Stalker 2 Gets First Patch Notes Fixing Game Breaking Bugs and More

Stalker 2 has announced its first update and its patch notes confirm it will fix some game breaking bugs. Stalker 2 is one of the last major releases for 2024 and one of the big exclusives for Xbox. The game has been in the works in various forms for about a decade and a half, much to the frustration of fans everywhere. It looked like for a while it was never going to happen, but it finally materialized this month after a ton of challenges.

On top of standard development challenges, Stalker 2 developer GSC World is based in Ukraine, meaning it was in the center of a warzone and some of its staff had to go fight in the war against Russia. The developer had an office fire and was also hacked and had playable builds leaked far in advance. All of this played a part in the game being delayed multiple years, but it’s finally here.

While a lot of people are getting on well with Stalker 2 and it has already sold over a million copies, the game is quite janky. This is to be expected with this franchise, but given it is exposed to a more mainstream audience with Xbox’s marketing behind it and its availability on Xbox Game Pass, it has caused some frustration among players looking for a meaty new RPG, especially since it has a huge file size. Thankfully, GSC World is hard at work at fixing things such as bugs that prevent players from progressing in the main quest, NPCs getting stuck in objects, crashing, and a number of other issues. The developer has also addressed some problems that won’t be fixed until a later update, including dead zone issues on controller. The update for Stalker 2 will release sometime this coming week, but GSC World has yet to nail down a specific day.

You can view the full patch notes below.

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.