Today, GSC Game World revealed new details on two major destinations in Stalker 2: Cost of Hope, focusing on the Chornobyl Power Plant and the Iron Forest.
The Stalker 2: Cost of Hope trailer highlights the fully explorable Chornobyl Power Plant, a central location in the Stalker universe, where players can explore industrial interiors, machine halls, administrative buildings, and abandoned reactor facilities. GSC Game World states that reaching the power plant will be one of the expansion’s main challenges, with new story missions and dangerous encounters for players who reach the Zone’s center.
The Iron Forest region features rusted factories, overgrown rail yards, and industrial ruins filled with anomalies, and includes narrow pathways, large machinery, dense vegetation, and hazardous environments, creating a more claustrophobic exploration experience compared to the base game.
The trailer focuses on environmental storytelling instead of combat or new enemies. Both locations feature abandoned infrastructure, mysterious anomalies, and atmospheric details that reinforce the series’ survival-horror gameplay.
These will all be previously unexplored areas of the Zone that have never appeared in earlier Stalker titles. Cost of Hope will launch alongside Update 2.0, a free update for all owners of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. The update upgrades the game to a newer version of Unreal Engine 5 while also introducing additional content, gameplay improvements, and technical enhancements that GSC Game World plans to reveal in more detail ahead of release.
Stalker 2: Cost of Hope launches on August 20, 2026, for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
