Get A-life
The enemies of survival shooterStalker 2have a funny habit of showing up right behind you, like a panto villain with an AK-47. Far from being a premeditated ambush by intelligent AI-controlled soldiers, this is just a result of the game’sjanky spawns. Those botched encounters are unlike previous games, where roaming bands of factional murderfolk would patrol the radioactive wastes, seemingly according to their own whims. Back in the day, this wandering baddies feature was dubbed “A-life” by developers GSC Game World - basically a jargon word for the simulation of enemies that would lead to “emergent” moments of violence and conflict. It was promised as a feature in Stalker 2 but many players have noticed it seems to be absent. Over the weekend, GSC insisted the simulation is technically present in the sequel. It’s just broken.
“Often, the game world exists only in the player’s field of view,” say the developers when asked to define the feature in anofficial FAQ. “A-Life 2.0 is a simulation system for life in the Zone. Factions and mutants are fighting for living space, migrating, capturing new places, or retreating to safer areas. A-Life is what makes Zone truly alive and unpredictable.”
After some playerscomplained about the A-life systembeing absent (and pointed out that a mention of the feature wasedited out of the Steam page) the developers have responded on Discord and Reddit to say that the system is really there, but that bugs are preventing it from acting as intended.
“There are several known issues with A-life 2.0 system that we are aware of and are working on fixes/improvements,” said the studio’s community manager on the Stalker Discord (as spotted byPC Gamer). “We know that this system is very important to the Zone having an immersive atmosphere, and we will do our best to fix the known issues.”
It doesn’t help that “A-life” is (and always has been) a hand-wavey buzzword, even more vaguely defined than Battlefield’s “levolution” or Call Of Duty’s recent “omnimovement”. This leads to confusion and mixed expectations among players about what the feature actually entails. What is also complicating things from a developer perspective, say GSC, is that two different in-game systems are responsible for creating these theoretically organic shootouts. It presumably takes tweaking both to make the world feel inhabited by competing groups who wander around. And for each bug report or complaint they receive, they need to figure out which system is responsible for the unintended behaviour.
“The Combat AI and A-Life 2.0 are different things,” one of the developers notes ina reply to a Reddit complaint. “One is actually a ‘brain’ for combat scenarios, while the other is an overall and more complicated system that is trying to manage life in the Zone.”
In the meantime, the first patch for the shooter is coming soon, say GSC, who recently posteddetails about the fixesthey’re planning. A lot of these will address crashes, softlocks, balance adjustments, and other high-priority stuff, they say. But at the bottom of the list is “A-Life system bugfixes”, which further suggests the studio considers it significant enough to sort out soon.
