Stalker 2 developer GSC Game World has explained exactly what's happening with the game's much-touted A-Life 2.0 game AI system, including why mention of the system was removed from Stalker 2's Steam page and why the system itself doesn't seem to be working properly.
Speaking to IGN, GSC Game World creative director Maria Grygorovych and CEO Ievgen Grygorovych (a husband-and-wife duo) say that the A-Life 2.0 system is, in fact, in Stalker 2, but that like much of the rest of the game, it's riddled with bugs.
First, it's worth explaining what A-Life 2.0 is supposed to be. The original Stalker included a system called A-Life, which would essentially dictate NPC behavior. It would simulate NPC movement through the game's world; in essence, NPCs didn't magically spawn around you in Stalker, but had their own paths and lives instead.
A-Life 2.0 was, as you've probably surmised, supposed to be an advanced version of that system. GSC Game World talked up its inclusion prior to release, but at launch, Stalker 2 seemed to tell a different story for many.
Fans pointed out that, contrary to the way A-Life 2.0 was supposed to create organic paths for NPCs, characters were instead simply spawning around players, and the game's AI seemed prescriptive and scripted to others.
In fact, the apparent failure of Stalker 2's A-Life 2.0 system to function was one of the sticking points for our very own Robert N. Adams. In his review, he talks about how the game's sudden NPC spawning "breaks immersion", describing Stalker 2's handling of enemy spawns as "downright clumsy".
A couple of weeks ago, Stalker 2 players noticed that A-Life 2.0 had been removed from the game's Steam description, with mention of the system being replaced by a somewhat more generic promise of "advanced artificial intelligence systems".
Now, in the IGN interview, Maria Grygorovych says A-Life 2.0 was removed from Stalker 2's Steam page by a marketing staffer who felt the term wouldn't make sense to Stalker newcomers and wouldn't help to sell the game.
According to Maria, this marketing staffer told her that "there will be a lot of new players who don't know what A-Life is" and that he removed the term "without any discussion or permission".
As for the A-Life 2.0 system itself, Ievgen says that optimization forced GSC Game World to reduce the spawn area for NPCs around the player, which is why some Stalker 2 players have noticed NPCs seemingly popping into existence around them.
A-Life 2.0 is supposed to work with a very wide spawn area for NPCs, but this area was reduced in order to free up memory for the game and improve its performance.
Ievgen is insistent that A-Life 2.0 will be fixed and that it will eventually work as intended, but for now, the focus seems to be on fixing Stalker 2's bugs, which is fairly understandable given just how many of them there seemed to be at launch.
Stalker 2 is available now for PC and Xbox Series X|S. It's also part of Xbox Game Pass, so if you've got an Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscription, you can enjoy it at no extra cost.
