S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl was supposed to be released last year after a delay from 2021, but then the Russian war against Ukraine started, which of course led to several problems for the Ukrainian studio GSC Game World.
Not only did they have developers forced to leave to defend the country, there were also massive cyber attacks against the studio which suffered setbacks and ultimately relocated to Prague, Czech Republic. Now it seems like the game will finally be launched during the first quarter next year, and in a recent Chinese interview with executive producer Mariia Grygorovych and marketing producer Vlad Novikov, they had some new details to share.
Regarding the number of endings available, they said that there are four different endings for the main storyline. Apparently, there will also be side quests available that will yield different results depending on the choices you make. This could even have impact on the main storyline, they said, without adding more details.
They continue by explaining that it won't be possible to experience all the stories in one go, and that it's a lengthy adventure we have ahead of us with about 40 hours for the main campaign. It also turns out there will be two different settings for graphical fidelity in the Xbox Series X version; Performance and Quality with the former running in 60 frames per second.
The developers finally say the game is pretty polished already, but that more time is always needed in game development. Therefore they don't want to commit to a release date quite yet, adding that it's challenging for them to determine how far they are from completing the game.