Das Buggen

[Null Winter]

Soooo, did part of the deal with Epic involve cutting the bug testers and QA team off the staff?

I've had to redo multiple mission segments now due to the game locking up during cutscenes; all the characters involved will just stand in their idle poses instead of doing their scripted events. I've even had the little scenes where a female shrimp jumps on the boat break, resulting in Artyom telekinetically moving a boat while the shrimp morphs inside him.

During the entirety of the Caspian chapter, after taking out the "sniper", I've had the joy of listening to the battle music. Every. Single. Minute. Reloading the game from before didn't fix it, and neither has restarting the game client. Supposedly, finishing the chapter will finally fix this, but I'm not holding out hope.

Clipping through structures is common; this may just be the devs slacking off and not coding collision on a lot of the random junk in the maps, though, rather than a full on bug.

Does anyone know if there's a fan-made patch in the works to fix this mess?

[cuss]

haven't heard of a fm-patch. have you done a verify? i haven't had the music bug (yet) but i've heard of it. also, have you got the 'cloud' disabled? that seems to fix a multitude of issues.

[Null Winter]

Originally posted by cuss:

haven't heard of a fm-patch. have you done a verify? i haven't had the music bug (yet) but i've heard of it. also, have you got the 'cloud' disabled? that seems to fix a multitude of issues.

Cloud saves were disabled from the start. Steam claims that all files are in order.

[cuss]

24/7 battle music eh? must have been exciting.

[Null Winter]

Originally posted by cuss:

24/7 battle music eh? must have been exciting.

The opposite, really; all other music and even dialogue was being overshadowed by the really repetitive drum beat. Thankfully, advancing to the next chapter did finally fix it. I think the devs messed up big time and set some sort of flag that attaches to your save files if you save anywhere near combat in the Caspian chapter that either tells the game to keep playing the music OR bypasses the flag that tells it to stop and never checks for that flag again.

[Null Winter]

Beat the main story! Final bug report...

Title screen:
The intro movie had to start and go on for a bit before I could skip to the main menu screen, on all but 1 occasion. Hidden load screen for the main menu, perhaps, with truly awful optimization?

Swamp:
3 occasions of story scenes freezing up as the NPCs get locked into idle animations. Reload to prior save!
2 occasions of the female Shrimp hopping on the boat causing an animation lock-up. Reload to prior save!
1 full, fatal freeze during normal gameplay requiring a total computer restart.
Fell into water 2 times because a solid looking piece of wood and a solid looking chunk of ice were, in fact, not coded to have any collision data.

Desert:
1 occasion of the car getting stuck on a dune and not letting me exit. Reload to prior save!
2 full, fatal freezes. Restart the computer!
I had to play the entire last half of this chapter with the battle music playing on endless loop; no amount of reloading saves or restarting would clear the damn battle music from playing in all situations at all times. It finally, mercifully ended when I hit the next chapter.
On a lesser note, the map always bugs out in the car. Every time, without fail, it will shift the view up towards the roof; if a bug can be done on command, then it's clearly a feature, yes?

Taiga:
2 full, fatal freezes! Restart the computer, yet again.
1 cutscene simply dropped all audio and then fatally froze partway through. Restart the comp!
1 occurrence of a wolf launching itself to the moon. I guess it really wanted to see space.
1 occurrence of a guard backflipping into a wall after being knocked out. Nice punch, Artyom!
Far too many stutters. I don't know why, but this chapter would consistently plummet down to single frames when more than a single enemy was on-screen at once; no matter how low I put my settings, it would **** the bed.

Dead city:
1 fatal freeze, of the buggy kind. Another restart.
Watched about 4 Watchmen fall through the ground.
First death in the game from falling through a solid platform myself.
First gasmask damage from worms spitting through invisible walls that I couldn't shoot through myself.
I watched as a chandelier stretched through 3 floors of a building to attach to Artyom for a moment before snapping back into its proper position. I know that area was haunted, but I'm pretty sure that ain't meant to happen.
1 occurrence of an angry gorilla automatically knowing my location after charging up a power box; the closer enemy actually didn't notice anything.

Ending scene:
There is a visible and noticeable freeze when the game is presumably deciding which ending you earned based on your actions and the flags triggered.

My final verdict:
If the QA and bug teams (or whoever ignored their reports) still have jobs, then change that soon.

[cuss]

i didn't keep a list but:
intro was fixed for me by deleting intro videos. game menu did start a few times with very bad frames but a quit and restart fixed it.
very few problems on volga. game ran well throughout except for minor glitching. some irritating and some funny.
caspian i had the lighthouse bug a couple times but after about 10 playthroughs, 2 out of 10 ain't bad. i did also have some localised lag in some areas but nothing too serious. strangely enough my worst play on caspian was on hardcore. don't know if it was the difficulty.
yamantau, taiga and dead city ran perfect.
of course i saw my share of glitching and minor bugs too, such as objects interacting when they shouldn't or not when they should, strange ragdoll behavior among others and even being stuck in only being able to travel in a straight line but the deal breaker is always performance and progression and once i sorted the save issue it was 'basically' clear sailing. i'm curious to know if you'll play a 2nd run through.