Okay, I'll start by saying, yesterday, I reported a bug to Bethesda that happened to me. I thought it was just because of death.

(Which I've discovered, is in fact, not due to death at all.)

Edit: I'm playing the PC version. Windows 7 64-bit.

(This is the less important report I made, so skip to the next section if you're interested in the game-breaking part.)

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I saved before entering a building. Upon entering the building, I ran over a bottlecap mine. It exploded, and I made it away in time to stay alive.

Directly after, I ran into a second bottlecap mine. It blew me up, causing me to die.

First, I paused my game, then I reloaded my autosave from entering the building, and the bottlecap mines were no longer there.

(I'm almost sure this has had to happen to someone else).

So, since I wasn't very far in the building, I loaded the save from outside, and as soon as it started loading, I heard the sound from when you die.

I'll just call it the "death animation sound".

So, once the game was loaded, I entered the building, and the bottlecap mines were there.

I assume the game had thought that the bottlecap mines had already exploded when I reloaded the autosave from entering the building.

(Important, possibly quest-breaking part)

Today, I decided to visit The Memory Den in Goodneighbor.

I looked around a bit, and decided to head upstairs.

I saved my game before I hacked Irma's terminal.

After hacking Irma's terminal, I went downstairs. I spoke to Kent Connolly, which was an objective of the Silver Shroud quest.

After speaking to Kent Connolly, I received the next part of the quest, to retrieve the Silver Shroud costume.

I left The Memory Den.

After leaving The Memory Den, I loaded my save from before I hacked Irma's terminal.

Not only do I find that Irma's terminal is already unlocked, (which, it wasn't when i made the save), but, I could not speak to Kent Connolly at all.

No dialogue options whatsoever. The game thinks that I had already hacked Irma's terminal, and spoken to Kent Connolly.

But, my quest menu tells me that I have NOT spoken to Kent Connolly, and I do not have the next quest objective.

So, by loading a save after completing some things, the game will think that certain things have already happened.

This can be gamebreaking, say, if I decided not to talk to Kent Connolly and went on with the game, I would have never been able to return and speak to him.

This has probably happened to others, as well.

It is only fixable by quitting the game, and then loading the save from before you did anything.

Which is in my case, hacking a terminal and speaking to Kent Connolly for the Silver Shroud quest.

I believe this bug is applicable to the following, so far (as tested/noticed):

Mines, terminals, traps, and important NPCs (those who have any sort of dialogue).

The bug is easily replicated, and I suggest you try it yourself. If it does in fact happen to you as well, I recommend a feedback report.

I just thought I would inform people, so they may know what's going on if this happens to them, or they are unable to finish a quest.

Thank you for reading, and have a great time in the Commonwealth, folks.

- InConSciOUS, trying to help fix some little kinks in this excellent game!

i think the "memory between saves" concerning explosives is intentional to prevent exploit. In Fo3 every land mine that killed me ended up in my inventory after reload. The second part you described sounds like a legitimate bug related to that intentional(my theory) feature you described first.

I'm not sure, but I don't think that ever happened to me in Fallout 3.

This is definitely game-breaking if you decide to load a save and not start a quest, without exiting.

I can still load the save from outside of the building, so it hasn't broken it for me, but I'm almost positive this has had to happen to others, as well.

I personally believe it's a major bug.. Not even quitting and loading fixed it, so that's something big, within the game itself, it seems. Or possibly your saves.

Also, I'm playing on PC.

Mines that killed you being removed when you load a save seems extremely intentional, and a good idea IMO. Otherwise I'd just know where they were and pick them up.

Well, I loaded a save from outside the building, and the mines were there. But I don't know.. It seemed as if the game realized they were supposed to be there once I loaded the save from outside.

It's a very confusing glitch, I'm testing it, and I have two saves. One from before unlocking the terminal, one directly after. If I load the one before, the terminal is actually still locked.

If I load the one after, I still can't talk to Kent Connolly.

So, what I'm saying is, maybe I was wrong about it applying to terminals, but it definitely does indeed apply to NPC's dialogue and getting quest objectives.

So it can break quests.

And if this -is- an anti-exploit feature, it is unintentionally affecting NPCs/Quests, as I said.

We aren't disagreeing. Just saying that the explosive part might be intentional and the unintentional is probably tied to that somehow. I'm sure Beth will get it sorted.

Oh, I know. I was just saying.

When you load these saves do you completely exit to the main menu before you load them, or do you load them from a position already in the game? In past games I've had issues where oddities happened when I load a save when already in the game. Even when I die I quickly exit to the main menu and then continue rather than letting the game load my last save from where I was.

I've loaded them from in the game, and I've exited complete to the Desktop, started it back up and loaded them. Both ways it still happens, it seems. I've tested it a couple times, and it always does it. I could upload the save, and if you were to load it, you'd see that you can't speak to Kent Connolly, and the objective he gives you isn't there.

Also, I do the same thing you do. I pause and load the game instead of waiting for the game to load it for me. But this glitch apparently doesn't have anything to do with death. I thought it did, but it doesn't, it seems.

i'm not yet totally sure, but there's something odd about autosaves. they seem to get constantly updated or something, dunno, they appear to change anyway.

and as a consequence of this and the fact autosaves are not called "autosaves" (wtf??) but just like a save you make yourself, it seems that, if you manually save your game over such autosaves, that'll be "updated" just as well.

didn't research into this any further cuz i rather wanted to play , but to be on the save side, rather make new saves than overwriting existing ones, if you're not totally sure they're your own

edit: op, if you're in a deathloop after loading a save:

open console as quickly as possible after load and type "tgm" for god mode, helps in many cases. don't forget to toggle off afterwards

and if that doesn't do the trick, in case you didn't know, the game keeps the last 2 (!!) quicksaves, both in your save folder, one "quicksaveblah.fos" and the other one "quicksaveblah.fos.bak", just delete or rename the .fos (your current quicksave), rename the .fos.bak to .fos to restore your previous one.

Yeah, I know what you mean by saves being "updated". That's basically a certain part of the problem here.

I'm not in a deathloop or anything like that, but thank you for informing that there is a backup autosave, I would've never known that.

I've had that happen to me, except my character has maxed-out Sneak perk, so he doesn't set off mines. If I pick up some mines in a particular area, and then reload a quicksave from before I picked them up, they are no longer there.

See, that doesn't quite make sense. This is basically the entire bug in a nutshell, only it applies to quite a few things, rather than just that.

From what I know: Mines, Traps, NPCs, and quite possibly Terminals and Locks.

Does anyone know if Bethesda even looks at these forums for glitch/bug reports?

Just wondering, I've already sent them like 5-6 feedback emails, total. (All about different bugs, of course).

I'm just trying to make this a better game, work out the kinks, and maybe even help Bethesda's reputation as being a developer that releases buggy games before they're finished.

Hell, if I knew how to fix it myself, and had the tools/software, I would definitely try.

I want to become a modder (possibly more), but I have no mentors and/or no guides/information to teach me or teach myself.

Now, I don't believe that it's a -very- buggy game, and I love it anyway, but there are a few things that need fixing. This, in my opinion, being a major one.

I was in a deathloop once. I fell of a highway by accident and fell to my death, funnily enough it must have just auto saved when i was mid air and i died again. Happened twice then it put me a little bit further on the highway. Its like the game knew what was happening.

One thing i have seen myself is that the game remembers certain things even if i load a earlier save. I found some random estate and got killed by super mutants. When i reloaded a manual save that was from earlier but in a different location no where near the estate it came up that i just discovered it even though i havent been there.

That is commendable and a very desirable trait in this community. No worries, this bug isn't isolated to a few, so it is known i assure you. As for Bethesda's reputation of "releasing buggy games before they are finished", well that is completely unfounded and started by those that don't understand how the game engine works.

Once you get into the CK you will see in a neat spreadsheet style display the mountain of data and dynamic variables that are at play with each other to make the game function as desired. It only takes one mistype'd character, or improper asset call to bring the whole thing crashing down.

Once you've been here for a couple of releases you'll have a greater appreciation for the improvements that come with each successive title.

Thank you for your comment about it being "a commendable and desirable trait", my friend.

I would also like to state, for the record, that I personally don't think Bethesda's games are very buggy at all, as I've never really had any big problems. The most I've experienced is getting stuck in certain places, for 3, NV, and 4 (so far).

But, I know a bit about coding, and I assume modding is, in a way, similar to the point that, like you said, one mistyped character can bring it all down.

I've played every TES and Fallout game since Oblivion, but I haven't been a part of this community until today.

I only say that because you mentioned that I'll "have a greater appreciation" for the improvements, but I already do!

This seems like a nice enough community of fans, though, and it seems it has quite a bit of helpful information as well, so I probably will stick around.

Anyway, yeah, modding is one thing I want to do, I just don't quite know where to start learning. That's my problem, I guess.

Also, thanks again for your kind comment.

happens all the time. If you die in an explosion tripping a tripwire, when you "come back to life" the tripwire has already been tripped. If a car explodes (and you die) when you come back to life the car is still in pieces from the explosion etc.

On Death, it seems, it doesn't reload the whole cell, just PC/NPC positions. Which seems odd.

Works fine for me.

I'll be interested to see whether this only happens with auto or quicksaves, or if it's any time the game reloads the area you're currently in. I'll have to experiment next time I see some mines. It seems like the game engine is taking more shortcuts than it should with re-using cached data.

I had something similar happen to me last night on xbox. I was going to salem from the Kingsport lighthouse settlement. Hit a nuke mine near that crater area (where some children of the atom were previously, after I killed all of them). I was walking around it towards salem, missed a nuke mine just barely and then hit a second mine seconds later and died. Once it reloaded and I took the exact same path, the first mine that I missed wasn't there but the second one was. and the trip wire that I had tripped on a radiation trap previously was still tripped.

I believe what most of the people above believe, is that the game may reload the work upon death, but certain things are still reused. Like afore mentioned blown up car still being in pieces.

Its like there was another time I ran into a pack of mongrel dogs, and one was a legendary that had a Sentinel Revolutionary Sword.... I died seconds later because of two random deathclaws.... went back and the dogs were still there but no legendary and no deathclaws eventhough I took the same exact path. I know somethings are completely random..... so its whatever.

Well, for me, it happens with all saves. Autosaves are normally what I load when I get the mine bug, and I loaded a regular save when I experienced the NPC/Quest bug.

And I agree about the engine taking shortcuts. Maybe this has something to do with trying to negate the effects of save file bloat. It's hard to tell, for me, probably because I don't know how the engine works, really.

This is another good example of what I'm talking about, with the nuke mines and radiation trap you mentioned.

But, the thing about the pack of Mongrel dogs happened to me, as well, but I believe that the game loads things in at a certain distance.

For Example - If, on the in-game compass, you save over 100 (meters?) away from an enemy/object, and load that save, the item and/or enemy will be different every time.

However, if you were to save about 80-90 meters away, and load that save, the enemies and items will be the same, every time.

I believe that's just a way to prevent you from knowing exactly what's going to happen when you enter an area/cell, and keep things interesting at the same time.

But back to your case, with the mongrels, the exact thing happened to me. I walked into a dead-end alley, picked up an object, turned around, and there were 2 regular Mongrels, and there was one Legendary Mongrel. I killed them, but died a couple minutes later, so I had to load a save and wanted to get the Legendary item.

When I got back to where they were, all 3 Mongrels were regular, there was no Legendary mongrel.

I think some of the systems they've put in place may be interfering with other mechanics of the game.

But I believe the whole Legendary/Non-Legendary thing is just part of the random item/enemy mechanic, I don't think that has anything to do with the bug we're experiencing.