A new patch is out for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, continuing the very, very long journey to making the newest entry in the series a stable and polished game. As you might expect, patch 1.0.2 attempts to fix a number of the games many bugs.
News in brief
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is now a slightly more bug-free game
Game launched in an extremely buggy state
A lot focus on fix progress-halting bugs
If you've been exploring the Zone in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, then you're probably aware the game is in a … less than perfect state. While the game is otherwise widely agreed to deliver a masterclass in atmosphere and a world that's dripping in danger and horror, it's otherwise marred by a massive amount of bugs and problems.
A lot of this can be attributed to the fact the developers, GSC Game World, are Ukrainian, and are therefore living in an active warzone — which can tend to hamper game development a tad.
Thankfully, bugs can be fixed, and tend to be easier to sort out than a game's underlying quality. This patch, like the last one, focuses primarily on those issues, and chiefly those which are stopping players from advancing in the game's main storyline. Many of the fixes are chock full of spoilers, so as other websites have put it, the patch stops lootable bodies from despawning before players can collect loot, stops enemies from chasing the player too far, and crucially, it stops immortal NPCs from dying. Because they're, er, not meant to do that.
It may be that you've stopped playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 because of the bugs, and a number of players will likely have found themselves in position — especially when there are so many game-breaking bugs around the place. Thankfully, this patch and upcoming patches should help make it easier to ease yourself back into S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 soon.
