STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl Global Release Times Confirmed

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl developer GSC Game World has confirmed the global release times for its highly anticipated post-apocalyptic shooter.

In one tweetGSC said that the November 20 release date for STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl will start at 08:00 PT / 11:00 ET and is consistent across both PC and Xbox Series X and S. It will also launch directly in Xbox Game Pass as part of Wave 2 of the November 2024 lineup.

GSC has also confirmed STALKER 2’s final PC system requirements. The game has four graphics presets: low; medium; high; and epic, as well as a target resolution and FPS for each. The high graphics preset is what GSC calls ‘recommended’, providing 60 fps gameplay at 1440p. For the high graphics preset, you need an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti / RTX 4070 or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT GPU and 32 GB of RAM. Low and Medium require 16GB of RAM and less powerful GPUs. However, all graphics presets require 160GB of SSD storage, which is a sizeable footprint worth keeping in mind if you plan on gaming.

Meanwhile, GSC confirmed that STALKER 2 has upscaling capabilities for DLSS and FSR. Specifically, STALKER 2 launches with DLSS 3 and Reflex, meaning GeForce RTX 40 Series gamers can enable DLSS 3 with Frame Generation and Super Resolution from day one, accelerating performance.

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl Global Release Times:

November 20, 2024

• Seattle: 8am PST
• New York: 11:00 a.m. EST
• São Paulo: 13.00 BRT
• London: 16:00 GMT
• Prague: 17:00 CET
• Kyiv: 18:00 EET

21 November 2024

• Beijing: 12pm CST
• Tokyo: 01:00 JST
• Sydney: 03:00 AEDT
• Auckland: 05:00 NZDT

STALKER 2 has suffered a number of understandable delays, at the latest in July as the match was due to be played in September. Ukrainian studio GSC said at the time that the extra two months would give developers the chance to fix “unexpected anomalies,” also known as bugs.

GSC has also been vocal about the challenges the studio has faced in getting STALKER 2 off the ground after a mixed reaction to its debut public screening last year. At gamescom 2023, GSC addressed what some had called a “downgrade” triggered by STALKER 2‘s then-latest gameplay trailer. At the time, GSC told IGN that it was still aiming for a visual quality and level of polish suggested by STALKER 2’s eye-popping 2021 trailer despite the terrible conditions suffered by personnel during the war with Russia.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].