Finally, some British representation
Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobylhas been in the wild for almost a week now, and it’s a great, if predictably somewhat shonky time, is the word on the street. Literally, that’s what the streets are saying. “It’s good! A bit shonky, though!” opined my postman this morning, enunciating each syllable by yanking the package further from my grasp. “Don’t worry!” I said. “A patch for theFPSis coming next week”. “That’s cheered me right up, that has! Thank god for games journalists!” he replied. Then the whole street started cheering and bringing me various baked goods. It was a delicious time, andhere’s the notesfrom the delicious patch:
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Crash Fixes, including:
Main Quest Progression Fixes, including:
Gameplay & Balance Adjustments, including:
Cutscenes & Visual Fixes, including:
Softlock Fixes, including:
User Interface Improvements, including:
Noted to be addressed in future updates:
That’s a fair few key issues targeted, which is reassuring, although I do get the sense the series’ history with bugs has primed the audience to be a little more forgiving this time around - understandable given theextraordinary circumstancesthat GSC Game World faced during development. Personally, I only have one request: please do not patch out this guy’s dodgy teeth:
I’m not sure if the screenshot fully conveys what I’m talking about here, so do have a look at theGameranx videowhere I found the footage. And, yes, I admit this is a strange thing to get excited about, but I’m genuinely happy to see such imperfect, yellowing (even if it’s partially the flashlight) teeth in a game. It’s the sort of realistic touch that feels incredibly minor until you realise just how few games actually do it. Like, I say ‘dodgy’, but they’re not even dodgy, really. They’re just a normal bloke’s normal, imperfect teeth.
I haven’t spent enough time with the game yet to tour its full menagerie of miscoloured mouths, although afterreviewing the game, James tells me that dodgy teeth aren’t too rare, if not exactly common. I may have honed in on this lad’s gnashers specifically because I’d so recently been blinded byDragon Age: The Veilguard’s pearly whiteout, even though its far from the first game to be populated by bizarrely blemish-free inhabitants. It’s the sort of manicured unreality that’s so common I don’t even tend to notice it until something like Heart of Chornobyl comes along with characters that look well and truly worn out. More bad teeth, I say. More scars in uncool places, more stretch marks. I’m serious!
