A-life alone wont fix the main issues with the game.

A lot of attention is being rightly directed towards A-life, but I don't think people realize just how many changes and fixes will need to be implemented AS WELL for this to make a difference. I'm worried people are sugar coating the future of this game by assuming everything will be fine when it's added.

If A-life was fixed tomorrow, there would still be several massive issues that still hold the game back. In my opinion they are;

-Loot. While roaming squads of bandits might provide more chance for a decent early weapon, we will quickly find ourselves facing the same issues that we have with stashes.... The loot is awful and not worth the investment of retrieving it. The 2 broken mp5's will be just as useless, The 3 rounds of 9mm and the bottle of water and 2 bandages aren't worth the bullets you fire to retrieve them. The med kit will be stored with the other 300 in my stash.

-Optics. Its more than a little telling that the developers only balanced the game around a 75m spawn bubble in the end. The scopes are very poor for long range combat, lacking the zoom and precision found in the older games. Couple this with the absurd bullet drop (again, I'm sure balanced around 75m). You can see a sniper round fall the whole height of the scope at only 200m. My air rifle has more range than half of the weapons in this game. 5.56 from most rifles will plummet to earth just over 100m away. They have worse ballistics than a subsonic .22

-Dialogue combat. This one annoys the hell out of me. If ever you find yourself talking to a group, who decide to start a fight (something we might see more of with A-life) the game will put your weapon away, and lock you in place as the AI all pull out their weapons and mag dump you. There seems to be no way around this other than getting lucky and reloading a save, until you take less hits, and don't need a mortgage for the armor repair.

-Difficulty balancing. I made the shameful choice to drop down to stalker difficulty last night, and I cant recommend it enough. I've beat all the old games, anomaly and gamma, but the artificial difficulty, I.E prices and repairs on stalker 2 are just so tedious, and so lore breaking, that its not worth whatever extra gameplay challenges it brings.

-Price balancing (veteran). Finding an artifact valued at 20,500 and having a sale price of 2070 is ridiculous. It makes artifacts no more than junk, otherworldly, important objects, one of the main focuses of the whole franchise, are worth less than a half dead AK74. Even playing like an absolute loot goblin, I realized I would never get to upgrade half the guns, half the armors that I'd like to. It felt like I had all this cool gear, none of which will be upgraded until long after its irrelevant. I'm not expecting to fully upgrade every item in game, but surely upgrading my Saiga shouldn't cost me 30 mid tier artifacts. If your argument is that good loot should be scarce, then that's understandable, but tell that to the 300 med kits in my stash.

Gun Balancing. a 9x18 bullet should not do more damage than a rifle round. It should not do more damage than a .45 It should not do the same damage as a giant subsonic round designed to do massive tissue damage... The calibers need a complete rework.

-Durability. Not much to say on this, its super silly, super tedious, and makes high difficulties an exercise in frustration. Lugging 100kg of loot back to base, selling everything and being -4000 coupons after repairs is just shite. -1930 coupons if you were lucky enough to pick up an artifact on the way.

AI- There are clearly a lot of cut corners with the AI in general. Shooting through walls, shooting through bushes, ignoring the bloodsucker murdering the gang to try and wall bang the rat in the basement... we've all seen it. It needs far more work than just existing in the world.

-Shadows and brightness- I'm sick of taking heavy damage because the building I'm flighting inside is literally black after 10 meters. The AI can see me, but all I can see are the muzzle flashes. Fighting a controller who is basically invisible at the end of a dark corridor is not a fun time.

-Mutants. While the HP changes were great, I am very disappointed at the lack of variety. Even with bloodsuckers being the most popular mutant at the games start, I find the variations to be a let down. The individual mutants are identical to each other, and I just wish there was some more creativity and variety in their design. They also have awful combat AI, for example I saw a cat and a boar fighting infinitely, as neither's pathing could hit the other, meaning they were just running in circles together never landing an attack.

There are more issues. But these are the biggest ones for me. I'm worried the devs are getting off easy, and I'm even more worried that A-life 2 seems to be regarded as some kind of miracle cure.

If the game cost me £30 I could understand it being half finished. But it didn't. It was full price, it should include the systems and features advertised for the price we paid.

And for fuck sake, don't vote this game of the year. Its a disservice to so many other games and devs.