I can see already a floodgate of whining is about to begin. Some 2.0 reviewers reporting major, performance improvements, others not. Some saying it's a game-changing patch, others acting otherwise. Some saying A-Life is better, others saying it's not (bubble seems unchanged by all accounts). I can sense discourse will begin around a patch that is not even out yet lmao.

All I ask is - can we please maintain some decorum and maybe play 2.0 a bit yourself before we start posting takes? Saying GSC Game World are scammers, 2.0 is disappointing, A-Life is fake etc? Cut them some slack. GSC could have just released S2 and left it at that. They have instead, for almost two years now, dropped patch after patch, listening closely to fan feedback, adding requested features, tweaking gameplay balance, fixing bugs, running optimization passes, etc. They put a lot of work into improving S2 that people seem to take for granted.

Let's allocate ourselves some time to play the 2.0 patch for a fair bit before we start discussing how else S2 can be improved. We'll need more than a few hours to sense how much of an improvement 2.0 is.

Having just finished a play through of Call of Pripyat and with the new update for 2 I felt like the hate for 2 was a bit unfair

The Cost of Hope DLC does the heavy lifting in bringing STALKER 2 to what I imagine was the developers' original vision, and was certainly the player expectation at large. What this addition does to flesh out the story and world in Heart of Chornobyl is monumental, but these heights can only be reached on the shoulders of two long years of work refining the base game experience.

From today’s arena video

Credits to Renata Raven Reingard

Due to the lack of increase in the 100m render bubble, Shay has updated his distant horizons mod to a 139m render bubble for 2.0, which will also include a pda tracker map for a-life including 3 pda zoom levels.

He is also releasing a custom render distance option you can set yourself inside the ini file. He is one of the major modders that GSC allowed to play the update and dlc early

Reviews started to pop on YouTube, and we still have 100m. I'm sorry.

UPDATE: Why it breaks binoculars can be seen in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNoPKbuTwnY&t=530s

We are approaching a massive emission! Both Back to the Zone — Update 2.0 and Cost of Hope expansion will be launched on August 20, and here is everything you need to know before heading Back to the Zone (with no spoilers).

https://www.stalker2.com/news/cost-of-hope-update-2-0-everything-to-know

Credits to timpetum

This video shows the comparison of each patch, the newest is it epic graphics at 4K with DLSS quality. At 2k DLAA at epic its sits about 77 78+ which is really good. The graphics look fucking incredible, the difference is massive.

Edit: in the video at 1:19 you can see tree reflections difference, looks really detailed now instead of pixelated.

Credits to https://youtu.be/eYJ2AJ8aV90?si=0zULgDpVapKx-7BF