When STALKER 2 was released on November 20, one thing that was missing was the ‘A-Life 2.0’ that was promised to make The Zone a living, breathing world. It was said that A-Life 2.0 would serve as a solid evolution of the A-Life mechanics featured in the earlier STALKER games, giving players a sense of being present in a world populated by intelligent AI characters.
That’s not there in STALKER 2, and recently, GSC removed a reference to A-Life 2.0 from the game’s listing on Steam. However, GSC’s CEO has sat down with IGN to explain what happened to A-Life 2.0 and why it’s not in STALKER 2.
Where Did A-Life 2.0 Go?
In an interview with IGN, Ievgen Grygorovych, the CEO of GSC Game World, explained what happened to A-Life 2.0. It was penned as being one of the most advanced features in STALKER 2, allowing players to witness events unfolding independently of their input, with NPCs almost living their own lives irrespective of what the player was doing.
Grygorovych said:
This system to work properly requires a much larger area for spawn NPCs, and it requires much more memory resources. We were fighting with optimization. To optimize, you have a lot of things that need your resources, and you try to cut things from different directions to properly optimize the game well.
But to make it work we had to optimize some things, and they make A-Life work in many situations not as it should. Also, we created some bugs not long ago before release with NPCs spawning in the air and dropping back to the bottom. They should actually spawn in the terrain. Why it happened, I don’t know! And also we had some bugs with AI behavior.
He explained that the team is working very hard to stabilise A-Life 2.0 and deliver what was promised, but it’s ‘very broken and not working’. In another statement, GSC’s creative director, Maria Grygorovych, threw the blame at the company’s marketing team, stressing it was them who removed the reference to A-Life 2.0 on Steam without permission.
She brought receipts, though. In the interview with IGN, she showed screenshots of a conversation between her and the ‘marketing person’ who removed the details on Steam. However, the team won’t put the reference back until they’ve fixed A-Life 2.0.
That’s what happened – but it’s now up to GSC to patch up A-Life 2.0 and turn it into something that resembles what was promised.
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