[SPOILERS] [ENH/PC] Replaying missions issues - unable to switch characters, failing due to being put onto wrong character etc.

[cinoI]

Hi

 

I know that I'm very late to the party, but I haven't been able to play this game for the past... ten years or so, so have only recently started getting into it.

 

I'm currently playing the enhanced version on PC, my progress is up to the first last big score mission (i.e., completed Meltdown).

 

Very often, I have to replay missions (both story missions and strangers and freaks missions) to get to the gold level. I know that it's not strictly necessary to get gold medals for 100 % completion, but I'd still like to do it.

 

I'm not sure how spoilers are handled in this forum, but to be safe, I'll put most stuff into spoiler tags.

 

The first time I had trouble replaying a mission was in The Wrap Up and Lamar Down.

In The Wrap Up,

Spoiler

I cannot switch between characters and am stuck with Michael, with lethal consequences. For instance, when first encountering the helicopter (after killing all enemies in the meeting point vicinity), the game should automatically switch to Trevor, which then snipes the helicopter pilot out of existence, but since switching does not work, the game stays stuck on Michael after the Trevor introduction cut scene. Worse, even, because it's just stuck on Michael, you can't even really control him. You can go out of hiding and do melee attacks, but pulling out a gun is impossible, just as is running around. It's also impossible to bring up the character selection wheel using L_ALT.

This makes sense, since Trevor is supposed to kill the threat, but it... just doesn't work. Ironically, once you inevitably die as Michael, you're resuming from a checkpoint (which means that gold is now unreachable, since the time goal cannot be fulfilled any longer), which puts you into Trevor, so you can finally kill the chopper. This triggers another cut scene, after which you spawn as Michael, but not at the correct location, but right beside Trevor.

You'll either have to jump down, killing yourself, or go a long way down to the plaza, just to eventually get back up again at the other side. Nuts. Some time later, Trevor is in threat by Merryweather goons up on the balcony north from him, but even though the game highlights Trevor's slot in a reddish color, switching to him is impossible. His portrait is fully missing, too.

Ironically, Franklin's portrait is there, but greyed out (which makes sense, since Franklin doesn't play a part in this mission). The only solution to that issue is to move up the stairs as Michael and kill the private soldiers threatening Trevor, since otherwise he'll die. Lastly, the mission is already difficult enough to achieve gold on, mostly because the last spawning chopper is so difficult to time correctly and you're easily dying, but with these bugs, it's essentially being made impossible.

Later, in Lamar Down,

Spoiler

you start out as Franklin, which makes sense. After reaching the saw mill, a cut scene plays and you're then supposed to play as Trevor to select a starting point. Unfortunately, the game puts you out as Franklin, again without having the option to switch to any other character (both Trevor's and Michael's portraits are missing and switching to them doesn't work). Reaching ANY starting point as Franklin and pressing E to select it will instantly fail the mission without an indication as to why it failed. Note how it even says the mark the position as Trevor's, even though you're playing as Franklin.

Restarting from the checkpoint (which probably makes the time goal unreachable yet again), you're starting as Trevor, which lets you actually progress.

After Trevor has marked his starting point, you're teleported into Franklin, can select another starting point and play through the mission. The whole time, though, switching to either Michael or Trevor will be impossible, even though Michael is at threat later on and supposed to snipe a few Ballas on the roof and woods right before him. Instead, you'll have to run around and kill the enemies with Franklin on foot, which takes additional time.

 

In the end, I got neither the accuracy, nor the mission time goals, since I had to restart from a checkpoint in the middle of the mission (forcefully). I haven't died afterwards, but both goals were marked as "X Checkpoint".

Likewise, Meltdown

Spoiler

is failing right at the start! As soon as you start the replay, you'll get a mission failed screen with the helpful indication that "Ponsonbys closed".

Yeah, thanks for that. After restarting, you can go on to finish the mission normally. Interestingly, I got the gold medal there, even though I had to restart once (forcefully), but since it was the starting point anyway, I guess the game didn't regard it as a "checkpoint restart", blocking the time goal.

 

There are probably more missions affected like that. Ironically, though, in Chop,

Spoiler

Chop is being added as a switchable character in the left slot and that actually works just fine. You can select him, his portrait is visible and the slot is unlocked.

 

 

Crucially, in free roam, I'm able to switch characters as much as I like. I'm not blocked by anything, no character is awaiting any phone calls and everything is working fine. It's just the mission replays that are bugged. I don't think that my save game is hosed.

Also, during the initial mission playthroughs, these issues did not show up. I was able to switch between characters, the game correctly selected the required character etc. - the issues are only happening in mission replays.

 

Can anyone do me a favor and check if their mission replays behave the same? If they do, that's certainly a series of bugs and I should probably contact Rockstar directly. Not that they would still care for the single player variant of GTA V, but there's some hope. If it's just happening like that for me, maybe my save is hosed after all. I'm aware that I could load a random 100 % save game file, but doing so would sync it up with the Social Club stuff and I don't want to pollute my online record with an alien game state.

Edited yesterday at 08:37 AM by cinoI
Used visual editor instead of bbcode, meh; added missing space character.

[44Orca]

There's gtasnp site where you can share your save file so I check them out. (site is safe, used for the chain game here forums and helping people pass missions that might be difficult)

I will try later to see on my own but when I did the replays there were no issues for me. Also don't think there's any sync with social club, when you remove a save file, all your story mode statistics also get removed, when you add a new one, they appear again, nothing goes wrong with that. (You will miss the achievement you're trying to get if that's what you are saying then yes).

@cinoI

Once uploaded save file, share the link it gives you. If you don't want that, I will go check replays myself again although they're probably fine for me as I have done them before like I said.

[cinoI]

Sure, here you go: https://gtasnp.com/GZeNIy (uhm, you might not like how the characters and cars are styled, but that's your problem. :))

 

I'd still appreciate it if you could try replaying these missions with your own save game first to see if it works differently/correctly for you, and with my save game only afterwards. I can hardly believe this to be a game or save corruption, but naturally double-checking doesn't hurt. It just doesn't make sense to me that I can freely switch in free roam and such issues never showed up when initially doing the missions as part of the story.

 

Yeah, I'm concerned that loading a different save file would mess up my achievements and the other statistics. I'd be open to try a different save file whenever I'm fully done with the game, but that will probably take months to finish.

Edited yesterday at 02:11 PM by cinoI

[44Orca]

@cinoI Yeah for some reason with your save file I start as Franklin at that location in Lamar Down mission. I have no idea why. With mine it's normal though I tried that too first, I always start as Trevor. 

Anyways, I'll try and see if it can be passed some way.. but don't think there is one..

Also another question, did you have mods installed before, during your playthrough?

 

If you want the solid gold achievement, you can try replaying mostly the strangers&freaks missions, I think works too. 

Edited 17 hours ago by 44Orca

[cinoI]

Crap, so it looks like it's a corrupted save file after all.

 

No, I haven't used any mods, it's all vanilla. I'm not a fan of mods at all.

 

I do have to admit to cheating once, though. I've once opened and modified the save file through XB36Hazard's editor, but only changed one bit: I killed Packie very early in my playthrough with Franklin, not knowing who he was and what helping him would mean in the long run. Once I stumbled on that on wikis in preparation of heists, I felt screwed and searched for a way to reset the random event, which I then did through the editor. This was literally the only change I did... and while I have a backup of the unmodified save, that's from like 100 game play hours ago. Quite literally, I fear. It also didn't help, since I spent hours on hours just passing by that pharmacy again and again, going down and up the road, but Packie still never showed up. So... modifying that save was utterly useless (I believe that there's another bit that tells whether Packie is alive or dead, in addition to the random event completion, and if he's dead, he won't spawn either way, but the editor doesn't seem to have a way of editing that), but I kept playing with it, instead of reverting to the unmodified one because... well, even just going up and down the road sometimes spawns interesting stuff like other people being chased by police, which is a nice way to get additional ammo and money for free, if you just wait for them to kill each other.

 

I'm not too keen on redoing everything past that point with the unmodified save, although strictly speaking, I could. But that's like... weeks of lost progress. The whole Epsilon Program stuff gone (which is really unnerving due to all the time I sank into that), all the mission progress, pastime activities gone etc. I've also levelled up all characters as much as possible. That was hard, manual labor, swimming miles and miles and killing thousands of cows, literally.

Edited 12 hours ago by cinoI

[44Orca]

8 hours ago, cinoI said:

Crap, so it looks like it's a corrupted save file after all.

 

No, I haven't used any mods, it's all vanilla. I'm not a fan of mods at all.

 

I do have to admit to cheating once, though. I've once opened and modified the save file through XB36Hazard's editor, but only changed one bit: I killed Packie very early in my playthrough with Franklin, not knowing who he was and what helping him would mean in the long run. Once I stumbled on that on wikis in preparation of heists, I felt screwed and searched for a way to reset the random event, which I then did through the editor. This was literally the only change I did... and while I have a backup of the unmodified save, that's from like 100 game play hours ago. Quite literally, I fear. It also didn't help, since I spent hours on hours just passing by that pharmacy again and again, going down and up the road, but Packie still never showed up. So... modifying that save was utterly useless (I believe that there's another bit that tells whether Packie is alive or dead, in addition to the random event completion, and if he's dead, he won't spawn either way, but the editor doesn't seem to have a way of editing that), but I kept playing with it, instead of reverting to the unmodified one because... well, even just going up and down the road sometimes spawns interesting stuff like other people being chased by police, which is a nice way to get additional ammo and money for free, if you just wait for them to kill each other.

 

I'm not too keen on redoing everything past that point with the unmodified save, although strictly speaking, I could. But that's like... weeks of lost progress. The whole Epsilon Program stuff gone (which is really unnerving due to all the time I sank into that), all the mission progress, pastime activities gone etc. I've also levelled up all characters as much as possible. That was hard, manual labor, swimming miles and miles and killing thousands of cows, literally.

I see I am not able to figure out a way, I tried in-game changing how I approach, even watching the cutscenes, different vehicles but nothing works.

There's this solid gold achievement savegame from youtube, drive to airport to trigger that strangers&Freak mission, complete it, but backup the other ones.

Or you can continue with your own so you can experience the rest of random events/missions, make new save file, new slot, maybe it fixes it?

Get every other achievement left for story mode then put 100% file after if so.

Edited 4 hours ago by 44Orca