Looking back at STALKER’s modding scene: can it happen again with STALKER 2?

The STALKER series has a long, complicated, and extremely storied history of development. From the earliest days of Oblivion Lost all the way to the release of the open-source port of GSC Game World’s X-Ray engine, it’s quite fascinating. How likely, though, is it that STALKER 2 tops all that?

Here’s the thing about STALKER 2: the odds of it truly substituting and improving upon every single aspect of its predecessors are remarkably slim. I’ve said before that, following the latest developer deep dive, I’m way more keen on the state of the game than ever before. The developer, GSC Game World, is obviously doing its best to replicate the immaculate vibes of the old STALKER titles in every possible way, but I just don’t see it happening across the board, and modding is one of the reasons why I feel this way.

Now, obviously, this article may well prove to be incorrect within a couple of years: STALKER 2 may well be the title that will kickstart full-fledged Unreal Engine 5 modding in an unprecedented way. You’re going to want to keep a pinch of salt at hand as you read, is what I’m getting at. Yet, having been at the ground zero of each and every one of STALKER‘s PC releases, I can’t help but be skeptical of UE’s ability to host this franchise’s burgeoning modding community. Down below, I’ll explain why that’s the case.

STALKER 2 replaces X-Ray with Unreal Engine 5, but is it for the better?

Obviously, this header is a bit of a stinker when you think about it, because good grief was X-Ray an absolute mess in its Shadow of Chernobyl build. Yet, as years went by and OpenXRay came into its own, the community ended up fixing and improving upon every single aspect of the old, original STALKER titles while developing a new standalone experience along the way.

This materialized in the form of Call of Chernobyl – a free single-player mod that unifies all the content from Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat into one A-Life simulating super-sandbox. It is phenomenal, and if you haven’t yet given it a chance, I highly recommend doing so. Avoid the usual assortment of Anomaly and GAMMA modpacks that players often recommend, too: just give STALKER a chance for its ecology to start popping off. Now, had STALKER always relied on third-party engines, this wouldn’t have been possible, and I firmly believe that, in turn, we wouldn’t be so vigorously discussing the merits of a full-featured STALKER 2 to begin with.

Don’t get me wrong: Unreal Engine 5 is obviously going to be a huge improvement to the core stability and feature-set of STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Its tech-stack is so massive that GSC Game World didn’t have to spend time producing their own custom engine that would, inevitably, come apart at the seams if X-Ray is anything to go by. Yet, in moving over to a mainstream third-party solution, GSC Game World is without a doubt losing something that’s been absolutely crucial to STALKER: modding capacity.

The STALKER modding community is almost guaranteed to suffer

Certainly, there are moddable Unreal Engine 5 games. The engine lends itself to third-party customization way better than its immediate predecessor, but it’s still not even close to the flexibility of Unreal Engine 3. UE3, in turn, was a pale shadow of some other game engines when it comes to modding, and X-Ray is one of them.

It’s crucial to understand that STALKER games have had prolific modding communities basically from day one onwards. True, we didn’t get to enjoy the golden age of Call of Chernobyl until after the release of OpenXRay in 2020, but that’s beside the point: deep modding is a crucial implement for a STALKER game. It’s a pillar of the franchise’s community, and I sadly do not think this will continue with STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl.

Here’s the jig: it all has to do with Unreal Engine 5 and how moddable it is or is not. Now, obviously, all of this depends entirely on the developer, a game’s community, and whether or not they end up releasing the mod-kit/SDK for a game in the end. Some UE5 games are moddable, to an extent. Take Ready or Not, for example, which has map mods, gun mods, AI mods, and a variety of other thingamabobs players can install through the integrated modding UI.

Thing is, though, that virtually everyone recommends manually installing mods regardless, because the in-game UI is simply unreliable and doesn’t work properly half the time. I can vouch for this, too: the mods will not reliably load in Ready or Not if you don’t put in some elbow grease.

Technically, the possibility of modding is on the table for STALKER 2 and, certainly, GSC Game World has promised to support it, as per the official website. Given UE5’s track record, though, I just don’t think the game’s modding community will ever reach the ridiculous heights of its predecessors. Predecessors which, note, did not come with SDKs of any sort, only for modders themselves to reverse-engineer them into being.

STALKER 2 will continue the franchise’s legacy, but jankiness and free-form modding may be a thing of the past

I fear that this article’s tone may suggest that I’m somehow skeptical of STALKER 2 in general. Not at all, though: not after the latest batch of gameplay trailers and showpieces. Heck, I was absolutely thrilled when Scar of Clear Sky fame made a triumphant (and surprisingly jolly) appearance in his own dedicated trailer.

No, I genuinely believe that STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl will deliver a true STALKER gaming experience that meaningfully riffs on what came before it. I just don’t think the game’s new tech-stack is going to allow the modding community to spread its wings quite as much as it did with Call of Chernobyl.

Gun skins, armors, and perhaps even some new content? I’m sure it’ll drop in, sooner or later. Something resembling a full-scale retrofit such as GAMMA, though? No shot. At least not from what we’ve seen of Unreal Engine 5 so far. And, really, it’s hard to argue that this hypothetical scenario wouldn’t be a marked loss for the STALKER community.

For the time being, let’s wait and see what comes of all this. Even if STALKER 2 does manage to find its footing as a proper modding platform, it’ll take years before we know how far modders can take it. In the interim, we just gotta hope that GSC Game World can deliver the base gameplay experience we’re all hoping to see.