Bug: cannot progress in the game

coldsteelblue

Hi guys, new to this forum
Anyhoo my problem
I'm playing on the PS4 version & I've encountered a huge problem & cannot progress in the game at all. I've just seen Neera at the bridge district, she's saved the girl & teleported away, but now, whenever I try to leave the district, no matter where I choose to go, the game crashes to the xmb menu, 100% of the time, meaning it is literally impossible for me to progress at all. I have tried uninstalling & re-installing, but nothing, does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks

ThacoBell

Ugh, this one again. I'm sorry, but the only way I've found around this bug is to use the dev console. I don't think that's available on the console versions. Its been plaguing my games for a long time too.

@JuliusBorisov Any ideas?

coldsteelblue

This again? Wow, sounds like it's been a problem in the past, this is not good, how did such a serious bug make it passed QA?
I was able to load an old save & exit from the other end of the map, but still, I know I have it waiting for me when I go back to the bridge district, this is a serious oversight, especially since the EE launched what, 7 years ago? This should've been addressed.
Thanks for the info anyway

ThacoBell

Its one of those hard to track bugs, because it seems to be random, like the infamous Genie glitch. It doesn't happen on every save (and is pretty rare, another reason why it probably slipped through), but when it happens on a save, it happens every time on that file. As far as I can tell, its something that broke in the 2.5 patch. It was the first time I encountered it, and I never any reports on its before then.
The problem might be because of a spell effect not loading properly, or possibly too many effects active at once. If your party has any spells or buffs active on them, try letting them run out, or remove the equipment that has the effect. I don't actually know if this would work, but one of the solutions was using the console to disable some effects.
If you do manage to get past, DONT ATTEMPT RASAAD'S QUEST. His cutscenes have the same issue, and in my experice, if the error pops up on your file for one, it probably will for the other too. Neera's only issue seems to be her city "ambush". I've seen the freeze for 3 different Rasaad cutscenes.

coldsteelblue

Thanks for the info on that, not a huge fan of Rasaad, so no worries about me doing his quest, but still good to know.
Still think that Beamdog really should've been looking into this though, even if rare, it's a serious bug, still, don't know what's in store in the future. I'll try unequipping my gear, biggest contender is probably the Pale Green Ioun Stone combined with the Ring of Regneration, as every time I load the game up my PC's always missing 2 health, the ring does regen this, but it's defo a strange thing.
Anyhoo I'll give it a shot to removing my gear & post what happens

coldsteelblue

Stripped off all my gear: no dice

BelgarathMTH

I wonder if they ever fixed the one where saving the game with an Avenger who is shapeshifted crashes the game and corrupts the save file? There's a WotC employee named Kate Welch who did a promotional stream of BG2:EE as an Avenger, and encountered this bug several times in a very public officially sponsored stream. I thought that was a huge embarrassment to Beamdog.

It's distressing to hear such serious bugs are still around, and it makes me think I'd better use the GoG version the next time I want to play BG2.

ThacoBell

Part of the problem is that I was the only one who seemed to have (or at least document) the bug pre-2.6. And it not replicable, the game just decides if its gonna happen on a particular save or not. This is still only the 4th post I've seen reporting it since 2.5's beta.

@BelgarathMTH Yeah, these bugs suck, but a big part of the problem is the engine. Its made very poorly and barely functions. And despite this, there's still LESS game breaking bugs (and bugs in general) in the EEs than in the originals. I find it particularly strange that the Avenger bug makes you want to go back to the original, which has the Avenger bug while also being less stable than the EE.
Heck, original BG2 has a bug where the game can just decide that you can NEVER SAVE AGAIN. It happens with no warning, and unless you are right at the end of the game, it means starting over from scratch. Because of the way the engine is constructed and runs, it never going to be as stable as modern games. And its sadly something that Beamdog can't fix. That being said, they CAN fix the bugs they introduced for sure. And this should have been fixed 2 years ago.

coldsteelblue

If BD are having trouble replicating conditions for bugs, they could always ask players to copy the bugged save onto USB & upload the file to them so that they can investigate the code, I know Obsidian have done so with Pillars of Eternity & I think thay uses the same engine.
That Avenger bug sounds like a real nightmare, glad I didn't decide to play one.

ThacoBell

@coldsteelblue Uploading the save doesn't always replicate it. There are more than one bug that seems dependent on the environment it was encountered in. Its rare, its not contained to the save, and since it shows so seldom and so randomly, its impossible to intentionally replicate.

BelgarathMTH

@ThacoBell , I didn't know the avenger bug was in original BG2. I must have gotten kind of lucky with not encountering bugs during all those years. I remember once that Saemon Havarian failed to spawn in Brynnlaw and broke my game, forcing me to look up console commands to spawn the right version of him in. That was a modded game, though, so I blamed it on the mods at the time.

ThacoBell

I totally get the frustration (Rasaad is one of my favorite characters and I haven't been able to do his quest in a couple years). Yeah, this bug should have been fixed by this point, but because of how awful the Infinity Engine is, bugs like this WILL appear. Its just the nature of the beast.
Beamdog needs a kick in the pants to get these game breakers fixed faster, no question. But, I think these bugs appearing in the first place isn't fully under control due to the conditions of the engine.

coldsteelblue

Yeah it is rather frustrating & the randomness of it is a pain.
I get that the infinity engine is a massive P.I.T.A to work with, even back then.
Just want to add, fired up the game again today, jusy on an off chance & I was able to finally move on with the game.
Hopefully the 23 bug reports (not a joke) that got filed through Sony's automated system, complete with vid attached help.

ThacoBell

Agreed.

Maurvir

I had hoped Beamdog would fix most of those bugs when they did the EE's, but I guess not.

Still, I really like the IE games, because they focused on telling the stories rather than depending on fancy graphics. As Ribald puts it "No fancy illustrations, just the goods". It hearkens back to an era when plot and substance mattered more than style.

ThacoBell

@Maurvir "I had hoped Beamdog would fix most of those bugs when they did the EE's, but I guess not."

The really scary part, is that they DID fix most of the bugs. I think a lot of people forget how vanilla BG would barely run a lot of the time.