The update 1.1 for the shooter addresses one of the biggest criticisms: the A-Life. We summarize what this means for our rating of Stalker 2.
Christmas came a little early to the Zone this year: GSC released the 110 GB patch 1.1 for Stalker 2 just before the holidays. The update fixes a whopping 1,800 issues, most notably the biggest point of criticism: the missing/broken A-Life 2.0.
Patch 1.1 is already the fourth major update since the release on November 20, 2024. We devalued the launch version by 15 points due to bugs, plot stoppers, performance and technical problems.How do we continue our test and a possible upgrade now?
When will our review come?
Originally, we wanted to deliver a follow-up test to Stalker 2 before Christmas – now, suddenly, one day before the Christmas vacation, the tester Patch 1.1 pops up.
Of course, we could write a follow-up test and an upgrade based on the impressions of a few hours of play. But that wouldn’t be fair to the game and the developers after so much effort and work has gone into fixing bugs and other issues.
At first glance, a few important things have improved a lot, but in the three hours or so of gameplay, we continued to struggle with issues we experienced in the release version. Also, we have only been able to test the patch on one machine so far, which doesn’t give a comprehensive impression.
We have therefore decided to postpone the retest to the beginning of the year, presumably January 2025. We want to invest more time in the patch, including playing through previously bugged quests again, trying out aggressive and stealthy play styles, taking a closer look at the in-game economy, and much more.
Small spoiler in advance: There will be an upgrade in any case – but we can’t tell you how big it will be at this point
First impressions after patch 1.1
What has improved?
- Enemies no longer spawn on the tip of the nose: Before, we could literally see enemies manifesting out of nowhere two meters in front of us. After the patch, the NPCs no longer spawn in the field of vision of protagonist Skif.
- More random encounters: Random encounters with factions and mutants were already present in the release version. However, it usually looked like this: the enemy spawns directly in front of Skif, is directly aggro, and Skif shoots around in panic. There was no room for different approaches or even tactical retreat. After patch 1.1, these moments feel much more natural and are more reminiscent of the predecessors. Factions fight among themselves, mutants attack loners – and we can decide whether and how we want to intervene.
- Economy: In previous patches, the developers already gave the economy a cash injection. This was necessary because in the release version, for example, we were in the red if we wanted to repair a broken weapon and then sell it. Now, not only do we make a lot of money, but the repair costs have also dropped significantly. This makes the economy much less grind-heavy and much better balanced overall.
- Performance: At first glance, performance seems to have improved on our RTX4070 test machine. Even in later areas like Prypjat, the game runs without stutters or FPS drops. Of course, we are testing on more machines and over a longer period of time to be able to give a more accurate estimate here.
What still didn’t work well for us?
- Group AI: While the behavior of individual opponents works much better in the open world, so that we can even outsmart NPCs in random encounters, the AI absolutely cannot cope with us in confined spaces and in groups. NPCs either lose sight of us immediately, even though we are standing right in front of them, or they have already targeted us even though we are still 200 meters away, cowering behind a building.
- Even stealth doesn’t always work reliably: Although we take out individual opponents with knives and silencer pistols, everyone in the camp knows immediately – it almost seems as if the entire NPC group shares an AI brain cell and reacts to the same stimuli together, even though Skif is only involved with a single person.
- Graphics and Clipping Errors: Flickering textures, enemies clipping through walls and floors, corpses in T-poses, respawning clothes, and so on are still present and spoil the otherwise great atmosphere of the shooter.
What do we still want to check more closely?
- Quests: Can we now complete important main quests without plot stoppers?
- Sound: Has the sound design improved? In the release version, it was often very difficult to locate enemies. Sometimes the wrong sound backdrop was played.
- Enemy AI and A-Life: We are looking even more closely at what the revised AI is doing and whether this changes the feel of the game.
- Performance: We are testing on different computers to see if Stalker 2 is now better optimized and no longer crashes at 10 FPS.
Please feel free to tell us in the comments what changes you noticed after patch 1.1 and whether you had to deal with many problems before that.
