Less than a week after the launch of Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout 4, players have already discovered a major, show-stopping bug that halts progress across all of its available platforms.
The glitch triggers when players attempt to enter an in-game location during a specific Settlement quest, and is confirmed to exist within the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC versions of Fallout 4.
According to user posts on Bethesda’s forums, Fallout 4 crashes on a consistent basis when players attempt to enter Monsignor as part of the Settlement quest line.
“It seems to appear once you’ve [passed] a certain [part] in the story (either Valentine or killing a certain somebody after rescuing Valentine),” the forum thread reads. “It is fairly game-breaking as many main story quests go through this area making the game impossible to complete if you have the bug and don’t use console commands.”
While some players are able to complete the glitched quests successfully, users who experience crashes have no recourse outside of PC-exclusive console commands. According to Bethesda’s forum thread, players who experience the glitch will still be affected even after starting a new game, updating hardware drivers, or reinstalling Fallout 4 from scratch.
PC players can bypass many glitch triggers by using console commands to skip past environments that crash the game when loaded. While many quests are solvable through cheating (including the “Shadow of Steel,” “Kidnapping from Greentop Nursery,” and “Nuclear Option” quests), the “Ad Victoriam” quest has no known workarounds for players experiencing the bug.
The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of Fallout 4 do not grant players access to console commands, and affected users have few options outside of ignoring the glitched quests until a solution is discovered or a patch is released.
Players experiencing the glitch can report their findings to Bethesda as the developer works on a fix. While it’s likely that a forthcoming patch will address the issue, a timeframe for its release is not yet known.
