The day a lot of us have been waiting for is finally here, Stalker 2’s A-Life 2.0 system has been fixed with patch 1.1! NPC spawns no longer feel as random and the overall A-Life system seems to be working more as it should. According to GSC, they’ve addressed a total of “over 1800” issues in this gargantuan patch, and this is only the first iteration of A-Life fixes.

I tested patch 1.1 before publishing and can confirm that A-Life feels like it’s working now. I ran around Zaton for a while and it felt much more “alive” and believable than before. NPCs now spawn much farther away and you can actually hear them fighting each other in the distance… Instead of watching them spawn in 20 feet away. Enemies no longer spawn “on top” of you and overall my hike felt much more immersive than before.

However, there are still parts of the A-Life system that need to be fleshed out. As pointed out by Reddit user /UsedNewspaper1775, NPCs still won’t loot bodies and they’ve also noted issues related to draw distance. GSC Community Manager /e_mcculkin responded to the post to confirm that GSC are “continuing to work on the A-Life system and will bring more fixes”.

GSC made a ton of other changes that impact NPC behavior and balance in patch 1.1, as well as a host of immersion-breaking animation bugs. If you’ve encountered many Pseudodogs while exploring The Zone, you might be happy to hear that the number of summons have been reduced and the time between them increased. A ton of other fixes were deployed that tackle a range of issues from animations to bugs…. erm… Anomalies.

Here are the patch notes regarding the A-Life and AI fixes in patch 1.1.

A-Life fixes

  • Fixed the issue with spawning NPCs behind the player’s back.
  • Players can now encounter roaming NPCs across the Zone more often.
  • Greatly extended the distance at which A-Life NPCs are visible to the player.
  • Fixed the aggressive optimization issue that prevented A-Life NPCs to exist in Offline (out of player’s visualization range).
      –   In Offline mode, A-Life will continue to advance towards their goals over time.
      –   Players may now have opportunities to encounter A-Life NPCs they’ve previously met by following in the same direction as the NPCs.
  • Improved A-Life NPCs navigation in Offline using GameGraph (global AI navigation map):
      –   Fixed multiple issues where NPCs would fail to follow or find a path to their designated goals.
      –   Fixed several issues with NPC being stuck in Online-Offline transition state.
  • Enhanced A-Life NPCs’ motivation to expand territory and actively attack enemies and mutants.
  • Fixed issues that could result in fewer A-life NPCs encountered than intended.
  • Further contextual actions improvement to ensure seamless transitions between Offline and Online states for NPCs engaged in these actions.
  • The groups exploring the Zone are now more diverse regarding possible factions and group sizes.
  • Fixed issue that while roaming over the Zone, Human NPCs didn’t satisfy their communication needs and talks.

AI improvements:

  • Reduced the number of summons and increased time between spawns of Pseudodog phantoms.
  • Fixed an issue when zombies would have their arms and legs twisted while knocked down.
  • Fixed an issue when large mutants would hide behind small cover, such as trees.
  • Fixed an issue when mutant limbs stretch sometimes when firing automatic weapons.
  • Fixed an issue when bloody visual effects played a few times after Rat’s death from grenade.
  • Fixed an issue where NPCs quickly detected the player when he was crouching.
  • Fixed an issue where NPCs would enter doors without opening them.
  • Fixed the issue when the controller could take the main story NPCs under control.
  • Fixed an issue when Chimera would try to enter a narrow passage that it couldn’t enter instead of hiding in ambush.
  • Fixed an issue when NPC was teleporting to the restricted areas such as safe zones and hubs.
  • Fixed an issue where mutants that were in cover did not change their cover when receiving damage.
  • Fixed visual effects of Burer’s telepathic ability.
  • Minor combat behavior fixes for NPCs shooting from covers.
  • Fixed Burer’s throwing objects animation.
  • Fixed some issues with NPC staying idle and refusing to start mission-related dialogs. 
  • Fixed an issue when mutants kept attacking zombies in knockdown.
  • Fixed an issue when NPCs are stuck in aiming animation.
  • Fixed an issue when death animation was replayed for an NPC who was resurrected as a zombie.
  • Fixed an issue when a neutral NPC stays neutral after a player hits them by melee attack.
  • Fixed an issue with some NPCs’ broken arms while shooting.
  • Generic improvement of combat experience and NPC pathfinding in big fights with lots of corpses.
  • Fixed an issue when Player was able to kill the chimera with the help of carousel anomaly.
  • Fixed an issue where NPCs would clip through objects and walls when shooting from covers.
  • Minor improvements for peaceful behavior of NPCs.
  • Fixed issue where NPCs wouldn’t stop combat on emission start.
  • Fixed an issue when some mutants couldn’t jump off an obstacle.
  • Fixed issue when NPCs were stuck after the end of emission.
  • Fixed bandits’ behaviour after emission ends during the mission Bullseye.
  • Fixed an issue where NPCs could teleport if the NPC couldn’t build a route.
  • Fixed an issue where NPCs could stop talking to each other after loading a save.
  • Fixed an issue when mutant dead bodies fly to a long distance from the places where they were killed by the shotgun.

Beyond getting A-Life to work as it should and fixing a ton of other problematic AI issues, GSC has patched almost every other part of Stalker 2 with the release of 1.1.

On the balance side, they’ve increased mission payouts, made the gauss rifle more punchy, nerfed snorks, and patched out a couple of infinite money glitches. They’ve also upped the difficulty of the fight with Korshunov which was previously a little underwhelming.

Patch 1.1 addresses over 200 various performance, crashing, and optimization issues. If you’re playing on a controller, you’ll be happy to hear this patch tackles the deadzone and curve problems. They also fixed the issue that was causing XB Series X/S controllers to not work over Bluetooth.

GSC also claims that “over 250 bugs and blockers” in the main story were fixed in this patch. This part is absolutely riddled with spoilers so I won’t get too much into it, but, if you’ve been having issues with the main story being bugged or blocked, chances are it’s fixed now. They’ve also patched “over 100” issues related to various side missions and open-world encounters.

Conclusion

Overall, this is the largest Stalker 2 patch to date and it tackles a massive array of bugs, glitches, crashes, and performance issues. Most importantly, patch 1.1 has effectively fixed A-Life in Stalker 2 and brought some life to The Zone.

Of course, there’s undeniably still more work to do before A-Life “2.0” is working as it was originally envisioned, but patch 1.1 does a great job of getting us 1 step closer. If you’ve put your Stalker 2 playthrough on pause until A-Life 2.0 is working, now is a great time to dive back into The Zone.

You can read the full patch notes for Stalker 2’s 1.1 patch here.

0
Have a question or comment?x
()
x