Mods are already out to fix it, but it’s not unlikely they tied a bunch of functions to timescale so that longer days screw up AI/Emissions/Quests etc.

The keybinds are absolutely atrocious and I was staggered that so many were unable to be re-bound. Quick Melee is “V” and you can’t change it??

The beefy mutants are absolutely a problem and made me actually switch from Veteran to Stalker difficulty simply because those bullet sponges are not fun gameplay. Otherwise in the long sequence of inane design decisions the absurdly fast timescale (24h in game in a single real life hour!!!) is pulling me out of immersion a lot as well. I hope it can be modded without breaking everything because I just want to be able to savour these beautiful areas and weathers for a bit while exploring without weather changing and night falling every 5 minutes!

Lastly, and I haven’t gotten far enough to see much of it yet, but most importantly will be the A-life implementation and how much of it is actually fixable with patches. That was what made the other STALKER games feel alive, and the devs have at least acknowledged that it’s not working at the moment. Hopefully that means the engine for it is actually there though and can be patched. Unless they’re lying to save face, I suppose.

You know what, I agree. And I would love to see the look on Todd Howard’s face if Fallout: London wins GotY. It should be eligible for that reason alone.

I have a 7800X3D and a 4070TI, running the game at 3413x1920 with DLDSR on my 1440p monitor with everything on Epic and DLSS on Balanced. For the most part, I’m sitting at 65-85 FPS. However both frame drops and stutters are pretty bad, and performance tanks in the populated first town area (forgetting its name), regularly hitting 45-55 FPS. To note also, frame gen doesn’t seem to work for me. It works for a couple of minutes, then it starts behaving like a memory leak: getting me down to sub 10 FPS until it crashes or I reboot the game. This doesn’t happen with frame gen off.

On that subject though, I’m getting frequent crashes anyway. The first two hours yesterday were fine, but I’ve had 4 fatal error CTDs today. Very disappointing.

It breaks my heart to read about all the bugs and performance issues. Not that they were entirely unexpected - especially since it’s a STALKER game - but I was hoping for a miracle. I really, really want this game to succeed and the game itself sounds like they hit it out the park. I just hope launching in this state doesn’t ruin the game’s reputation and sales.

Could be, could be. I think your suggestion would make for a better game with less conflict between what the main story is saying and what the game is presenting in the open world. Having the story emphasize how fast V is dying, only for the player to then fuck around with car races and random merc contracts and whatnot really doesn’t work all that well as far as immersion goes.

Jackie’s death would have also been much more impactful if we’d have spent all that time with him playing through those six months.

I always felt like the game was originally never meant to be an open-world game, it’s as if they were going for a mission-to-mission corridor kind of game and wrapped up a world around it to walk around in at a later phase.

That’s my take on it too. The story they wanted to tell does not mesh well with an open world game, but since the people loudly wanted something like “RDR 2 but Cyberpunk” they felt obliged to attempt to shoehorn it in.

The whole cutscene thing with Jackie after the intro feels like it was supposed to be actual gameplay, but was just cut out and changed to a cutscene to skip time.

Completely agree. I think having you play through that part would have made a huge impact on how you connect with Jackie. Maybe they felt it would have pushed the Keanu introduction too deep into the game?

I’ve been trying to get back in the game a couple of times, but it often just feels so lifeless and lacks any depth.

They’ve added some touches to the open world, but I think it was too fundamentally broken to be easily patched. The new skill tree from 2.0 is actually good though and I think the combat is pretty fun in its current state, even without going to mods.

It’s inspirational what they’ve done. I really hope the launch goes well.

Are you working on the STALKER 2 team?

Already pre-ordered the Ultimate edition. Goes against my usual principles but I don’t care in this instance. I hope the game is a massive, GotY contending success.

Unity is flawed, but somewhat of an underrated gem. It’s such a shame that it released in the state it did and got the reception it did because that’s pretty much what caused Ubisoft to pivot into the style of the Origins and onwards style games.

Imagine what could have been if they built on what they had in Unity? The free run up/down system had so much potential and - while janky - the Unity parkour can produce some of the most pleasing, slick and stylish sequences. Just look at the stuff people are pulling off!

Also, revolutionary Paris is the best realised city they’ve ever made for an Assassin’s Creed game.

There is also Red Info which is Robert Kurvitz, Alex Rostov, Helen Hindpere and Martin Luiga. They are apparently working on something and will probably make an announcement next year (according to Martin Luiga on his recent Human Can Opener podcast appearance).

All I want is a final proper send-off Splinter Cell before he dies. Sam Fisher’s final job type vibe. I think there is some cool potential there - not that I trust Ubisoft to pull it off, mind.

Same. It depends on the game though, obviously. If I’m playing Deadlock or something similar (fast paced and competitive) I’m not going to go for graphics fidelity. But anything single player? 60 FPS is perfectly fine and ray traced lighting can make a huge visual impact. Both Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk looked great with RT and well worth forgoing 100+ FPS.

The only real qualm I have is the lack of Ukrainian and Russian accents on the English dub. I don’t really understand the thought process as I felt like it added a lot of character and immersion to both the originals and to the Metro games.

Otherwise I’m optimistic, I think the game looks good and they’ve been saying all the right things. Game journalists who have played it also report things that make me feel very hopeful, both in terms of micro gameplay (atmosphere, tension and isolation without reliance on jump scares) and macro gameplay (decisions mattering, branching stories and factions).

I pre-ordered the ultimate edition regardless to support the studio after the horrors they’ve survived over the war, including losing colleagues to the frontline.

I’m in a bit of a down period as STALKER 2 is coming out soon so I don’t want to pick up a new story campaign from my backlog in the meantime (Metro: Exodus, Bioshock Infinite and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided are on the docket) in case I’m not finished in time for release day.

Still playing lots of Deadlock, but for a single player story game I’ve gone back to some bits of RDR 2 when I’m not in the competitive mood. I started it earlier this year but abandoned it as I burnt out on it a bit. Coming back to it has been a very mixed experience, there is still so much about it I love - but also some very deep frustrations. And absence hasn’t really made the heart grow fonder in that regard. I don’t really like the mission structure. I know it’s been brought up by others, but I too seem to be among those who are bothered by it. I also find the sheer body count forced on you through main story missions to be so ludicrous as to regularly ruin my immersion. I’m not even that far in and I’ve already basically committed genocide levels of murder! And then the mission is over and nobody is talking about the massacre of hundreds of lawmen?

I think that was supposed to be an attempt at an accent?

For sure, STALKER is just not the same without Cheeki Breeki!

I still can’t get over how “wrong” it sounds and feels to have native English speaking accents for the voice work instead of the heavy Ukrainian and Russian accents. This is one to play with Ukrainian VA and English subtitles for sure.

Love this game. Ever since trying the VR mod though I’ve been dying for official support. Imagine using the proper VR controls to pop handbrake and steer the car, would be the most immersive thing!

Still, even with that said if you like the game and have access to a VR headset It’s still worth giving it a go, it really fits the game I think.