I've created this account to report a very strange bug which, though not game breaking, does make certain objectives and achievements very difficult for the Overseer Campbell mission.

During the mission, when waiting in the room where the High Overseer and Captain Curnow go in to talk, the conversation starts then suddenly gets interrupted right before they get to the door. Even if I am unseen, perfectly hidden, the conversation is interrupted and the High overseer and Captain immediately run to the hidden sanctum and the Captain instantly dies once he arrives there. I've tried numerous methods but is seems regardless of the path or means which I get to the Overseer's room, when I activate the event this bug will occur. I cannot therefore save Captain Curnow and I cannot complete the level undetected. The High Overseer can be killed or eliminated non-lethally to complete the level.

I can post a video later but this is a very glaring and serious bug and I'm wondering if other people have noticed this before or if the developers are aware of this issue.

Try to load an earlier save and DON'T save while in or around the meeting room where the drink glasses are.

If you don't load a save in that room, or around it, see if the problem doesn't occur then.

I've tried saves from near the beginning where you save Martin and the bug still occurs.

I will restart the entire mission and see if the problem persists.

Ruined the game for me. No matter what I do, Campbell runs away.

At least someone else seems to have the same problem. I've tried replaying the entire mission, even an entire playthrough of the mission without any saves other than the autosave function, yet the bug still occurs. I might have to figure out a recording solution to illustrate my problem but I'm hoping this is a known issue such that an upcoming patch might alleviate this problem.

If you knock stuff around they run away it seems.

But that's the thing, just triggering the event seems to cause them to run. You can open the meeting room doors, go back out, close the doors behind you, and wait in the hall and they will still get interrupted before Campbell starts fiddling with the lock.

Bethesda fails at "Quality Assurance", as usual. They should let the developers test their own game.

This shouldn't ruin the game for you, even if you are trying to go it via stealth.

Here's why...

Curnow, the guard, will run out of the map after this, automatically awarding you for "saving" him. Just give him the time necessary to escape (about one minute). Campbell will run and hide in a basemant room of this building. Find him and sneak up on him down there.

A few questions for you


What versions are you playing? (North American, UK, somewhere else?)
Do you have Steam in offline mode?
What's your current chaos?
What supernatural powers (and level of each power) do you have?they have if the issue is related to Abilities/Powers
Do you have pre-order DLC installed? If so, which one?

And specific to this mission, have you already done the Granny Rags side mission?

I'm uncertain if it will still allow me to get achievements for being undetected though; I will try to get "faceless" for this mission to see if this counts as alerting anyone.

Regardless, I am kinda frustrated since this bug is immersion breaking and denies me the chance to listen to Campbell's conversations in the mission. I never said this was a gamebreaking bug, my original post said nothing about obstructing my progress in the game, but I called it "storybreaking" since it ruins the scripted events that are part of the plot. I am clearly not enjoying the mission as the game-designers intended it nor do I have the chance to enjoy the mission like other people who do not experience this bug. It should be fixed along with other optimizations probably in another patch or so. In the meantime I was hoping someone can tell me what is causing this problem so a workaround can be discovered. Apparently I will be waiting but I will still enjoy the game so long as other events work properly and through chapter 3, this seems to be the case.

North America
Low
My first playthrough of the mission had: Blink lvl1, Shadow Kill lvl1, Dark Vision lvl1, and Possession lvl1
The second mission playthrough had: Blink lvl2, Dark Vision lvl 1, Shadow Kill lvl1
No DLC installed, did not preorder
I have completed the granny rags side mission

EDIT: upon reflection, this might be caused by shadow kill, though I do not recall if I have killed any overseers with this power. Will replay the mission to test.

Gotchya. I hope Beth can help ya!

I have loaded an earlier save before i got Shadow kill and once I have gotten to the high overseer's meeting hall, the event with Campbell seems to work without getting interrupted. I can now approach the glasses and poison Campbell, should I choose so, without being detected nor him and the captain inexplicably running to the sanctum. This seems to be an issue with the Shadow Kill power.

I'm having the same problem, and I haven't taken the Shadow Kill power. As far as I know, up until this point no one has spotted me and I haven't killed anyone. I have darkvision 1, blink 2, and possession 1. I'm assuming my chaos is low because as I said, I haven't killed and I haven't been seen. I finished the Granny rags mission, do not have any preorder bonuses, and I believe it's the North American version I have, I bought it on greenmangaming.com for use in Australia on steam. Reloading to various saves beforehand hasn't changed anything.

I have confirmed that Blink lvl2 also seems to break the event with Campbell. This seems odd; were events and people supposed to "scale" with powers in an earlier build? Only reason I can come up with why this problem exists in the first place.

I'm also having the same problem. It's like locked doors would pop open for no reason. I've encountered the problem again on the 2nd mission. One of the locked doors at the distillery containing the weepers would just open and they run out attacking other people in the area. I'm not sure if it registers a kill when they either die or kill someone.

The weepers escaping outside the distillery when you exit after talking to Slackjaw... that is scripted.

The Campbell/Curnow issue is not.

Was going to update to say that it didn't affect my kill rating. Didn't know it was scripted so thanks for the info. Was getting kind of worried that I would continually run into similar problems afterwards.

I ended up restarting the mission from the save at the beginning and it worked the second time. Worth noting that I still took Blink 2, so that isn't necessarily what's causing it.

I had Blink 2 for that level (I think I got it in the beginning of the level, actually ...) and the mission worked fine for me.

Just a quick question for the people with the problem. Did you free Martian in the beginning? Because going to the meeting room before freeing him is what gave me this same bug. I replayed the mission on easy a couple times to confirm that doing that is one of the causes of the bug.

I made a video of the bug but I don't have permission to post links so you'll have to copy paste into your address bar and of course put in the dots.

wwwyoutubecom/watch?v=qhgKrl6aCFw&feature=plcp

I freed Martin at the beginning of the area each time I played it. In fact, I didn't really do anything differently between the playthrough where it didn't work, and the second where it did.

I'm on my second playthrough now and I have a similar problem in this mission. So far I've played the mission completely undetected. I decided to spill Campbell's wine so he couldn't poison Curnow, leading them to leave the meeting room and go to Campbell's private chambers.

While they're on their way they draw their swords for no reason but continue walking. A minute later Campbell's personal guards will enter the meeting room, draw their swords and start actively looking for me. Mind that I have been COMPLETELY UNDETECTED this whole time.

Only power I have is Blink at level 1. I also skipped Granny Rags' sidequest.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I freed Martin before proceeding to High Overseer's office.