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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl from GSC Game World has a huge patch out now, that attempts to fix up a lot of the disappointments and bugs with their A-Life system and other AI issues. I mentioned in my original review that it had a lot of bugs, and the AI system was not particularly great. It certainly sounds like this patch will fix up a lot of my and everyone else's complaints about it.

Some of the A-Life biggest fixes and improvements include:

  • 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.


Pictured - Stalker 2 on Linux

Above is just the A-Life system changes. There's absolutely loads of other bug fixes and improvements across the whole game. From cut-scene problems to story progression issues and more, it's truly massive. Lots of fixes to various visual bugs too which is great to see.

Think I'll have to dive back in again soon and see how much it has improved. Once the 110GB patch download has finished that is…

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

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Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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9 comments

Xpander 3 hours ago
lol 110GB patch. Stupid UE5 i guess.
I'm near the end of the game now and didnt have many issues tbh. few strange NPC spawns, animation jank, artifact spawning inside the rocks and poor performance in Rostok Main building, but other than that its been mostly troublefree. Game has been super stable for me also.
Nice to see huge list of fixes though.
starpollo 2 hours ago
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Game is crashing while compiling shaders for me after the update :(
sudoer 2 hours ago
Did they fix the stuttering of the despicable UE5?

https://www.vg247.com/unreal-engine-5-has-been-a-disappointment
Xpander 2 hours ago
Quoting: sudoerDid they fix the stuttering of the despicable UE5?

https://www.vg247.com/unreal-engine-5-has-been-a-disappointment

Didn't really have any stuttering since patch 1.02. Few framerate dips when getting into completely new area but not the stuttering like most other UE5 games had with each new effect on the screen. I guess it depends on the game and what shaders get precompiled.

But yeah UE5 is pretty awful usually. Also the freaking smearing is just insane in UE5 games. Everything is blurry AF... nanite and lumen are also kinda bullshit marketing words. Performance cost is just way too high for the blurry image you get imo
Jarmer 59 minutes ago
110 gb patch. That's just absurd, are you basically just redownloading the entire game?

Also, I have one big question: did they fix the key bindings for kb/m at all? I played at a friends house and was astonished that such a basic functionality was totally broken.
Xpander 53 minutes ago
Quoting: Jarmer110 gb patch. That's just absurd, are you basically just redownloading the entire game?

Also, I have one big question: did they fix the key bindings for kb/m at all? I played at a friends house and was astonished that such a basic functionality was totally broken.

what was the issue with keybinding?
the only problem i had with keybinding was that i couldn't bind melee attack separately. It had to be V as the default.

all the rest like leaning and quickslots etc i was able to rebind just fine


Last edited by Xpander on 19 December 2024 at 2:25 pm UTC
Jarmer 30 minutes ago
So many issues.

Move forward backwards was rebindable, but go up down ladders was permanantly WS with no way to change, this means you can basically never rebind movement.

Y is unusable. You can bind it to something else but it has some hidden permanant function like swap weapon which is unchangeable and that means the button press will do both things which is idiotic.

Melee is not changeable. I always always always use a mouse button for melee, so ..................

Flashlight is all screwed up, middle mouse sometimes, but also a different keybind. I can't remember what happens when I tried to change this, but it didn't work.

And more and more and more.

This is like ultra ultra basic game functionality 101. If such a low level easy thing like this is all screwed up then I shudder to think about the bugs in the game world itself.
Xpander 22 minutes ago
Ahh ok. Yeah i don't rebind WASD myself. Melee yeah sucks i want mouse sidebutton for melee also ,but that's unrebindable. flashlight i liked middle mouse. i just change all the quickslot stuff and leaning etc. that worked without issues..

will see with new patch i guess.


edit:
Quoting: starpolloGame is crashing while compiling shaders for me after the update :(

no issues with shader compile for me. Loading times seems to have improved with this patch quite a bit also


Last edited by Xpander on 19 December 2024 at 3:01 pm UTC
starpollo 8 minutes ago
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I switched to experimental and got through the shader compile.. or maybe I just got lucky that time

Update seems good so far!
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