Undead Nightmare Headless Glitch

[BoulderFaceplant]

Just dropping in to ask- is the game breaking headless zombie glitch still present on Xbox One? If so, how can I avoid or mitigate it?

[Kaizen454]

I'm currently playing the GOTY edition (2 discs) on the Series X and I've had:

• Headless Zombies and NPCs.
• Zombies that look like normal NPCs.
• NPCs being marked as 'enemies' during missions where you need to clear the town.
• Random horse galloping/falling noises for no reason.
• Game crashes when manually saving.

This is all with about 3 hours of total gameplay. I almost gave up on trying to play it because of how much of a mess it is. AFAIK, this affects all versions of RDR: Undead Nightmare that are fully patched. If you can somehow play an unpatched version, you shouldn't get the glitches.

 

Reloading a save file usually fixes it for about half an hour. I'll keep playing and see what else I can find.

[kubon352]

23 hours ago, Kaizen454 said:

I'm currently playing the GOTY edition (2 discs) on the Series X and I've had:

• Headless Zombies and NPCs.
• Zombies that look like normal NPCs.
• NPCs being marked as 'enemies' during missions where you need to clear the town.
• Random horse galloping/falling noises for no reason.
• Game crashes when manually saving.

This is all with about 3 hours of total gameplay. I almost gave up on trying to play it because of how much of a mess it is. AFAIK, this affects all versions of RDR: Undead Nightmare that are fully patched. If you can somehow play an unpatched version, you shouldn't get the glitches.

 

Reloading a save file usually fixes it for about half an hour. I'll keep playing and see what else I can find.

None of these happened on my fully patched game, digitally bought, but on X360.

Edited September 30, 2021 by kubon352

[billiejoearmstrong8]

Edit: Ignore this post and read further down, there is a fix!

 

Even though the headless glitch is annoying it isn't actually game breaking. You can live with it by making use of autosave

 

- You can't prevent the glitch from happening, but reloading your save will remove it every time (until it randomly happens again at least)

- If the glitch happens, simply autosave (complete the mission or task you're doing if possible or use the war horse deed) and then reload. It will not have any negative impact on your save if you autosave while the glitch is happening or be any different to if you saved without it, so there's no reason not to and no rush 

- However if you try to save at a safehouse while the glitch is happening, you'll just get a black screen, unable to save or exit and will have to turn the game off and on again and will lose your progress

- For this reason NEVER SAVE AT A SAFEHOUSE unless you've autosaved right before doing so - the glitch could happen at any moment so you're never safe doing it unless you've just autosaved

- Many missions and tasks are actually still possible to complete even with the headless glitch, including saving towns, because you can still "headshot" zombies with no heads by hitting the neck area. I've completed the final mission with it before. The only really bad time for it is when clearing graveyards. If it happens then it is impossible to complete it as even if you kill the zombies it doesn't "count" them and they'll just keep coming forever with no end, so it's wise to always autosave before starting that so you can reload if it happens (although you can also just move away from the graveyard to abandon the mission, autosave and reload)

 

Sounds complicated with all these points but it really isn't. Basically you just have to use autosave and reload the game from time to time. I've 100%ed the game four times with it and just got used to it.

 

Edit: Should probably add this is on Xbox 360 (game of the year edition disc). But since it's the same glitch on other versions I assume this also works on other versions.

Edited October 11, 2021 by billiejoearmstrong8

[kubon352]

I also 100% game, but had not glitches. My game was digital though.

[billiejoearmstrong8]

8 hours ago, kubon352 said:

I also 100% game, but had not glitches. My game was digital though.

 

Yeah I don't know what makes the difference. My brother had the original disc on 360 and never had it either. But I've heard it's present on every version/platform so maybe it's luck. That or it's not actually on every version. Seems like GOTY disc is bad news though.

[kubon352]

Is goty one disc? Or two separate games?

[billiejoearmstrong8]

13 minutes ago, kubon352 said:

Is goty one disc? Or two separate games?

 

Two discs, one for regular game and one for Undead Nightmare

[kubon352]

So my bet is that standalone version of UN is simply broken.

[BoulderFaceplant]

I’ve since gone by rumor and bought a vanilla XB360 RDR and UN off the XBLA. I uninstalled from my Xbox One my GOTY Edition that I was getting the glitch on. I’m happy to report that the headless glitch does not occur with vanilla RDR+UN DLC. 

[FishyFishy]

Hello all,

 

First off, wanted to say that the Headless zombie glitch is NOT in all versions of Undead nightmare.

 

The GOTY edition of RDR and the undead nightmare standalone disc include a patch (the latest patch) which includes all the most common glitches (headless zombie for example). When the patch is deleted, this goes away. If you have the latest patch then you will get the glitch 9/10 times. 

 

For the standard version of Red dead (on disc or download) you can play undead nightmare as a DLC alongside the standard version. Doing this will NOT include the glitch (since the standard edition is not the same as the GOTY edition). 

 

Do NOT buy the GOTY edition of RDR for undead nightmare. 

 

I do have a YouTube video which I created which shows how to fix the glitch, however I am not aware of the rules on this forum so I don't want to risk anything. 

 

Hope I can help. 

[billiejoearmstrong8]

5 hours ago, FishyFishy said:

Hello all,

 

First off, wanted to say that the Headless zombie glitch is NOT in all versions of Undead nightmare.

 

The GOTY edition of RDR and the undead nightmare standalone disc include a patch (the latest patch) which includes all the most common glitches (headless zombie for example). When the patch is deleted, this goes away. If you have the latest patch then you will get the glitch 9/10 times. 

 

For the standard version of Red dead (on disc or download) you can play undead nightmare as a DLC alongside the standard version. Doing this will NOT include the glitch (since the standard edition is not the same as the GOTY edition). 

 

Do NOT buy the GOTY edition of RDR for undead nightmare. 

 

I do have a YouTube video which I created which shows how to fix the glitch, however I am not aware of the rules on this forum so I don't want to risk anything. 

 

Hope I can help. 

 

Is there a way to delete the patch if you have the GOTY disc? If your video shows that I'd definitely like to see it!

[FishyFishy]

5 hours ago, billiejoearmstrong8 said:

 

Is there a way to delete the patch if you have the GOTY disc? If your video shows that I'd definitely like to see it!

Depends what console you are on. For Xbox 360 or ps3, you can clear game cache/game data (360) or go to game data utility (ps3) and delete the GOTY File. 

 

For Xbox one (or series) is where it gets tricky. Since RDR is a backwards compatible game, you can not manually delete the patch, instead you may be able to by deleting RDR, turning off the internet on your console and then playing the game and seeing if it includes the glitch. I am not 100% certain that you can remove the glitch on Xbox one (or series)  using the GOTY edition... 

 

hope this helps 

[billiejoearmstrong8]

1 hour ago, FishyFishy said:

Depends what console you are on. For Xbox 360 or ps3, you can clear game cache/game data (360) or go to game data utility (ps3) and delete the GOTY File. 

 

For Xbox one (or series) is where it gets tricky. Since RDR is a backwards compatible game, you can not manually delete the patch, instead you may be able to by deleting RDR, turning off the internet on your console and then playing the game and seeing if it includes the glitch. I am not 100% certain that you can remove the glitch on Xbox one (or series)  using the GOTY edition... 

 

hope this helps 

 

Thanks! I have Xbox 360 and will be trying it.

[FishyFishy]

1 hour ago, billiejoearmstrong8 said:

 

Thanks! I have Xbox 360 and will be trying it.

 

 

here's a video showing how to do it on xbox 360. : ) 

[billiejoearmstrong8]

Brilliant thanks!

[kubon352]

On 10/8/2021 at 2:38 PM, billiejoearmstrong8 said:

Brilliant thanks!

Just of curiosity, did it help?

[billiejoearmstrong8]

1 hour ago, kubon352 said:

Just of curiosity, did it help?

 

I didn't try it yet (busy), but I'll post here when I do

[billiejoearmstrong8]

OK I cleared my Xbox 360 cache (nothing else - and all this does is remove all game updates, it doesn't remove saves or DLCs or anything like that) and from playing for about an hour looks like success!!!!!!! No sign of headless zombies or anything else wrong.

 

As a bonus it also unlocked the (undead) Tomahawk and Explosive Rifle challenges, which for whatever reason never showed up before even though they did in regular RDR. So I had something to do on my 100% save while testing it out.

 

I don't know why I found so much misleading info/no fix when I searched about this before, weird when there's such a simple solution. I guess I won't know absolutely 100% until I play the game through again (ie play for longer) but an hour plus of no headless glitch seems like pretty good confirmation based on how often it usually happens. Seems like all I have to do is keep saying no to updates when I load the game and problem is solved. Wish I'd known before, thanks @FishyFishy!

Edited October 11, 2021 by billiejoearmstrong8

[FishyFishy]

On 10/11/2021 at 6:28 PM, billiejoearmstrong8 said:

OK I cleared my Xbox 360 cache (nothing else - and all this does is remove all game updates, it doesn't remove saves or DLCs or anything like that) and from playing for about an hour looks like success!!!!!!! No sign of headless zombies or anything else wrong.

 

As a bonus it also unlocked the (undead) Tomahawk and Explosive Rifle challenges, which for whatever reason never showed up before even though they did in regular RDR. So I had something to do on my 100% save while testing it out.

 

I don't know why I found so much misleading info/no fix when I searched about this before, weird when there's such a simple solution. I guess I won't know absolutely 100% until I play the game through again (ie play for longer) but an hour plus of no headless glitch seems like pretty good confirmation based on how often it usually happens. Seems like all I have to do is keep saying no to updates when I load the game and problem is solved. Wish I'd known before, thanks @FishyFishy!

 

You are very welcome!