Last week, GSC GameWorld released STALKER 2 for PC and Xbox. Sadly, though, the game feels more like Early Access than a finished product. It has many bugs, problems with its AI, issues with both side quests and main quests, and graphical glitches. And although GSC GameWorld promised A-Life 2.0, this system doesn’t work properly in the game. Luckily, a modder has created a mod to somehow improve it.
So, Roadside Panic is a mod that aims to fix A-Life and overhaul the game’s spawn system. As the modder noted, it will restore most of the online A-Life functionality. So, basically, this is a stopgap measure until GSC fixes A-Life 2.0.
But what can you expect from this mod? Well, by using it, you’ll heavily mitigate cases of enemies appearing out of thin air right behind you. This was an issue that annoyed a lot of players. Moreover, you will significantly extend the A-Life range. Thus, NPC and NPC interactions can be seen and heard from afar. And yes. Like in the previous STALKER games, different factions will now fight for territory at POIs.
Now before getting too excited, we should note that this mod comes with a big performance hit. As the modder noted, Roadside Panic is extremely performance-heavy with its current spawn settings. The good news is that ConnerRia is also working on an optimized version of it.
Those interested can go ahead and download the mod from this link. At the end of the article, you can also find a video for it. So, make sure to watch it as it shows multiple overlapping events taking place in the game.
For those wondering, GSC GameWorld is currently working on the first patch for STALKER 2. This update will NOT fix the A-Life system issues. In this first patch, the devs will focus on more important things like quest blockers, soft locks, crashes, and gameplay/balance issues. So, it might take a while until we see A-Life 2.0 working correctly in the game.
What I’m saying is that you should definitely get this mod. My guess is that it will take over a month until we see A-Life 2.0. That’s a bummer as this was one of the key features of STALKER 2. And yes. This is another reason why I called it a Beta/Early Access release.
In theory, this mod should be compatible with the two mods we shared last week. The first one removes the inventory weight limit, which seems to require some balance tweaks. The second makes the Bloodsuckers and Poltergeists less tanky. Also, be sure to read our PC Performance Analysis.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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