Last week, it finally happened. After years of delays due to Russia's war, Ukrainian developer GSC Game World released S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Although the game was met with great reviews and high sales, there have also been reports of bugs and gameplay issues.
Fortunately, much of that will be fixed this week, as the developers have announced that the first update is on its way to both PC and Xbox Series S/X. The patch seems to focus mainly on technical shortcomings, but it will also fix some unbalanced elements such as price tags on modified weapons and how NPC characters behave in certain situations. Here is the full list:
Crash Fixes, including:
Issues and memory allocation failures, which previously caused the game to exit unexpectedly, particularly around rendering, skeletal meshes, and quest-related cutscenes.
Main Quest Progression Fixes, including:
Several bugs blocking the main quest progression, NPCs getting stuck in objects, incorrect quest markers, and issues with quest cutscenes.
Revision of the main quests (like Visions of Truth or A Minor Incident) to ensure smooth transitions, avoiding rare cases of players not being able to proceed further.
Gameplay & Balance Adjustments, including:
Fixing the price of the weapons with upgrades installed compared to their value without attachments.
NPCs behavior, including the way they act when lacking a shelter during the Emissions.
Cutscenes & Visual Fixes, including:
Rarely missing facial animations, misplaced NPCs, and visual inconsistencies like detached heads and clothes clipping.
Quality and stability improvements of the visual effects.
Softlock Fixes, including:
Issue where players were unable to close the trade screen after putting ammo in a wrong slot while playing on a gamepad.
User Interface Improvements, including:
Quest notifications now showed correctly during dialogues.
Corrected texts and missing interaction prompts.
Noted to be addressed in future updates:
Analogue sticks dead zones bugfixes.
A-Life system bugfixes.
If you want to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, it's out now for both PC and Xbox Series S/X, and it's also included with Game Pass.