STALKER 2 is GOTY for the creator of Dishonored

STALKER 2 was always going to be a conflicting release. I don’t think anybody expected it to be conflicting for the reasons that have since come to light, however, namely the lack of A-Life proper. Still, there’s merit in this game, and the creator of Dishonored thinks so as well.

According to Raphael Colantonio, the founder and former CEO of Arkane Studios, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is going to be his personal Game of the Year. Colantonio has been one of the lead developers on a great number of widely acclaimed games. Examples include The Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, Dishonored, and Prey, just to list a few, and he’s since moved on from Arkane to the greener pastures of a smaller dev team. The man’s got experience, is what I’m getting at, and he thinks STALKER 2 is the best game he’s played since Baldur’s Gate 3. That’s high, high praise indeed.

Raphael Colantonio says STALKER 2 is his personal Game of the Year

According to Raphael Colantonio, STALKER 2‘s atmosphere and brutality are the best things since sliced bread, and the game is his own personal GOTY. It’s not a perfect product, Colantonio admits, but he’s quite adamant in stating his opinions about STALKER 2 loudly and clearly. In fact, he’s been defending his takes about STALKER 2 over on Twitter with gusto, and it’s hard to deny that there’s merit in what he’s saying.

All things being equal, I do think Colantonio is taking it a tad too far in saying that STALKER 2 is just “a bit rough on the edges at launch.” Having been with the franchise from literally day one of Shadow of Chernobyl, and some time prior, my experience with STALKER 2 has been more sobering. Roughness around the edges I’m more than happy to excuse, and GSC Game World has already delivered two substantial hotfixes resolving many of them.

That said, I’m not happy with the fact that A-Life 2.0 requires extensive modding before it gets to a functional state. I’m also not keen at all on the way STALKER 2‘s narrative falls apart in the later stages of the story due to problems with quest triggers and scripting. Are these problems unforgivable? They’re certainly more annoying than Colantonio lets on.

The funniest thing is that I don’t disagree with Colantonio, necessarily. I genuinely think STALKER 2 might be my Game of the Year for 2024 as well, as weird as that might sound. I’ve already written at substantial length how conflicted I am about the game, but I feel that this drives home just how good the bits that aren’t broken are. The game is memorable, clearly made with extreme care, and has all the bones of a cult classic. An appropriately anomalous release, one might even say.

In other related news, it’s not like Colantonio is sitting around in the Zone, practicing his guitar skills. After leaving Arkane Studios, Colantonio founded the smaller, more agile WolfEye. WolfEye has since produced the awesome — but less recognizable — Weird West. More importantly, the studio is now incubating a far more prospective Dishonored-meets-Fallout Immersive Sim in the background. It’ll be curious to see if STALKER 2 ends up rubbing off on Colantonio enough to make a difference for WolfEye’s next project, that’s for sure. The Zone’s reach goes far and wide, after all.