Patch 2.1 is out now
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl has received a new update, version 2.1, which builds on the well-received 2.0 patch by upgrading one of the most cherished and debated features of the STALKER series: the A-Life system that governs simulated NPC behavior. With the 2.1 update, it is now possible to increase the distance at which A-Life NPCs—those who, unlike scripted characters, wander around, fight others over faction territory, and occasionally settle down for a campfire-side guitar session—are visualized, while audio tweaks can make these unplanned shootouts audible from further away. The effect, in theory, is a stronger sense of the Zone’s inhabitants going about their daily business, even when the protagonist isn’t nearby.
Both the updated game and the accompanying blog post warn that pushing this A-Life bubble beyond the lowest, default “Recommended” setting may have adverse effects, ranging from lower framerates to “story quest instability” and crashes. Fearing a return to STALKER 2’s bug-ridden early days, I tested the new A-Life distance options on the RPS test rig and found they aren’t actually that perilous—though they might do strange things with binoculars.
To gauge the performance impact, I ran the rig’s RTX 4060 at 1080p with Quality-level DLSS and the High preset—save for setting the draw distance to Epic, to maximize the potential visualization. Walking through an open, A-Life-ripe patch of the Zone produced a 93fps average on the Recommended setting, which remained unchanged on the Extended setting, before barely dropping to 91fps on the Highly Extended, Maximum and Dynamic settings. Well, that’s not so bad! The warnings made it sound like the larger options would ignite the air around my graphics card and brainwarp quest NPCs into thinking they were in Barbie Horse Ride & Rescue (available now on Steam). 2fps? That’s nothing. Nothing.
Granted, results may vary depending on your PC specs; the RTX 4060 isn’t especially potent but it was backed up by a good CPU and a healthy 32GB of RAM, which likely helped handle the extra computations required for a wider sprawl of distant gunfights. To get a fuller picture, I did try a different approach, leaving ground level to claim a lofty concrete vantage point and—god dammit, recently added fog effects.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World
That’s better.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World
Still, the Zone’s unknowable RNG calculations were not kind, and after several minutes of fruitless waiting I returned to run more tests on terra firma.
I ultimately didn’t find anything else that would suggest an unacceptable risk of performance loss or instability, though I did discover one quirk of the new system: in addition to render distance, your choice of A-Life setting also appears to influence the range at which faction markers show up on binoculars.
Highly Extended | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World
Maximum | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/GSC Game World
Mais strangely, selecting Maximum A-Life also seems to… increase the zoom of binoculars? As you can see in those two shots, which were snapped from the same position. I guess it’s a bug but hey, if GSC are telling me I can get better NPC simulation and a magnification upgrade for the low, low price of two frames per second, I’ll take that deal.
STALKER 2 2.1 is out now for everyone. Besides the A-Life distance gubbins, it also adds the ability to tag along with roaming fellow stalkers, turning them into mobile fast travel stations—though, in keeping with the notion that NPCs don’t actually give a toss about you, they’ll only warp you to places that their specific patrol route was passing anyway.
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