Enemies in the survival shooter Stalker 2 have a comical habit of appearing right behind you, like a panto villain with an AK-47. This is not a planned ambush by bright soldiers controlled by artificial intelligence, it is simply the result Janky appears. These botched encounters are unlike previous games, where roving bands of factional assassins patrolled radioactive wastelands, seemingly at their own whim. Developers at GSC Game World once called this roaming bad guy feature “A-life” – basically a jargon term for simulating enemies that led to “emerging” moments of violence and conflict. This was promised to be a feature in Stalker 2, but many players have noticed that it appears to be absent. Over the weekend, GSC insisted that the simulation was 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 this feature in official FAQ. “A-Life 2.0 is a system simulating life in the Zone. Factions and mutants fight for living space, migrate, conquer new places or retreat to safer areas. A-Life makes the Zone truly alive and unpredictable.”
It’s difficult to say if this is currently present in Stalker 2. Right now it seems like enemies spawn in a straight radius around the player, and sometimes you can even see them spawn in the world. If you can’t see the enemy itself when it appears, you will see a white sight marker that will suddenly show that you have been immediately spotted by the bad guy who has materialized somewhere behind you. It’s not the smartest spawning system, but I think it keeps you on the edge of your seat. This also doesn’t apply to every type of enemy encounter – some are scripted, while others have bandits and soldiers tied to specific locations, which makes the encounters feel more naturalistic.
Enemies also fight each other when they come into contact, but more often than not it happens when a group of bandidos or a pack of blind dogs shows up near an enemy camp just because you’re there. I have come across roaming groups of Stalkers, but again their appearance is sudden and they are more likely to walk straight into toxic waste and become brain dead than to engage in emerging encounters with wildlife. I definitely haven’t seen any (unscripted) instances of factions “taking new places” or “retreating to safer areas” as the developer’s definition suggests.
After a few players complained about the A-life system was absent (and indicated that there was mention of this function edited from the Steam website) developers responded on Discord and Reddit, saying that the system does indeed exist, but bugs prevent it from working as intended.
“There are several known issues with A-life 2.0 that we are aware of and are working on fixes/improvements,” said the studio’s Discord community manager Stalker (as noted Computer gamer). “We know this system is very important to the Zone providing an immersive experience, so we will make every effort to fix known issues.”
It doesn’t assist that “A-life” is (and always has been) a buzzword, even more vaguely defined than Battlefield’s “levolution” or Call Of Duty’s recent “omnimovement.” This leads to confusion and mixed expectations from players as to what this feature actually involves. From the developer’s point of view, according to GSC, the matter is also complicated by the fact that two different systems in the game are responsible for creating theoretically organic shootings. Both probably need to be improved to make the world feel inhabited by competing groups roaming around. For each bug report or complaint they receive, they must determine which system is responsible for the unintended behavior.
“Combat AI and A-Life 2.0 are two different things,” notes one of the creators response to complaint on Reddit. “One is essentially the ‘brain’ for combat scenarios, while the other is the overall and more complex system that tries to manage life in the Zone.”
Meanwhile, the first patch for the shooter will be released soon, according to GSC, which recently published details about the planned patches. Many of them are said to be related to crashes, softlocks, balance adjustments and other high priority items. However, at the bottom of the list are “A-Life system bug fixes”, which further suggests that the studio considers them crucial enough that they will fix them soon.
