Look at all the angry CoD fans in the replies.

@Zippy6 SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE?! Jk.

TBF I don't mind the early access for CoD Campaigns. Because AFAIK it was the standard price still, you didn't have to pay more for early access. xD

Oh okay, didn't know it was for standard pre-orders, that's a bit of an odd removal then.

Pop off CoD fans!

I think the idea was you could play through the campaign in the week before launch and then everyone starts multiplayer at the same time. So people who play the campaign don't get left behind in MP by people who skip it. Not sure why they've chosen to stop doing that this time.

Few other things that I wanted to point out.

Demo/Size

I point out that I didn’t run into any issues with the demo I played before we spoke, which was also available on the show floor, to which Lukyanenka explains that the opening portion of the game has been completely polished. As he once again emphasises - the game is big.

“To beat the game, you would need 25 to 40 hours,” he says. “I don't know the precise number, because the way we play the game is different than the players [...] But the world is huge. It’s 64 square kilometres.”

Modding

But beyond that, this game also has to make up for such a long absence. One way GSC Game World wants to do this is by thanking the fans who kept the series alive for so long. “We will put the emphasis on our players in the modding community,” says Lukyanenka. “Thanks to them, Stalker is still a known franchise after 15 years with no major release.”

Xbox Support

In particular, Bocharov is confident that Xbox president Sarah Bond is personally a fan of the game, and also praises head of games Phil Spencer for being “very supportive and caring” towards the team.

“I never expected a corporation to be this close to the developers who are in a bad situation,” says Bocharov. “It was spectacular. That's the professional connection we value a lot, because it would have been much different without them.”

Post-Release

“After the release, we are going to provide support for modders. We are going to release the mod kit, so they’ll be able to continue to keep the Stalker franchise alive,” Lukyanenka tells me. “Then we are going to have several small, free DLC updates. [We'll have] hotfix[es] and patches. We are going to release two big story expansions.

“We still have a few interesting ideas on how we could move the Stalker universe further, but that's a topic for another time”.

“We’ve learned this from the past. If we didn’t have a huge fanbase, if we didn’t have modders who kept the original trilogy alive, at this point, Stalker 2 would be a different game. So we should respect all the players, all the fanbase, all of the modders. Therefore we want to support it after the release of Stalker 2 as well.”

Towerborne Dev Diary #3

@G2ThaUNiT 

Hell yeah! Now get started on AoE 2 and 4