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hornacek's avatar
3 years ago

Black faces in Dragon Age: Origins

I recently bought a new computer, installed Dragon Age: Origins on it, and copied over my save game files from my old computer (I had already started a new game on the old computer).  When I loaded my saved game on the new computer I was able to continue, but the faces displayed in the character-profile circles on the left side of the screen are all black.

This is a new computer and new monitor, and everything displayed fine on my old computer/monitor - both ~10 years old, so I would expect it to display correctly on my new computer.

I searched Google for possible solutions.  Someone mentioned downloading the "4GB Patch" and running it on the Origin executable.  Did that, didn't fix it.

Another solution was to go into the Options and on the Video tab set Graphics Detail and Texture Detail to Low (they were set to Very High and High by default).  But when I do this and try to load my saved game, the application crashes before it loads anything.  I tried starting a new game - after the character creation I got the cut-scene of Duncan talking, but after that the application crashed again.

I can still play the game, and have been doing so for the past month, but it's annoying that on my old computer the character-profile faces displayed correctly, but on my brand new computer they do not.

Any idea how to fix this?

2 Replies

  • @hornacek 

    Try to repair the game.

    (Origin: Game Library > Right-click the game cover > Repair)

    (EA app: My Collection > Click on the three dots on the game cover > Repair)
    (Steam: Game Library > Right-click the game > Properties > Local Files > Verify integrity of game files.)

  • hornacek's avatar
    hornacek
    3 years ago

    I did that - I used the EA app.

    After it was done I ran the game and tried to load my saved game.  It says "the saved game cannot be loaded, it requires the following content" and has a list of mods I have.

    I clicked Force Load, I got another screen saying "You should save your game after this loads etc".

    I clicked Force Load again, the game started loading, and then closed.

    So I ran DAUPDATER for every one of the MODs listed.

    Then I ran the game again.  This time it loaded my game, the faces in the profile-circles were NOT black, but the application closed within 2 seconds.  Tried this a couple of times, always got this result.

    I ran the game again, but before I loaded my game I went into Options > Video and changed my Video Settings based on previous Google results I had found and changed Graphics Detail to Very High, Anti-Aliasing to Off, and Texture Detail to Medium.  Then I tried to load my game - it loaded it, the application didn't close after a few seconds, but I still have the black face in the profile-circles.

    If I change Anti-Aliasing to any setting but Off the game still loads but I get different color lines and squares appear and disappear.

    If I change Texture Detail to High then I can still play but if I save the game, close it, restart it and try to load that saved game, it will not load and the application ends.

    NOTE:  don't know if this matters but the black faces also appear on the Character Record screen.  But the face of the characters on the normal game screen are NOT black.  Also, Shale and Dog are not affected by this - they display normally and don't have black faces.