Lots of S2's potential is held back by shaky performance. The thing everyone complains about, A-Life, has improved tons since release, but it's still hampered by a tiny NPC spawn bubble of 100m. Which, IMO, is likely a console performance-related bottleneck, alongside a general UE5 performance bottleneck.
Every UE5 update has had optimization improvements. The latest version of Unreal, 5.6, claims to have particularly huge ones. People were asking about an engine update, but I always assumed that would be way too much work (S2 supposedly runs on a heavily customised UE5 5.1).
GSC Game World prioritizing an engine update means they can really overhaul optimization and performance, then go crazy with adding the features everyone wants to have after. The community manager, Mol1t, also confirmed on Discord whilst they are definitely targeting 5.5.4, going to 5.6 is possible if testing goes smoothly enough.
Everyone complains about games coming out half-baked, but given GSC Game World still have a fair chunk of their staff actively based in Ukraine, I'm willing to cut them more slack than anyone else. Their documentary showed they're dealing with a way more difficult development context than any other company I'm aware of. Yet despite the circumstances, they got S2 out the door, they've non-stop patched it since release (5 major ones so far), not just fixing bugs but adding gameplay tweaks and new features based on what players provide feedback on. They dropped everything they promised patches would feature so far, and this roadmap doesn't even mention the single player DLCs and multiplayer. Which, as far as I'm aware, is still going to be done at one point or another.
Stalker 2 is going to be unrecognisable a year from now in the best way. I can't wait to see how it turns out.
meanwhile 286/386/486 boards are still alive
www.eurogamer.net
