I’m praying the successful sales gives the team the resources to fix the games many problems in coming patches. Unlike the author of this article I have a lot of issues with the current state of the game and find many design decisions to be not in the spirit of classic STALKER. Finally, the broken at best and absent at worst A-life (simulation of what NPCs and mutants are doing off screen for those unfamiliar) is a massive issue.
The bones of a great STALKER game are there, but it’s quite a ways away from it in its current state.
Even with the bugs, I’m having a blast with the game. The positive is that the devs are acknowledging that it’s got issues vs some other devs/publishers going on the offensive with broken games and doubling down saying everything is fine.
As long as they’re not lying about the existence of A-life in the first place I’m hopeful. If the framework of it actually is there but not working I have hope they’ll fix it.
Otherwise yes, I’m still enjoying having more STALKER after all these years. I’ve installed maybe a dozen mods and am now having a lot of fun with the game, but even so there are a lot of things missing and/or lacking. Even stuff like factions. You can’t see the faction of corpses anymore when you loot them, and you can’t keep track of your relations in your PDA. Aren’t factions supposed to be important? Puzzling.
That’s true, what mods are you running? I didn’t even check?
I recommend going through what’s trending on Nexus and seeing what appeals to you. Apart from fixing the timescale I installed some rebalancing mods that make enemies less bullet spongy and combat more lethal, as well as a mod attempting to improve A-life and stealth. Also installed all of Grok’s mods. and this Medkit and Consumable rebalance.
Awesome, gonna have a look through these, did you have to restart?
No, but I would have if I had fewer hours played just to get a proper experience from the start and consequently less of an item stockpile etc. Grok’s less loot in stashes won’t apply retroactively for example.
Well that’s good, I’m only a few hours in since I don’t have a ton of time to game, thanks for the info though. Greatly appreciated.
I was looking forward to the launch but feared it might come out in the state it did. I’ll probably wait until summer and hope KCD2 will have a better launch… and run on linux.
The devs kinda have to put their money where their mouth is in terms of A-life. Most of the other issues are already being addressed via simple .cfg mods so they should be easily patched (though I have no idea how some of them ended up in the game, was it not QA tested at all?).
A-life is what makes the Zone feel alive in all the previous games. The devs have said it’s not working right, so now they actually have to prove that the framework is there at all and can be fixed.
I tried two older Stalker games way back but I’m not much of a horror fan and I just wasn’t good enough, so I didn’t play the games much. A-Life sounds quite interesting. Let’s hope they can fix it faster than CDPR fixed Cyberpunk.
What makes the older STALKER games special is the way the zone lives its own life independent of the player. That’s what makes you feel small and insignificant, just wandering a hostile wasteland. As you’re heading to your mission you hear gunshots in the distance, NPC Stalkers are fighting bandits perhaps? As you head over you arrive as the fight is over and they’re looting the bodies, after which they start heading off towards the nearest encampment. Unscripted stuff like this is missing in the game right now.
