Long overdue, the release date for the first expansion pack of the sequel, heavily criticized for being launched in an unfinished state, titled Cost of Hope, is... closer than everyone suspected.
Its not July 30, neither early September. Its August 20 2026 instead, which a lot of people didn't believe in August being the month, myself too. Not only we have a concrete timeframe of when to expect the new story to become playable, major Update 2.0 also is confirmed to roll out alongside the extra content, as said by the community managers beforehand, so on that regard, props to the marketing team for staying true to their word.
Plus. Hey, the accompanying trailer contains 2-ish seconds of the ever so frequently requested device we didn't have thus far because of rendering distance limitations, marking it the first time we ever see the player handle the binoculars.
Things lookin' on point, as usual. Question is, by how much will everything else outside of the performance enhancements, be retouched. AI is what I'm primarily interested at as that's 50% of what STALKER is about, with the rest 50% being the atmosphere.
Hopefully the base game will also receive some love in areas not deemed rich enough in terms of side activities as places can be found shallow at times without having any engaging stuff to do rather than roam around. More varying quests will be refreshing to have! Hopefully, eh...