[Your year-end holiday and/or cultural tradition of choice] came early for STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl players, as the game’s latest patch addresses over 1,800 issues still lingering in the open-world survival game since its Nov. 20 launch.
The biggest changes were reserved for the A-Life system, STALKER developer GSC Game World’s proprietary suite of artificial intelligence features. A-Life is largely what makes the series feel so immersive, as it allows for a vast population of NPCs that perform dynamic behaviors, like scouting, securing strategic footholds, and looting corpses, even when the player isn’t around. While STALKER 2 was intended as a showcase for A-Life 2.0, the studio confirmed suspicions that it wasn’t working as intended shortly after release and promised to make fixing it a priority.
Thursday’s patch features a variety of A-Life adjustments, like NPCs that no longer spawn behind the player’s back, more frequent encounters with roaming NPCs, an increase in the distance from which the player can see NPCs, improved NPC navigation, enhanced NPC motivation for expanding territory and attacking enemies, and diversified NPC factions and group sizes. GSC Game World said these are just the first iteration of A-Life corrections for STALKER 2, but players are already reporting improved experiences while exploring the game’s exclusion zone.
Fixes outside of A-Life include the removal of issues like NPCs detecting crouching players too quickly, NPCs remaining neutral when the player hits them with a melee attack, and NPCs continuing to fight during impending emissions. STALKER 2 players should also be happy to learn that Snorks will be much less aggressive thanks to a 30% increase to their ability cooldown and psy dogs won’t be able to summon phantoms as fast and in such great numbers as before. The full patch notes can be found here.
STALKER 2 has received a number of sizable, post-launch patches, and with each one, the game’s performance has improved dramatically. It may not have arrived in the best of shape, thanks in part to the obvious hurdles introduced by Russia’s war in Ukraine, but it’s nice to know GSC Game World is dedicated to making sure the game lives up to both its own goals and player expectations ahead of the planned expansions.