Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl looks like visually impressive, and fittingly, it’ll need a lot of hard drive space to fit in all 64km² of the Exclusion Zone. The official PC specs for the game are now live, and while it’s not too demanding in terms of RAM, GPU, and CPU requirements, you will need to ensure that you have 150GB of SSD storage capacity available.
Like several other modern games, Stalker 2 lists a solid-state drive as a mandatory requirement, likely due to them having vastly superior read/write speeds when compared to traditional hard disk drives. Developer GSC Game World has previously spoken about how it has attempted to create a photorealistic version of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, and early previews of Stalker 2 have shown off a lush environment for players to explore.
Beyond that, the rest of the PC requirements listed on Steam are very forgiving toward older machines, possibly as a result of Stalker 2 being in development for a long period of time. GSC Game World recommends an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT GPU with at least 8GB of VRAM and 16GB of RAM, although it’s worth noting that the system requirements didn’t list what kind of graphical output players can expect. If you’re aiming for a 4K resolution and high frame rates, you’ll likely want newer hardware to get the best out of Stalker 2.
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl PC Requirements
Minimum
OS: Windows 10, Windows 11Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 1600X / Intel Core i5-7600KMemory: 8GB RAMGraphics: AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GBStorage: 150GB available spaceAdditional Notes: SSD
Recommended
OS: Windows 10, Windows 11Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X / Intel Core i7-9700KMemory: 16GB RAMGraphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8GB / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GBStorage: 150GB available spaceAdditional Notes: SSD
“Navigating anomalies, navigating the open world and its mysteries, and navigating the politics of different competing factions all have me excited for Stalker 2. Its atmosphere of deadly, mysterious strangeness makes wandering its open world both alluring and frightening,” Phil Hornshaw wrote in GameSpot’s Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl preview. “Stalker 2 perfectly balances the desire to discover what’s hidden out there, like a field full of whispering poppies, with the unnerving knowledge that the Zone is also full of things that can and likely will kill you.”
After several delays following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Stalker 2 will launch for PC and Xbox Series X|S on November 20, and it’ll be available through Xbox Game Pass as well. If you’re interested in seeing just how the game came together while Ukraine was thrown into chaos, you can check out a 90-minute documentary from GSC Game World chronicling the last two years of development during uncertain times.
