Oh, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Mere weeks from release after years of delays, plopped in front of me at a cramped, lightly vibrating Gamescom booth, and you still won’t reveal your secrets. I did get to play a brief whizz through GSC Game World’s eerie FPS – enough to feel encouraged, even – but be it time constraints or the darkness of my nighttime raid into the radioactive Zone, I would have liked to have quite literally seen more.
Then again, keeping the mystery intact may have been the point all along. “As a game director, I want to hide everything from the player”, GSC’s CEO Ievgen Grygorovych had told me minutes earlier. “I’m fighting with the marketing team because they want to show as much as possible!”