Hi Chornobyl explorers,
It's already been a week since we launched Early Access and started collecting feedback on the overall game from our community worldwide.
What did you like as the game highlights?
💚 Open world, its atmosphere and its exploration.
💚 Amount of activities you can take within a game.
💚 Variety of gameplay mechanics, combat, and customization options.
💚 Interesting story premise and different conversation options.
💚 Switchable first-person and third-person perspectives.
The above is an excellent message because it's exactly how we wanted Chernobylite 2 to be perceived. The only reasonable comment for this is that we plan to keep working to improve this aspects wherever they can be improved. But we also thank you a lot for all your words of appreciation and heartwarming notes you're sending to us to let us know that you enjoy our vision and the direction of the project. High five! 💚
What you didn't like especially?
☢️ Optimization issues, lack of balance in certain aspects, and bugs.
☢️ Lack of proper language text localization (machine translation) and occasionally used AI-generated voices.
☢️ The fact that co-op missions are limited only to specific areas of the game and not available all the time.
This deserves more attention here because these are the areas we need to address with top priorities.
First, each point falls into a different category of things that can be evaluated from the perspective of what can be done and when.
We have to admit with complete openness: only the first of these things - optimization, balance issues and bugs - was fully expected by us, for a relatively simple reason: we have been testing the game for a long time, both internally and externally, and we are pretty aware of how much work remains in the area of optimization and bug fixing. Here, Early Access was primarily intended to help us collect additional data on the frequency of various technical glitches and their annoyance, which we want to translate into prioritizing the tasks of fixing these inconveniences. In this regard, our activities are proceeding according to plan so far - we have already published the first hotfix, which addressed some of the most significant glitches suitable for correction in recent days, and we plan to publish more hotfixes in the coming days.
The following two aspects - language localization and dialogue recordings - address flaws that we knew about but whose importance we underestimated from the point of view of Early Access reception and directly translate into changes in our priorities for the near future.
In short, we are preparing a major update to the game, in which we will solve the issues of text localization and voice recordings of actors. We are currently in the process of both translating the entire game text by human translators working with us, as well as recording with real actors and implementing those lines of dialogue that, for various reasons, we did not manage to insert into the game before the launch of Early Access. We estimate that this work will take no more than a few weeks, and we are preparing to publish it along with the first mega-patch, which, in any case, was scheduled for April. With this patch, in April, we'll reveal the roadmap of the Early Access with all milestones we're planning to deliver to you, not only fixes and improvements but also new content, features, and extra surprises.
Last but not least is the matter of co-op scope and availability in the game. This is where we need to do a deeper evaluation of your opinions and comments, as our game is a heavily story-driven game based on similar narrative assumptions as Chernobylite 1, and there is no easy way to shift the emphasis toward cooperative play without demolishing other design assumptions. We will certainly continue to listen to your feedback on all aspects of the cooperative missions and explore the possibility of a different exposition and development of them. Still, we must ask for your patience in this regard, as any changes in this area would inherently affect all other aspects of the game. We certainly don't want to spoil anything you think is well-conceived and executed so far.
Of course, there's much more to the details of your feedback—we're reading all of your comments, reviews, and messages carefully. We'll update you on the progress and next steps here, on Steam, and on our social media channels.
Don't forget that you can still publish your in-game screenshots in our Virtual Photography contest and win cool prizes, or if you simply like enjoying nice pictures, take a look on our Community Hub to see what others have already published.
We're working on our new game! Add it to your wishlist!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2075100/Chernobylite_2_Exclusion_Zone/