Stalker 2 releases in-engine trailer featuring a chair-throwing emission

Stalker 2 developer GSC Game World revealed some new details for its long-awaited, open-world survival horror game alongside a new trailer published on the official Xbox YouTube channel.

The trailer follows a new protagonist named Skif as he explores a school on the outskirts of Pripyat - the Ukrainian town that was abandoned nearly overnight when the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant melted down. He's in a bit of a hurry because the exclusion zone, which is haunted by things much stranger than lingering radiation, is about to have an emission.

While GSC Game World gave us a cinematic teaser of Stalker 2's world back when it was re-revealed in July, this trailer and an accompanying Xbox Wire blog post give us our first look at the events that can turn your surroundings deadly at a moment's notice. If it's anything like the previous Stalker games, you'll also have mutated wildlife and heavily armed raiders to deal with - but at least you can see them coming.

It might be a stretch to call this a gameplay teaser, but GSC Game World says it is all rendered in-engine, which is impressive enough by itself. The developers say work on Stalker 2 is "progressing smoothly", and they plan to support ray-tracing on both Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, with 4K visuals for the beefier console. It will be available as an Xbox Game Pass title as soon as it launches, though the studio isn't ready to share a release date just yet.

See what else is headed to Microsoft's new console with our guide to upcoming Xbox Series X games. 

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 now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.

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