GSC Game World’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl launched last year, giving players the opportunity to embark in the highly anticipated experience and follow-up to the franchise. Taking place in the Chornoybl Exclusion Zone, players head in to find anomalies and survive against the hordes of utants and other enemies awaiting.
Ever since the release, the game has been struggling a bit, with its current reviews on Steam sitting at Mixed, with players displeased with some of the updates and lack of features. Update 1.7 addresses some of the concerns and adds a few new updates.
Here’s what you need to know about the changes:
- The new Master difficulty that can only be selected at the beginning of the game.
- A new Expedition mode that has limited saves and only auto-saves when exiting a camp or during certain missions.
- A new Immersive Mode that removes UI elements to walk around the world or for screenshots.
- Two new gameplay and visual anomalies: Steam and Antigravitational Drops.
- A new Light Rainy scenario to diversify the weather variations.
- New animations for mutant deaths.
- UI improvements for consumables, artifacts, and equipment stats.
- A-Life Update where factions can expand control to new territories or outright lose them if they fail to defend them. This expands to both humans and mutants.
- Improved stealth through grass and reeds so you’re less visible when hiding. NPCs are less accurate when shooting through bushes, too, making swamp battles more fair.
- Improved controller aiming for locking and re-aiming.
- A tamina rework with a new running state called Jogging.
- A new negative effect of drinking energy drinks called tremor, which makes aiming more difficult.
The Expedition update for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is out now on Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG.
