Game breaking bug in "Monster's Ball" mission: Large rant and advice request.

[SpeakableCassie]

Okay, so slight forewarning: This post contains potential spoilers for the mission "Monster's Ball", which is found in the game's second DLC, "Dawn of the Rise of the Fallen Machines." If you haven't played the DLCs then maybe give this discussion a miss.

So I absolutely loved this game, I wanted to play it since it was first announced as an Xbox One exclusive and finally got my chance the day the PC port came out. Since then I've been gradually making my way through it (amidst other games, day to day life and whatnot) and have really been enjoying it. In the base game I didn't encounter a single bug but now that I'm finally playing the DLCs I've been encountering bugs none-stop.

In the first DLC I was encountering issues where explosions would actively send me through collision and get me stuck inside of buildings, (fixable by fast travelling), I had issues where I'd get stuck in a falling animation, (fixable only by abandoning mission in my experience) and I had a couple of hard crashes when roaming the oil rig outside of missions. It was surprising just how often the game was encountering issues compared to the base campaign, but it didn't bother me all that much because at the end of the day I worked around it and kept making progress. But the bugs in the second DLC have been way, way worse.

The above issues are still present but I've encountered one particular issue a few times now which has been a huge nuisance. Sometimes, (always close to the end of certain missions), the next event just doesn't trigger. More specifically: A character is supposed to speak but simply doesn't, meaning that the next main objective doesn't actually appear and no more progress can be made. I tried numerous fixes for this issue: Fast travelling, deliberately killing myself, abandoning the mission and trying again but the only thing I found that could actually fix the issue in those missions was to quit the entire the game, load it back up and play through the mission from scratch again, wherein the NPC would then speak their dialogue as intended and the next event would trigger without an issue. It was a huge pain in the ass but at least I was still making progress with my workaround.

But then came Monster's Ball: The major issue at hand...
About halfway(?) through the mission you must place a reactor core into a socket which causes you to turn into a giant ball of energy which is conceptually similar to a Monkey Ball or Sonic (when he's Spin-Dashing). So far, so good. You are then tasked with charging up the ball by hitting charging pads or rolling on charging wires. Simple enough. Once charged: Your character makes a quip about the term "literally" and then Fiona, who is on the phone with you, is supposed to say something in response buuuuuut... She doesn't.

I tried the usual fixes at first;
-Can't take damage in the ball so you can't deliberately die and respawn
-Can't fast travel in the ball so you can't re-instance the area
-Abandoning mission and restarting didn't work for me on three separate attempts

So I figured the only fix would be to restart the game (just like when I encountered this issue previously) and so that's exactly what I did. I closed it, loaded it back up, played the mission again up to that point, but I unfortunately encountered the exact same bug. I repeated this fix attempt four times: No dice. So I decided to try turning my computer off entirely, then booting up, launching the game and replaying up to that point but nope; That didn't fix it either. I tried this two more times. After that I thought, "hey: ♥♥♥♥ it, my internet's great", so I quit the game, uninstalled it, redownloaded it and then tried the mission again. This didn't work but I was pretty determined at this point and did it one additional time. No such luck.

So finally we get past my rant and to my actual question: Does anybody have any suggestions whatsoever in regards to how I could fix or work around this bug? I know I only have a few missions and 4 challenges left in the game but I really would like to properly beat it and not have it weighing on me at the back of my mind. I literally (heehee) have no idea how to go about fixing this issue past what I've already tried and I haven't found anybody online who's encountered the same issue as me, so I can't just copy potential fixes from another thread. Thanks for taking the time to hear me out on this one, I mean that's 12 times I've replayed that mission and just... Ech.

[SteelSack]

I currently have the exact same issue. Were you able to find a fix that worked?

[SteelSack]

Actually I was able to find a fix. Before restarting the mission, I went into the video settings and switched from an unlimited frame rate to 60fps. It is working as intended now and I'm able to continue passed that point in the mission.

[SpeakableCassie]

Originally posted by SteelSack:

Actually I was able to find a fix. Before restarting the mission, I went into the video settings and switched from an unlimited frame rate to 60fps. It is working as intended now and I'm able to continue passed that point in the mission.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to fix it myself and just ended up watching the rest of the DLC getting played on YouTube. Coincidentally though, I did actually try all sorts of frame rate changes in my attempts to fix it, (must've spent a good ten hours all-told trying to resolve the issue and attempted every single thing I could think of), but my fps was already locked at 60 when I encountered the bug. Certainly not a fix for everyone but I'm really glad you got it working and hope you enjoyed the game! It was great fun besides that. :)