thing from the next level of, hopefully, attention and funding and just creative opportunities and technology.

So, strangely speaking, this mission doesn’t change much. It’s just the bar is much higher. Both because of the circumstances in real-life and the circumstances in the industry as a whole, because it’s become quite challenging as well, but… you probably didn’t want to go this deep!

GC: No, I absolutely did. It’s fascinating. Do you feel other companies are more sympathetic to your situation than they might otherwise have been? Have they tried to reach out and help more than they would have ordinarily?

ZB: We are self-publishing but Microsoft is our partner and after the Game Pass deal a lot of people on the internet, they said, ‘Hey Microsoft is your publisher!’ That’s not true, they are not. Somehow, and I swear I’m not telling you this because I work in marketing…

Both: [laughs]

ZB: But somehow, this company genuinely holds human relationships as the foundation of everything. Somehow it clicks with all kinds of partners and people. I think we signed our deal with Microsoft prior to the launch of Series S and X, and they were doing the Game Pass and were looking for smaller games from certain smaller regions. That’s probably how they got interested in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

At the same time, I can genuinely tell you that a lot of what Microsoft did with us around the development time, a lot of this went far beyond things we signed on paper, and it doesn’t mean the money side but actually just being there… I feel so limited because basically our relationship is under NDA [non-disclosure agreement] but I promise there were situations where they just acted like human beings firstly, instead of professionals.

GC: Well, that is very good to hear, especially when it’s Microsoft.

ZB: For Microsoft, I have a feeling that how they pursue their own goals, with supporting games from smaller teams and smaller regions… I don’t know about that for sure but what I know for sure is they were genuinely interested in the game they gave us marketing support for sure. We only had a Game Pass deal, and I know that certain things happened and they went way beyond that deal.

With Sony, we don’t have a deep relationship like that, because it wasn’t an exclusive agreement, like it was with Microsoft. We’re developing this version of the game at the moment; they were all showing a kind attitude and support and full alignment with what we want to do. Because it’s not a propaganda game. You know, they wanted to vanish us in Russia, prior to release, but they couldn’t find anything to justify the ban.

GC: It’s available in Russia?!

ZB: It’s not, because we closed the sales in Russia. But, of course, you can turn on a VPN and buy this game. It’s a digital world; you cannot avoid it. But the sales are closed in Russia and Belarus. But it’s not a propaganda thing, it’s a Ukrainian thing.

GC: I greatly admire you taking the moral high ground.

ZB: That’s what makes the approach much more gentle, because it’s just like showing something this country is known for, or is acquainted with, or just showing something for you to get interested. It’s like, ‘Do you like this thing? If you want to explore it more, make a decision on your own.’ It’s not like someone is bad and someone is good. It’s not about putting Ukrainian flags everywhere.

It’s more about: ‘Hey, here is this country called Ukraine, the culture is kind of interesting, and by the way there is a place called Chornobyl and here is a sci-fi shooter game, set in Chornobyl, with Ukrainian themes here and there.

If you want to know more about the country, or learn the language, we have a video of Brazilian fans signing Ukrainian song in Ukrainian, playing the in-game guitar. We obviously didn’t ask him to do this. [laughs] It is about igniting the natural interest. Because it also probably works better than the propaganda.

GC: That seems a very good note to end on. I hope nothing I said was insulating towards you.

ZB: I hope the same! [laughs]

GC: Not at all, that was fascinating. Thank you very much for your time.

ZB: Thank you!

Formats: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: GSC Game World
Developer: GSC Game World
Release Date: Out now (20th November for PS5)
Age rating: 18

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