What you need to know
- While STALKER 2 developer GSC Game World has managed to fix most of the big issues with the open-world shooter, its dynamic AI simulation system A-Life 2.0 still isn’t working.
- This system controls how NPC stalkers and mutants spawn and move around The Zone, and is supposed to ensure it promotes emergent gameplay by being unpredictable and feeling alive. However, several aspects of it are broken.
- In a new interview with IGN, the studio explained that the reason why is because aggressive optimization of the game led to major reductions in the system’s sphere of influence and also introduced numerous bugs.
- GSC has pledged to get A-Life working again, and notes that all mention of it being controversially removed from STALKER 2’s Steam page recently was because of a miscommunication with the studio’s marketing team. A screenshot of a message exchange was shown to IGN to prove this.
GSC Game World’s long-awaited open-world survival shooter STALKER 2 may have only released a few weeks ago, but the studio has already managed to address many of the game’s biggest launch issues. Last week brought the first post-launch patch with over 650 fixes, and it was followed up by a quick hotfix as well as a larger Patch 1.0.3 that took care of a critical saving bug and improved aiming on PC. One huge problem that still remains, however, is that the game’s dynamic AI simulation system A-Life 2.0 isn’t working properly.
A-Life is a director that controls how NPC stalkers and mutants spawn and move across The Zone dynamically, and is intended to ensure that the open world always feels unpredictable and alive. In some ways, it’s accomplishing this even in its broken state — I’ve seen and experienced countless dynamic interactions between stalker squads and mutant packs — but there’s an overall lack of permanence with the system right now, as many NPCs seem to despawn frequently and won’t persist in The Zone if you travel far enough away from them. Stalkers and mutants don’t spawn much unless it’s near your location, either, which makes the map less lively than it’s supposed to be.
This is arguably the biggest issue with STALKER 2 at the moment, and it’s one that GSC has previously promised to fix. Recently, though, there was a bit of an uproar from the game’s community over the removal of mentions of A-Life from its Steam page, with some accusing the developer of trying to cover up the fact it was marketed as one of the sequel’s features. Now, GSC has addressed the controversy in a new IGN interview that explains why A-Life 2.0 isn’t working, why mention of it was removed, and reaffirms the studio’s intent to fix it.
In the interview, GSC CEO Ievgen Grygorovych explained that the current state of A-Life is due to aggressive optimization that helps ensure the game runs as smoothly as possible across Windows PC, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S systems. The distance at which A-Life was influencing the world had to be reduced, and multiple bugs arose at the same time.
“This system to work properly requires a much larger area for spawn NPCs, and it requires much more memory resources,” Ievgen said. “We were fighting with optimization. To optimize, you have a lot of things that need your resources, and you try to cut things from different directions to properly optimize the game well.”
“But to make it work we had to optimize some things, and they make A-Life work in many situations not as it should,” he continued. “Also, we created some bugs not long ago before release … So, all these things connected make it look like it’s very broken and not working. But we are now continuing working on the optimization part to bring more resources for the A-Life system, to increase the range where A-Life is actually visualized.”
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As for the controversial takedown of A-Life details from STALKER 2’s Steam page, creative director Maria Grygorovych told IGN that it happened because someone from the developer’s marketing team decided to remove it until it could be simplified and made easier to understand, without first checking with GSC executives. Notably, IGN was shown a screenshot from Maria’s phone that proves this was the case.
“He told me there will be a lot of new players who don’t know what A-Life is. They need to understand what we’re talking about in this description. So I will try to change it to a more understandable form. He did that without any discussion or permission,” she revealed. “He didn’t ask, ‘Do we have some bugs with A-Life or something?’ Because we had. We knew that. It’s a really huge and difficult system. But, when he did that before release, it was a surprise for me, because I noticed it because of Reddit. We did the Steam page in 2021. So for me, I was shocked, honestly.”
Maria went on to state that GSC won’t add mention of A-Life 2.0 back to STALKER 2’s store listing until it’s fixed — and both Grygorovychs stressed that it will be fixed. Ievgen says that “for now we committed to players to make it work and it can be done from directions both optimizing, giving more resources to A-Life, fixing bugs, making it work properly, and then putting more efforts to make it more advanced,” while Maria explained that “we have a relationship with our players and players wanted to see something. We have to do it for them.”
Ultimately, I’m glad that GSC got a good opportunity to explain what exactly went wrong with A-Life 2.0 and to clarify the reason why details about it were removed from STALKER 2’s Steam page. Even without the system fully functioning, STALKER 2 is a fantastic game, and a triumph for a beleaguered Ukrainian studio that’s been severely affected by Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
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.
