S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2

[hepcat]

[jztemple2]

According to the devs, these are the final system requirements



I'm too tired from a late night farming to figure out where my GeForce RTX 3080 10GB falls on their requirements. I'm guessing it's good for the "High" category.

[Daehawk]

Im way behind on my tech.

[Daehawk]

[jztemple2]

In anticipation of playing this game I picked up Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham this weekend at a Goodwill Bookstore.

[Blackhawk]

A copy of Roadside Picnic would have been a good choice, too.

[jztemple2]

Global release times:

[hitbyambulance]

i'm thinking of going for the ultimate set...

[Daehawk]

i'm thinking of going for the ultimate set...

God I wish I could! Ive been a fan since the beginning. Ive replayed them many times and modded them up. I would love to have that artifact lamp and backpack. But I cant justify nearly $500 for a game and some objects to just keep when I still have bills to pay and a mortgage to finish. Not to mention a car to fix and a PC to build or replace.

[Max Peck]

Yeah, the physical ultimate edition looks pretty sweet, but at this point the only way to get one would almost certainly involve paying an exorbitant scalper markup. It sounds like they will do a second production run, but I'd imagine that is already more than spoken for by people who've signed up for back orders.

[Max Peck]

It sounds like it's a good thing there is no preload on Steam. According to some reports, after preloading 146G and then 2 patches (16G and 139G), the total bandwidth consumption for console early birds is topping 300G, with still a day to go before the game is actually live.

[jztemple2]

From the devs just now: Deluxe and Ultimate Editions Bonuses: It's time to reveal what the Zone provides to the owners of Ultimate and Deluxe Editions!

It's time to reveal what the Zone provides to the owners of Ultimate and Deluxe Editions! Keep in mind that the bonus items won’t be in your backpack from the start — you’ll need to explore the Zone and hunt down stashes to collect your loot.

All the details are in the text of the article.

[Holman]

A copy of Roadside Picnic would have been a good choice, too.

When you've read that and seen the movie Stalker, Geoff Dyer's Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room is definitely worth a read. It's a smart, fascinating, and highly personal meditation on the meaning of the movie and its vision.

[Holman]

In anticipation of playing this game I picked up Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham this weekend at a Goodwill Bookstore.

BTW, if you haven't seen the Chernobyl miniseries, it is some of the best TV ever produced.

[jztemple2]

OK, I'm in, but just the regular edition. That's quite a price jump from the vanilla one to the Deluxe.

[gbasden]

In anticipation of playing this game I picked up Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham this weekend at a Goodwill Bookstore.

Very good book!

[Max Peck]

The reviews are out, with an initial Metascore of 77 for PC and 81 for XBox.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/stalker ... chornobyl/

[jztemple2]

The reviews are out, with an initial Metascore of 77 for PC and 81 for XBox.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/stalker ... chornobyl/

Some of those reviews are a little discouraging . I'm hoping we don't have another CP2077 on our hands.

[Max Peck]

The reviews are out, with an initial Metascore of 77 for PC and 81 for XBox.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/stalker ... chornobyl/

Some of those reviews are a little discouraging . I'm hoping we don't have another CP2077 on our hands.

I'm not too worried about it just yet. The reviews are based on prelaunch code, while there is plenty of reporting of significant patches seen by people who preloaded on XBox, so unless they are breaking as much as they fix I expect the game to be in better shape today than what the reviewers had to work with. Besides, are you really a STALKER fan if you can't tolerate a fair bit of jank?

Also, for the record, CP2077 was fine at launch on a PC that met the hardware requirements. It wasn't bug-free by any means, but it wasn't a disaster. That "catastrophic" launch story really only applies to the unfortunate decision to launch the game on previous-gen consoles that just weren't capable of running it.

[coopasonic]

I'm hoping we don't have another CP2077 on our hands.

You mean another game that I thoroughly enjoy at release on my high end gaming PC while everyone else complains? I'd be ok with that. On the other hand, this sounds worse but I also think expectations here are lower and people may be somewhat more forgiving. This isn't a follow-up to Witcher 3.

Regardless I'll be trying it out in about an hour and will report back on my experiences.

[jztemple2]

I'm hoping we don't have another CP2077 on our hands.

You mean another game that I thoroughly enjoy at release on my high end gaming PC while everyone else complains? I'd be ok with that.

I was in the same situation, CP2077 ran fine for me on PC but lots of others saw bugs.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the one release on Steam this week that worked fine was from Ubisoft?

We're heading out for several hours so I won't even be starting the download till later, but I'll be watching this thread and see how folks are doing.

[stimpy]

I'm hoping we don't have another CP2077 on our hands.

You mean another game that I thoroughly enjoy at release on my high end gaming PC while everyone else complains? I'd be ok with that. On the other hand, this sounds worse but I also think expectations here are lower and people may be somewhat more forgiving. This isn't a follow-up to Witcher 3.

Regardless I'll be trying it out in about an hour and will report back on my experiences when I finish it by end of day.

Ftfy

[coopasonic]

I'm hoping we don't have another CP2077 on our hands.

You mean another game that I thoroughly enjoy at release on my high end gaming PC while everyone else complains? I'd be ok with that. On the other hand, this sounds worse but I also think expectations here are lower and people may be somewhat more forgiving. This isn't a follow-up to Witcher 3.

Regardless I'll be trying it out in about an hour and will report back on my experiences when I finish it by end of day.

Ftfy

One of the reviews mentioned 35 hours so maybe give me until tomorrow.

[coopasonic]

Steam's letting me download now.

[jztemple2]

Advice from PC Gamer

It's brilliant, bizarre, and a little busted, but I love Stalker 2. Which is lucky, since I've spent pretty much the entire past week doing almost nothing but play it. And now here I am, aglow with the wisdom of over two full days in Chornobyl’s exclusion zone, to give you my number one tip for playing. The one thing you should do before all else to make sure you have a good time.

For the love of god, switch the voiceover language to Ukrainian

[Scraper]

From the reviews I've read it seems like it might be a good idea to wait a couple of weeks and let them patch it up. I'm torn though, I have it preinstalled and ready to go on the Series X and I want to fire it up, but at the same time I don't want to ruin the experience if a significant patch isn't too far away that will address a lot of the criticism.

[jztemple2]

From the PC Gamer review

It's excellent, and undoubtedly my personal game of the year, but here comes the caveat. I meant what I said: Stalker 2 is Stalker to the bone, and that means the bad stuff too. There were errors, crashes, progress-halting bugs and at-times hilarious glitches in animation and AI, plus minor stuttering that I just came to accept as the price of admission, even at 1440p on my 3700X, RTX 4080, and 32GB RAM-equipped machine. And though a meaty day-one patch has helped a lot, the game still feels rickety: a bit stuttery, with AI that still sometimes fails to distinguish between friend and foe, and so on.

[coopasonic]

A little over an hour in and all seems fine other than accidentally eating food like 7 times.

I dies 5 times in the prologue playing on the middle difficulty. No real issues so far.

[Scraper]

A little over an hour in and all seems fine other than accidentally eating food like 7 times.

I dies 5 times in the prologue playing on the middle difficulty. No real issues so far.

Hopefully the day 1 patch fixed a lot of the issues the reviewers are talking about.

[jztemple2]

From the devs

This is a project of endless love and passion from the entire team. We genuinely believe that this is felt throughout — you’ll feel it in the handcrafted world, you’ll feel it in the laboratory and in the poppy fields, or during the first emission, or intense battle with a bloodsucker, or the stylish reload of your new gun, or first seeing Prypiat under the moonlight. There are so many things in the game that we are incredibly proud of.

Nevertheless, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is a massive game. We understand that in such a game, there may still be rough edges: we literally haven't released anything of this scale before. We’re absolutely committed to being here, monitoring your feedback, and quickly fixing any issues that need our attention. In the first days after release, we’ll be working with hotfixes, rolling them out as precisely as possible, but as frequently as we can. Then, we’ll switch to larger updates that include constant improvements. There will also be free in-game content — we’ll share its roadmap later in December. We have big plans for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe. In a way, today is both a return and the beginning of a grand new journey.

[gbasden]

I'm hoping we don't have another CP2077 on our hands.

You mean another game that I thoroughly enjoy at release on my high end gaming PC while everyone else complains? I'd be ok with that.

Maybe even moreso - apparently the game is very CPU dependent. It really wants high end equipment.

Stalker 2 is really demanding on your processor, and I suspect a lot of players stepping into the game today will run into performance issues due to their processor. For context, even with a new Ryzen 9 9950X with 16 cores and some of the highest performance money can buy, the game peaked at 88% utilization and averaged 59% utilization over a 15-minute performance test.
...
I suspect some mixture of the large open world — the map is 60 square kilometers large — and the A-Life system that simulates interactions outside of the player’s view play a big role in these routine stutters. Apparently, similar to older Stalker games, A-Life is running at all times across the whole map, which explains the high CPU requirements.

It sounds like the systems they have in place are really fantastic, though, and I'm glad they are implementing these cutting edge ideas. I'm going to pick it up tonight, but I may wait for a couple of weeks to get a few patches in before I start.

[jztemple2]

A little over an hour in and all seems fine other than accidentally eating food like 7 times.

Yup, going to have to rebind those keys

I chickened out and went with Rookie difficulty, I cite old age and appalling slow reactions for this

Also, the game defaulted to Epic for the graphics settings . I turned on Vsync so my max will be sixty and right now as I approach the wall it is almost at that.

Article from PC Game, 6 things you shouldn't miss early in Stalker 2. I looked at the first one and while it's a bit of a spoiler, it also is a big of a help. So YMMV.

[coopasonic]

Just under 5 hours and hit my first crash to desktop. Quicksave is your friend. I am finding the difficulty of some of the enemies to be a bit over the top. I hope as my power ramps up, they go down a bit easier. My system defaulted to Epic as well. I haven't felt the need to adjust anything yet.

[jztemple2]

Just under 5 hours and hit my first crash to desktop. Quicksave is your friend. I am finding the difficulty of some of the enemies to be a bit over the top. I hope as my power ramps up, they go down a bit easier. My system defaulted to Epic as well. I haven't felt the need to adjust anything yet.

Which difficulty are you using?

[coopasonic]

Just under 5 hours and hit my first crash to desktop. Quicksave is your friend. I am finding the difficulty of some of the enemies to be a bit over the top. I hope as my power ramps up, they go down a bit easier. My system defaulted to Epic as well. I haven't felt the need to adjust anything yet.

Which difficulty are you using?

The middle one. I just got jumped by four of the enemies that shall not be named (or seen) I took two out when I thought there were only two and then ran when the other two showed themselves. I'm starting to think this game is puppies.

[jztemple2]

I'm starting to think this game is puppies.

Puppies?

[Isgrimnur]

Puppies are bullshit.

[coopasonic]

I'm starting to think this game is puppies.

Puppies?

I suspect artistic license. Still, "puppies are bullshit!" is a great catchphrase.

[Scraper]

I tried to play the intro. My first impressions aren't great. My first complaint is that the game is super dark. So dark that im playing in a completely dark room and I cranked the brightness and it's still hard to see. My next problem was that I kept getting jumped by an invisible enemy just outside of the opening bunker and it kept killing me. This really sucks when the load times are as long as they are. I finally get past the invisible enemy and my character decides that he moves like he has cement shoes. I reload and he's still slower than a sloth.


Long story short I might wait a bit for patches to play this one.

[jztemple2]

Maybe a silly question, but did you have your flashlight turned on?