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

[Brickfrog]

Tbh I'm hopeful that this (and other ai issues) will actually get a serious fix because it's a matter of programming alone. The problems that are harder to fix [...]

Just because it is a programming matter doesn't mean it is easy to fix.

You're right, I didn't mean to imply that it would be simple. I mean to say that fixing the issues in this game will require fewer resources from the dev than say, Cyberpunk, which needed improvements in everything from coding to animations and mechanical design.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The first week of CP2077 and the dildopocalypse made me pass on that game.

 

[Latro]

- no A-Life

That’s about 60% of the appeal of this series and made the Zone worth traversing for goofy stories, should have just cancelled the game if they weren’t going to do the real thing

 

[mediocrepoet]

There's also a homogeneity to the soldiers of the Zone that feels distracting at times - an endless truckload of men with the same haircut, the same gruff pessimism, the same iffy voice acting. If Stalker has taken much of its mechanical inspiration from 2007, it has also taken its approach to casting from the same era. I met a woman once, after 26 hours of playing. She acted like all the other men. It's possible there's some thoughtful lore to explain the Zone's lack of diversity, and I simply didn't clock it. But regardless of intent the story remains a homogenous parade of lads being lads, where one man bleeds into another, literally and figuratively

He is just above it, because he's woke. Note also how he adds the phrase "literally and figuratively" to the end of that paragraph for no reason at all, merely attempting to throw a "smarty man phrase" into his writing so it seems like he's above you as a "game journalist." ... They bleed into one another, literally and figuratively. How is that a meaningful comparison? What does it even mean? It means absolutely nothing. This kind of empty virtue-signaling through meaningless smart-sounding phrases is what most blogging consists of also.

Meh. This has nothing to do with being woke or not. He's just retarded and trying to sound smart. The issue isn't "literally and figuratively", it's that "one man bleeds into another" can only be figurative assuming they're not becoming some sort of meat slurry aberration.

He may be woke, but a person could be woke and also a good writer or otherwise intelligent. This guy isn't. What do you expect of game journos anyway? There was a time when they were at least gamers and decent at them. That was a long time ago.

 

[Mercatroid]

No, a person can't be woke and also be a good writer. As Alfred the Great put it over a thousand years ago, "anything done unwisely cannot be accounted as skill." And yes, "figuratively and literally" is the issue. It's a phrase the writer tries to find a way to cram into his piece because he thinks it makes him sound smart, rather than a phrase he chose because it was appropriate for what he was trying to say. He was trying to think of something to say rather than saying what he thinks, because what he "thinks" is just whatever he thinks his Eurogaymer colleagues think. That's why he's woke, and that's why he's a bad writer.

As for the initial photo, I guess I was wrong, but I think there's something telling about the fact that an article about the dev team used a photo of them with a bunch of Microsoft goons. How many creative decisions in the game were influenced, or even outright controlled, by Xbox Money? Yellow paint? Black and female NPCs? Maybe.

And in any case, the photo of the actual dev team seems to be even more full of women than the non-dev team photo is. And the dude made his wife the "Creative Director" of the project. I guaran-fucking-tee you that if any of the guys in the 2007 GSC dev team had said "hey guys, I've got a good idea, let's make my wife the Creative Director of Shadow of Chernobyl," it would have been the funniest joke of the day.

 

[Harthwain]

How many models are identical ones repeating over and over? That's actually an important point, not "the lack of diversity" (translation: "There are not enough females in this game!") coming from some idiot who apparently has no idea how the Eastern Europe looks like.

And in any case, the photo of the actual dev team seems to be even more full of women than the non-dev team photo is.

Are you actually serious? The non-dev photo team has 5 females vs 17 males. The dev team photo has 7 females vs 34 males. Yet you claim it to be "even more full of women"? When the number of females between photos doesn't reach 2:1 ratio, while at the same time the ratio for males is doubled (and is almost QUINTUPLE when compared to the number of women)? Man, you're trying reeeeeally hard here.

 

[Mercatroid]

How many models are identical ones repeating over and over? That's actually an important point, not "the lack of diversity" (translation: "There are not enough females in this game!") coming from some idiot who apparently has no idea how the Eastern Europe looks like.

And in any case, the photo of the actual dev team seems to be even more full of women than the non-dev team photo is.

Are you actually serious? The non-dev photo team has 5 females vs 17 males. The dev team photo has 7 females vs 34 males. Yet you claim it to be "even more full of women"? When the number of females between photos doesn't reach 2:1 ratio, while at the same time the ratio for males is doubled (and is almost QUINTUPLE when compared to the number of women)? Man, you're trying reeeeeally hard here.

Holy shit did you get your feelings hurt? 7 is a higher number than 5. Get over it.

 

[Harthwain]

Holy shit did you get your feelings hurt? 7 is a higher number than 5. Get over it.

I am simply shocked that somebody can be even worse at math than I am. I guess it's true what they say about each next generation being worse than the former.

 

[Mercatroid]

Bro, the correct number of women on the dev team for a Stalker game is zero. Let's just leave it at that.

 

[baba is you]

I heard that A-Life is gone, so I deleted it from my computer.

I'm curious, does anyone know what the GSC developers or budget level were when SoC-CoP was developed? I can't find anything even if I search for it.

If the current GSC has similar development staff or budget, Stalker 2 has no chance of improvement. The past developers were better.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

The black chick works for Microsoft Xbox brand I think.

All you racist white men back away, i will handle those jiggly big butt havin black women. STEP AWAY.

 

[TheKing01]

Encouraging to see the ratings go down on Steam. Was worried there for a sec favoritism was going to rear it's hideous head again.

The days of "x developer did this and should be crucified, but I'll let it slide with this other x developer since I like them" crap should have died long ago.

 

[Baron Dupek]

have you noticed something?

Can you guess it?

No healing artifacts

and similar UI (numbers replaced by stars/asterisks) will be in the new Gamma update
in other news - math if hard

 

[Readher]

You can keep the items from prologue by storing them in the blue safe before the cutscene. Long ARs get deleted though, so no HK416 or AK-74 (AK-74U, MP5 and Sawn-off are fine).

 

[Konjad]

- no A-Life

That’s about 60% of the appeal of this series and made the Zone worth traversing for goofy stories, should have just cancelled the game if they weren’t going to do the real thing

'dis what happens when all the know-how is within one dude and he dies (I couldn't confirm this, but he joined UAF in 02.2022).

GSC fucked it hard. We all should be replaceable.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I heard that A-Life is gone, so I deleted it from my computer.

I'm curious, does anyone know what the GSC developers or budget level were when SoC-CoP was developed? I can't find anything even if I search for it.

If the current GSC has similar development staff or budget, Stalker 2 has no chance of improvement. The past developers were better.

The original team developed also an original engine for the game, no third party unreal bullshit. In 2006 it was also one of the first engines to implement deferred rendering.

 

[Inec0rn]

The game almost has no AI, random spawns offscreen that know your position, the AI is like 20-30 lines of code tops. Just sucks to waste all that effort in graphics and drop the ball entirely on the combat, it's like Callisto Protocol again.

 

[Konjad]

I wonder what goes behind the doors to have a team do - in general - very good game, but then just completely ignore basics that screw the game entirely. I'm sure anyone would rather have shittier audiovisuals, less voice acting or languages, shorter game and smaller gameworld, but instead have competently done gameplay. Who the fuck cares if the entire world is open and you can go anywhere you want without a single loading screen if all actors spawn 20m from you anyway and nothing makes sense?

 

[Odoryuk]

have you noticed something?

Can you guess it?

No healing artifacts

and similar UI (numbers replaced by stars/asterisks) will be in the new Gamma update
in other news - math if hard

Are these all based on Roadside Picnic novel (I haven't read it yet, only watched the movie)?

 

[kites]

Hard-locked the MQ ~17 hours in; judging by the mission list I'm nearly halfway through the story. I liked a lot about it, but it's a tough pill to swallow when there's so much lacking and underdeveloped. Going to shelve it for now.

The world feels dead, which is a problem when it's so large and there's very limited fast travel (might be story reasons or a bug, but the only travel option I have atm is to the Slag Heap, and even if you could pay neutral stalkers in the field to guide you it wouldn't be a fix because I've seen next to none wandering around). Feels like you're just running from one quest location to another. Missions are often far away, and you may go 5-10+ minutes running around without seeing any humans or mutants. Nothing is ever in the distance; I don't know why they even included snipers when everything spawns next to you. Makes sense they got rid of the binoculars.

Gear degradation feels a little too taxing. Weight limit/fatigue is also punishing when you have to go kilometers to stuff away or sell your junk. Loot is much too plentiful and the economy makes zero sense. Human AI is decent at times and impressively stupid in others. AI is completely incompetent at fighting itself but pinpoint when it comes to you. Stealth feels broken. No reward for wasting time/money on mutants (they could also use a 10-20% hp debuff to make them slightly less tedious). Radiation on-screen effect is overwhelming. Constant bleeding. Long animations I frequently interrupted at the last frame (like bandaging). If there is a complex faction/reputation system I didn't notice it. People don't acknowledge that you revived them. Can't control length of sleep. No NVG and the flashlight sucks for how dark the game is; days should be a little longer if they're going to be gloomy half the time anyways. No ranking systems or chatter. Placeholder descriptions that somehow made it through QA. Have to edit the .ini to get rid of mouse smoothing and other visual effects. Experienced small annoying bugs, but at least they would go away on reload (a few times I got stuck doing the corner peak when I left the wall, couldn't run, had weird objects floating off my gun, wall textures breaking, etc). I feel like I could go on and on. I'd suggest waiting at least a year or two to see if they fix it.

 

[KeAShizuku]

I don't mind DLSS if it looks good enough. Videogames are all smoke and mirrors anyways.

Sucks for people with AMD cards though.

 

[cvv]

Also, if any of you niggers actually played SoC on release you'd know it was NOWHERE near as bugged as Stolkor 2.

There's a suspicious degree of certainty in saying that. Bruh, the game came out 17 years ago, you wanna tell me you remember how buggy or non-buggy it was? I call BS.

I for one DID play all three games on release but don't remember shit, except I fucking loved them. Also two flashbacks - trying to sneak through a minefield with a machine gun nest at the end and failing horribly for a long time - it was like a transition between two zones, not even sure whether it was SoC or CS - and finally getting into the reactor room of the power plant, that was intense. Other then that, nada, null, blank.

Haven't played S2 yet, I never play big open-world games on release, ALL of them are always fucked in one way or the other and need time to unfuck themselves. But I do wonder how much hate IIT is from braindead vatniks - gaym bad cuz hohols haha - and how much is actual problems.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

 

[The people of Duckburg]

I've seen the "SoC didn't have a-life at launch either" argument thrown around a few times in this thread. Whether that's true or not, it's a very poor argument. Isn't the point of a sequel to learn from and improve on the previous game? Making a mistake once is understandable, but making the same mistake several times is another thing. It's not the defense that some people think it is.

I'm sure anyone would rather have shittier audiovisuals, less voice acting or languages, shorter game and smaller gameworld, but instead have competently done gameplay. Who the fuck cares if the entire world is open and you can go anywhere you want without a single loading screen if all actors spawn 20m from you anyway and nothing makes sense?

Good AI doesn't show in trailers or screenshots. The average gamer doesn't care about AI or competent writing, either.

have you noticed something?

Can you guess it?

No healing artifacts

and similar UI (numbers replaced by stars/asterisks) will be in the new Gamma update
in other news - math if hard

Are these all based on Roadside Picnic novel (I haven't read it yet, only watched the movie)?

Pretty sure that Roadside Picnic has nowhere near 75 different artifact types. Some of the ones that appear have no immediate practical use for a Stalker, either, being more of interest to scientists and physicists. And some are just horribly dangerous, like the goop that turns your bones into rubber. Not sure what it was called in the English version.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

A Chimera being a hellacious bullet sponge is very much on brand. What's far more concerning is its inability to pathfind into the building.