What you need to know
- GSC Game World's new open-world survival shooter STALKER 2 has a system called A-Life 2.0 that controls how NPCs in The Zone spawn in, move around, and interact with each other and the player in The Zone.
- However, it's not fully working as intended right now, with players reporting NPCs spawning extremely close to players at times and groups of stalkers only moving around The Zone rarely.
- GSC has apologized for the issues, but promises that it's heard all the feedback and is working to improve A-Life with patches and updates.
- One of the studio's community managers, Mol1t, stated that "we are fixing it and we will fix it. This is a very high-priority thing for us and we work on it."
GSC Game World's highly anticipated open-world survival shooter STALKER 2 is finally here after a six-year wait, and for the most part, it's pretty darn good. Its grounded, hardcore FPS mechanics, persistent survival systems, and captivating atmosphere all come together in what is one of the most compelling open-world shooters ever created, and while the occasional bug and some mutant balancing issues take away from the experience somewhat, the game is nevertheless a triumph for a beleaguered studio impacted significantly by Russia's aggression in Ukraine.
One facet of the Xbox and Windows PC exclusive that's proven to be a bit underwhelming, though, is A-Life 2.0 — an AI simulation system that dynamically controls how groups of stalkers and mutants spawn in and traverse The Zone, as well as how they react to the environment. It's definitely impressive when it's working well; its influence has created some pretty wild encounters for me, including one where I and a few other friendly NPCs were attacked by a roaming unit of soldiers, only for two packs of mutants hostile to both each other and all the stalkers present to show up after hearing the dinner bell. The problem, however, is that it often doesn't work in the way you'd expect it to.
Players have reported the A-Life system spawning bandits or mutants nearly right on top of them at times, which is something I also encountered in my STALKER 2 review playthrough. On top of that, actually seeing NPC squads traveling between points of interest is considerably rarer than it was in the older STALKER games, which can make A-Life 2.0 feel like a downgrade of the original system even though I'd argue it generally has more of an impact on combat.
Feedback about A-Life's issues has been pretty clear following STALKER 2's launch earlier this week. The good news, though, is that GSC Game World has been receptive to it and promises improvements are coming in future updates.
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"Hey. We are working on upcoming updates, and the A-Life system will also get updates. We are hearing your feedback, and we are sorry if your first experience with some aspects of the game has not been smooth," wrote the studio in a reply on X (Twitter). "But we would ask you to stay with us, that is really important to us."
One of GSC's community managers, Mol1t, also took to the official STALKER Discord to address player concerns and reaffirm the developer's intent to get A-Life working properly.
"I am not getting into the broad details for one reason, A-life is broken at the moment, and not fulfilling its objective, once we got fixes rolling our fixes will speak for us," they said in their message. "A-life is supposed to make the Zone feel alive and real, it is clear that at the moment it isn't working, we are fixing it and we will fix it. This is a very high-priority thing for us and we work on it."
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It's good to see that the developers are prioritizing fixes and improvements for A-Life 2.0, and hopefully their implementation makes STALKER 2 an even better game than it already is. It is a shame that folks playing at launch won't get to experience the system working properly, though, especially since A-Life is very unique to STALKER and because there's really not much else like it in gaming. If you haven't started your playthrough yet, you may want to wait until updates come through the pipeline.
Notably, STALKER 2 has proven to be incredibly successful despite its A-Life bugs, with the game soaring up the Steam charts and even hitting a huge 1 million copies sold milestone just two days post-launch. That's very impressive for a game that's also available on Game Pass across both Xbox and PC, and I suspect its sales and player count will continue to swell this weekend.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl has arrived on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC, and is one of this year's best Xbox games and best PC games. It has a $59.99 MSRP, but notably, you can get it for a discount at CDKeys right now. You can also play it through Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
