STALKER 2 Graphics Analysis: One of the Best-Looking Games of This Generation?

GSC Recreation World’s S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. has continued to supply among the most genuine post-apocalyptic survival experiences through the years, and the staff has been working actually arduous for S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2: Coronary heart of Chornobyl for fairly a while now. After a turbulent improvement cycle stuffed with delays and setbacks, the sport has lastly arrived on Xbox Sequence X/S and PC.

Constructed utilizing Unreal Engine 5, S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 flaunts among the greatest visuals in its class ever because it was unveiled fairly a while in the past. And now that we now have the ultimate product in our fingers, we will’t wait to unearth the sport and break down particular person elements to grasp how GSC achieves this picture high quality on consoles, and the way that implementation differs from what we get on PC together with efficiency profiling and extra.

Engine particulars

As talked about beforehand, S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2: Coronary heart of Chornobyl was one of many first video games to modify to an Unreal Engine 5-based rendering pipeline. In fact, the various delays did cease the sport from being one of many first Unreal Engine 5 video games to have come out in the marketplace – nevertheless it makes good use of the engine’s toolset to create visually compelling vistas that may simply go neck to neck with among the greatest video games in its class. 

S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 flaunts some nice use of Unreal Engine 5 options like Lumen for lighting, Nanite for geometry, and way more. Utilizing a third-party engine like Unreal Engine 5 is nice for lowering strains associated to optimization and the perils of cross-platform improvement, however GSC Recreation World has positively left just a few tough edges on the subject of efficiency optimization on PC which we might be discussing intimately later. 

Check PC specs and PC Graphical Settings

S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 recommends gamers have not less than a Ryzen 7 5800X or equal CPU, 32 GB of RAM, and RTX 3070 Ti. For our testing functions, we examined the sport on a system comprising an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, and 32 GB RAM which is kind of a bit over what the sport recommends for itself. We additionally put in the sport on a PCI e 4.0 NvME SSD to get a extra apples-to-apples comparability between the PC and Xbox Sequence X variations.

Beginning issues off with a fast have a look at the settings menu, S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 presents us with a variety of sliders that can be utilized to search out the right steadiness between efficiency and graphical constancy. That being mentioned, it’s a slightly barebones settings menu at its core – and it doesn’t actually present variables like VRAM utilization or useful screenshots to raised perceive the distinction between the various settings on provide. 

The sport does provide choices for upscaling with assist for each AMD’s FSR 3, Nvidia’s DLSS, and Intel’s XeSS alongside body era choices. For our assessments, we knocked the settings all the best way to Epic at a decision of native 4K. DLSS upscaling was turned to High quality, which places the inner rendering scale to 66 p.c.

PC Efficiency

Loading the sport on PC first entails compiling shaders which may take up round a minute or so. Loading instances equally can take round 20 to 30 seconds which is fairly lengthy for a current-gen solely sport.

As for the moment-to-moment gameplay, S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 does impress by way of graphics high quality which we might be discussing intimately in additional sections. All the things from the foliage to the character fashions and post-processing pipeline appears nice, however that top stage of constancy additionally brings efficiency observations to the desk. 

The advisable {hardware} specs enable the sport to focus on 1440p at 60 frames per seconds. However our check construct was capable of max out all the pieces at Extremely at 4K with DLSS in High quality mode. We noticed body charges round 40 to 60fps relying on how taxing the results had been. Having VSync and body era choices might make issues quite a bit smoother, however so far as our construct was involved, we’re okay with the efficiency and given there may be an choice to lock the body price to 30, decrease finish {hardware} may have the ability to run the sport at a secure body price.

Xbox Sequence X Efficiency

Over on the Xbox aspect of issues, we get to decide on between two distinct modes – Graphics and Efficiency. The graphics mode turns all of the bells and whistles with a decision of 4K, and it appears actually beautiful. All the things from the textures to the post-processing results appears fabulous, however the efficiency isn’t the most effective. The body price is capped at 30fps, however there is a component of inconsistency to the whole affair that may bitter the expertise for some. 

Then there’s the Efficiency mode the place the decision and results are knocked down, however the body price is bumped to 60fps. Having additional frames helps quite a bit with fluidity, particularly in fight sequences, and usually, that is one of the simplest ways to expertise what S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 has to supply on console. There are specific points with texture pop-in and stage of element swapping which is actually surprisingly contemplating the sport makes use of UE5’s inbuilt Nanite for world streaming – however the sport works properly sufficient in broad strokes. 

Nevertheless, a recurring situation within the case of S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 is the loading instances. Regardless of being constructed for current-gen consoles and PCs with Home windows DirectStorage API, GSC Recreation World hasn’t optimized the sport for SSDs, and S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2’s load instances can simply take wherever between 30 to 60 seconds which isn’t an excellent exhibiting at a time when most AAA releases in the marketplace usually load below 10 seconds.

A Graphical Behemoth

Beginning off with the character fashions, S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 incorporates a actually sturdy set of rendering methods which are used to create lifelike character fashions with life like animations. Fashions exhibit excessive polycounts and thoroughly drawn pores and skin meshes, and components like hair have effective strand textures with minimal artifacts alongside the sides. Clothes supplies are created out of bodily primarily based supplies, and animations additionally look life like with what appears to be full-body movement seize – more than likely created by means of the help of UE5’s MetaHuman creator. 

Then there’s the lighting. S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 makes use of a Lumen-based lighting answer for its direct and oblique lighting wants – and it really works to nice impact within the sport’s case. International lighting and oblique lighting work in tandem to create breathtaking vistas with correct bounce lighting powered by ray tracing. Reflections are additionally equally correct with excessive resolutions which clearly replace with the change in perspective, and you may see beneficiant cases with loads of puddles scattered throughout the bottom and glass panes lined throughout makeshift homes. 

GSC Recreation World additionally makes use of Nanite to provide great-looking terrain with a excessive quantity of geometric complexity in addition. Environments in S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 are usually composed of various props like stones, buildings, and foliage that are fabricated from high-quality supplies. Utilizing Nanite additionally handles points with LOD swapping and world streaming, and S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 usually works nice in that regard. 

Then there’s the post-processing pipeline which includes a collection of high-quality results that assist in creating a delightful picture to the eyes. We get to see intensive use of volumetric smoke fog and smoke volumes, alongside high-quality movement blur and depth of discipline results. Alpha particles are additionally generously utilized in tandem with flames and weapon results which rounds out this sturdy submit processing pipeline. 

Xbox Sequence X vs PC 

Trying on the Xbox Sequence X and PC model aspect by aspect, there isn’t a lot of a distinction by way of the rendering methods used within the presentation of each variations. Each characteristic the identical implementations on the subject of textures, Lumen for lighting, and Nanite for world era amongst others. The one distinction between the 2 variations comes within the high quality of these results. 

Unsurprisingly, Xbox’s high quality mode resembles the closest to our PC model – although the latter inches additional with marginally crisper picture high quality. Textures are a bit sharper; world streaming works a bit of higher as in comparison with the console launch whereas reflections and post-processing results stay fairly comparable throughout each variations. 

The decision cutback on the Efficiency mode does decrease down the picture high quality, and whereas the anti-aliasing does a effective sufficient job of upscaling – it clearly pales compared to the PC launch. Textures can look a bit muddy consequently, and alpha results equivalent to fireplace and different particle results additionally undergo from comparable cutbacks in high quality. 

Conclusion

GSC Recreation World’s S.T.A.L.Okay.E.R. 2 is a graphical powerhouse, and it makes good use of Unreal Engine 5’s suite of options to create a practical rendition of a post-apocalyptic world. Its implementation of Lumen and Nanite have a few tough edges with texture pop-in, nevertheless it all comes superbly collectively to create a convincing picture by means of and thru. Efficiency points exist throughout each variations, and there may be actually room for enchancment by way of loading time optimizations and lowering the shader compilation time on the PC launch.