STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl has been a fun experience so far, and as I've navigated through The Zone, I've encountered interesting and compelling side content while progressing through the main missions in the game. That said, one of these main missions fairly early on in the Lesser Zone is totally bugged at the moment, and the entire experience left me feeling exasperated and slightly confused at the end.

STALKER 2's launch wasn't the cleanest ever, with bugs and performance issues plaguing a lot of people, especially those on PC. While most of the bugs are bearable and not game-breaking or save-ending, one potential bug in a predominant main mission totally destroyed my sense of immersion and left me feeling pretty annoyed.

STALKER 2 Behind Seven Seals Mission Feels Bugged

Infinite Waves Of Enemies

"Behind Seven Seals" is part of the main mission and tasks Skif with locating Solder. The mission itself isn't overly difficult until the end, after reaching Solder and speaking to him. And yes, I did spare Solder's life. Once you complete this part of the quest, you need to make your way out of the military base and onto the next part of the quest.

At this point, what seemed like an innumerable number of soldiers spawned onto the map. I made my way down to the bottom floor, setting myself up on an angle of the front doors. Soldier after soldier spawned in, as my ammo quickly ran down to nothing. After killing what was probably 15-20 soldiers, I made my way to the back of the building, hoping to break the chaotic loop of infinite spawns. What I found is that this just triggered another event and another set of spawns, but this time, it was at the back door.

By this point in the mission, my ammo was totally spent. I cycled through the guns, slowly inching myself to the corpses splayed out in the front lobby of the building, trying to get any scrap of ammunition I could from the hapless NPC soldiers brutishly making their way through the door on an infinite loop. Eventually, I realized this would never end, and just made a B-line to the next portion of the quest — ducking and dodging bullets spewed at me by this horde of STALKER 2 NPCs.

The Mission & Infinite Spawns Totally Broke My Immersion

The Worst Mission In STALKER 2

While I'm still having a blast with STALKER 2, this single mission really broke my immersion, and I hope that the developers of GSC Game World fix it soon. I understand that this is a military base, and in real life — they'd probably deploy a lot of soldiers, but the way this mission is broken not only wasted all my resources, but it was just generally not fun and turned STALKER 2 into a COD lobby against a bunch of AI NPCs.

The primary problem seems like there are certain areas within the base that will spawn another wave of enemies. I'm not exactly sure what these zones are, but there was a brief reprieve when I was able to get more ammunition from dead soldiers without more spawning. When trying to leave the base, another set of soldiers spawned in — this time in front and behind me, and it ended up killing me in the end.

Or maybe it was just an oversight. If it's intentional — I think it's probably one of the worst missions in the game.

In a game where repairing a bulletproof vest can drain all of my credits, this section was incredibly frustrating. I wanted to stand my ground, as I truly thought that the horde would stop the onslaught at some point. The worst part of this quest is that it's part of the main questline in the game, so, likely, everyone who has played STALKER 2 (unless they patch it by the time this article is published) has experienced this same thing.

I Left Behind All The Great Loot

Talk About Leaving Coupons On The Table

The worst part of all of it is the fact that because the spawns never ended, I never got to loot all the soldiers I killed. When I restarted at the previous save, I just ran straight to the next quest marker, trying to avoid soldiers instead of killing them. This added another layer of disappointment on top of the immersion-breaking from the quest itself. Hopefully, this is fixed, so more players don't have to endure the same thing.

It would be fine if this section had a lot of soldiers, 30 or even 40 — but randomly spawning in at random triggers does not make for a fun or realistic experience. This is just me guessing, but perhaps this part of the game is hampered by the technical limitations that also affected the A-Life system. Or maybe it was just an oversight. If it's intentional — I think it's probably one of the worst missions in the game.

Small Bugs Can Ruin The Game Experience

STALKER 2 Has Good Bones, But The Execution Is Lacking In Places

STALKER 2 has a deep and interesting story filled with stakes that actually affect outcomes in the game. That said, these small bugs, especially ones at the start of the game, can really hamper the experience, especially for those who don't already have an established affinity to the franchise via previous titles. Other than getting permanently stuck and some stuttering and performance issues in some places, I've luckily not encountered many other bugs in STALKER 2 so far.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that the same could be said for everyone, with posts on Reddit and inside Steam Reviews showing a mixed overall experience with the game's performance (though it's now at Very Positive on Steam) thus far. This is sad to me because technical shortcomings should not be a reason for STALKER 2 to get less exposure, but it's certainly something that plays into initial impressions of the game and has probably put a decent-sized chunk of the audience off from it.

Luckily, the last patch fixed over 650 issues, so my prediction is that STALKER 2 will age like a fine wine, much like Cyberpunk 2077. The start is pretty rough, but hopefully, this new injection of revenue will give GSC what it needs to refine and perfect the game — with people discovering what a gem it is for years to come.

Source: Steam