GSC Game World released S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl to PC and Xbox Series X|S a month ago, and it quickly became a massive hit among survival shooter fans. However, one of the main criticisms pointed at the game was its bugginess. While a few post-launch hotfixes have landed aiming to resolve some of them, today, the studio pushed out its first major patch for the game.
Patch 1.1 is now live on PC and Xbox platforms, and it ships with over 1800 fixes and adjustments for the game's various systems like AI, cutscenes, interactable objects, quests, exploration elements, gear, saves, and much more. As previously promised, the studio has also made important improvements to the A-Life simulation this time too.
Some critical fixes include RTX 3000 series performance drops with FSR frame gen, NPC's detecting crouched players to break stealth, and a multitude of crash issues. NPCs should also stop spawning behind players, and they will also carry on their usual activities when the player isn't around.
Here are the A-Life specific improvements the developer is making with today's update, which should improve the simulation and immersion of the game drastically:
- 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.
The changelog for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Patch 1.1 can be found here. Though considering its size, even the studio isn't detailing each and every change the update has brought to the game.
"We understand that the size of the patch is huge and the process of downloading will take some time," added the studio. "We would like to thank you for your understanding, and we will work on this aspect as well."
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl fans on Steam may find that this update will be essentially be a complete re-download of the game, coming with a size of about 110GB. However, on Xbox Series X|S consoles, this patch seems to be only about 12GB in size.
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