Post-apocalyptic shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl from GSC Game World suffered from many problems upon release, but for fans the biggest pain point was the A-Life 2.0 system. The developers explained what went wrong.
Image source: GSC GAME WORLD
Let us remind you that A-Life coordinates and controls what people and animals do in the Zone, even when the player is not nearby. At the moment, the system functions so poorly that it seems as if it is not in the game at all.
Head of development S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Evgeny Grigorovich and the lead producer of the project Maria Grigorovich assured IGN that A-Life 2.0 is present in the shooter, but is currently buried under a pile of bugs.
After fixing A-Life 2.0, GSC is going to make the system even “more advanced”
According to Grigorovich, in order to optimize the game on PC and Xbox, the team had to significantly reduce the area of operation of A-Life 2.0 – the recent mod restores the system’s range, but “kills performance.”
The optimization of A-Life 2.0 has generated a number of bugs and problems with AI, which the developers have not yet solved, but plan to do so. The team is also working to improve performance and expand the system’s operating range.
Grigorovich also commented on the sudden disappearance of the mention of A-Life 2.0 from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. page. 2: Heart of Chornobyl on Steam shortly before release:
- This happened as a result of the unauthorized actions of a member of the marketing team, who felt that the term A-Life 2.0 would be incomprehensible to many new players;
- An employee made changes to the game description on the Steam page without permission or notification to Grigorovich;
- The mention of A-Life 2.0 will be returned to the game description when the system is fixed – GSC does not give a time frame for this.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was released on November 20 on PC (Steam, GOG, Microsoft Store, EGS), Xbox Series X and S, and Game Pass. Total sales of the game in the first two days after release exceeded 1 million copies.