I’ll be honest: I was surprised to discover it had been months since we last received a substantialSTALKER 2: Heart of Chornobylupdate. Granted, I only realized this was the case when I saw that the game’s patch 1.2 had just been released, bringing with it over 1,700 improvements.
It’s a massive showpiece, that’s for sure. Patch 1.2 came out more or less out of the blue, though the community has been expecting one such update for the last couple of weeks now. The fact of the matter is thatSTALKER 2released in a bit of a sorry state. The developer GSC Game World has thankfully been sticking with the game since its release, delivering one massive update after another, though it speaks to the game’s quality that evenRaphael Colantonio madeSTALKER 2his personal game of the year. As for myself,I was quite conflicted. Heck, I still am, but patch 1.2 finally makes me fully believe GSC will be at it for as long as it takes.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl Update 1.2 is now available, and it’s massive
Though it’s still lacking in some key areas (A-Life, for one, remains shoddy),STALKER 2was in a reasonably solid state before update 1.2 released. The game wasn’t actively in the midst of breaking after about halfway through its story, for one, and there was the faintest semblance of A-Life present in NPC groups. GSC Game World could very well have pushed out one or two minor updates to the project before focusing primarily on DLC and calling it quits.
The availability of an update as ridiculously massive as patch 1.2 throws a wrench into this idea, however. Here are just a couple of notable highlights fromthe humongous patch notes:
This is a fairly interesting list in its own right, but it barely scratches the surface of the full patch notes. The gist of it is that virtually every aspect ofSTALKER 2has been meaningfully improved with this update. Sure, it’s going to break mods left and right, but boy, am I glad that GSC is still at it.
It’s important to keep in mind that bothShadow of ChernobylandClear Skystill had a bunch of potentially game-breaking bugs in place before GSC released the kinda-sorta remasteredLegends of the Zonetrilogy. It would’ve been all too easy forSTALKER 2to fall into this same trap, and I’m absolutely thrilled that this seemingly won’t be the case. So, good stuff, especially for the first update of the year!
