DA:I Freezing during a cutscene

I'm currently in my first playthrough of Inquisition, and encountered a bug that stops me from getting any further.

At the end of the Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts quest, after the boss battle, talking with Celene and addressing the court, the character walks out... and the game freezes. She normally gets about halfway across the screen with Morrigan standing in the back before it freezes. Via tapping escape to skip I can hear her first line of dialog and get to the dialog wheel, but it always freezes within a few seconds of starting the walking out scene. There were no freezes before this cutscene, but this particular cutscene freezes every single time.

There aren't any error messages, the game just stops doing anything, though windows doesn't give me a message saying that it's not responding even after a few minutes. The game continues using about 50% CPU while frozen, while not frozen it uses 70%+. RAM stays pretty much the same while frozen. GPU usage immediately drops to 0 when it freezes. The origin overlay also freezes if it's open, though the regular origin still works. When it freezes like this, I have to alt-tab out (I play fullscreen windowed) and close it via the task manager.

I've checked the forums, and while there are lots of general freezes, I haven't found any that match this specifically.

Things I've tried:

Restarting DA:I maybe 15 times, Origin 10 times, the computer 3 times. No change.
Turning off the origins overlay. Slight FPS boost, but still freezes.
Waiting several minutes for the cutscene to continue. Still frozen after 5 minutes.
Repairing DA:I via Origins. No change.
Virus scan. Found nothing.
Updating Drivers. Already on newest.
Adjusting graphics settings. I normally play on the lowest settings, 50% resolution scale. With higher graphics it takes a few extra seconds to freeze. Maybe it's trying to load something, failing, and getting stuck in an infinite loop?

Dxdiag: http://hastebin.com/xemisuruho.tex

In case it's relevant, my computer has 2 SSD, Origin and DA:I are installed on one of them.

dragon age inquisition

Anonymous
11 years ago
Alright, I've finally got it working. Uninstalling and re-installing the game did it. Just note that you'll need to re-download the game, and 24 GB takes a while.
Cptn_Delaguerra, in your thread you mentioned that you used mods at some point. This seems to be at least somewhat related to it. I don't know if modding in general or a specific mod was at fault. After re-installing, I at first got an error message saying that the saves were from a later version and to update despite already being at the newest version. Changing the version number in the package.mft file in the patch folder to 8 got rid of this. Again, not sure if this is the cause, but if you also uninstall and re-install, you'll most likely need to do the same thing.

11 Replies

Anonymous
11 years ago
I've actually mentioned this problem before as well, and still haven't gotten an answer:
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Dragon-Age-Inquisition/Freezing-at-final-Morrigan-scene-in-Winter-Palace/m-p/4491278
Anonymous
11 years ago
Hmm. Since it worked for you two months ago, maybe a patch that was applied since then caused it?
Testing... Renaming the DA:I\Update\Patch folder (to try to get rid of the patches temporarily) didn't fix it.
mcsupersport
Hero+
11 years ago
Double check to make sure you system is NOT using the Intel graphics....recheck all your performance settings and triple check them to make sure you haven't accidentally set it up to use the Intel sometimes....cause if it is, there is a good likelihood that is the issue....
You said tried repair..and changed graphics, but make sure you have post processing and shadows on min available.
Make sure you don't have any command lines to set FPS to something as well.
You may also try changing your gear on your character to see if for some reason an armor or weapon is causing a conflict.
Anonymous
11 years ago
Well, I don't have anything Intel on my computer. I've also reset the graphics multiple times, don't have anything setting FPS in the game, and also tried the outfit swap you mentioned. Nothing works at this points still.
Anonymous
11 years ago
By setting it not to use Intel graphics, I assume you mean the integrated graphics chip? I have DA:I set to use the Nvidia graphics card by default. Just double checked, and it's still using that. To make sure that it's not that, I tried the cutscene with both the integrated and the Nvidia graphics, in 2 attempts - neither lets me get past the freeze. Integrated is about 50% slower than Nvidia and shows up as using 95%+ CPU and about 5-8% GPU; Nvidia uses 70-80% CPU and 40% GPU.
Both Shadows and Post Processing are on Low, which is the lowest setting available for them.
I'm not using any command line parameters. This includes both the shortcut and the origin program settings.
Changing gear, as well as unequipping all of it, changed what my character had on when leaving the palace, but didn't stop it from freezing.
Anonymous
11 years ago
Alright, I've finally got it working. Uninstalling and re-installing the game did it. Just note that you'll need to re-download the game, and 24 GB takes a while.
Cptn_Delaguerra, in your thread you mentioned that you used mods at some point. This seems to be at least somewhat related to it. I don't know if modding in general or a specific mod was at fault. After re-installing, I at first got an error message saying that the saves were from a later version and to update despite already being at the newest version. Changing the version number in the package.mft file in the patch folder to 8 got rid of this. Again, not sure if this is the cause, but if you also uninstall and re-install, you'll most likely need to do the same thing.
dethnitebob
11 years ago
I also had this problem along with mods and am wondering how to open the package.mft file to change the version number.
Never mind you can use notepad or wordpad to edit this in case anyone else ever doesn't know.
Slave-Master2u
11 years ago
Having this same issue. Using Nvidia graphics. AMD chip. Re downloaded game. Did file check. All OK. No DLC or custom content installed. Only using texture changing mods. No game changers. Tried the version number change listed below. But my MTF shows version 10. If I change it to 8 the save game won't work because it was created by newer version. The game is set to auto update via Origin. When it freezes can only quit game by task manager. Task manager shows it's running (TM is not showing "not responding" message). Have tested the graphics demand of game. Results show game uses average of 1220mb of graphics ram. I have 2gb DDR5 graphics card. During freeze CPU is showing 27% usage. Graphics showing 1402mb GPU usage. Ram showing 33% in use. This is with frozen cut scene running. So not hardware issue. And all drivers and software on computer are up to date.
Any suggestions that actually fix the issue would be greatly appreciated.
dethnitebob
11 years ago
dont run any mods during the cutscene as they seem to be causing this problem. whenever you run the manager it updates the version so you may need to increase it to higher than 8 so maybe 11 or 12 as long as its higher than what your save expects. I reactivated my mods after the scene with no problems
if this doesn't work then I don't know what else you could try.
also you will probably have to re re install
Slave-Master2u
11 years ago
To; dethnitebob,
Sorry for not posting sooner. It would have saved you having to reply.
I did solve the issue. But do want to point out that this was happening with no DLC or custom content. All I had merged into the patch were texture files.
What I did to solve issue.
1) Took patched folder and moved to merged folder in root DAI folder.
2) Had a clean updated zipped patch folder on ext. drive. Unpacked it to DAI update folder.
3) Open MTF file in notepad and changed version to 10.
4) Launched DAI and loaded saved game. When I got to point where it had been freezing. It froze again. This is with NO mods installed. Just a clean updated patch.
5) Based on all the reading I've done pertaining to this, I relaunched the game, loaded the save. But this time before entering the ballroom, I removed all weapons and armor from Inquisitor and companions, then put formal wear back on entire party. Then went into ballroom.
The scene play out completely, no freeze. All the way to Skyhold.
My conclusion: Must be wearing your formal wear before cut scene begins. Conclusion based on fact that I was running a clean updated patch. Nothing added, no mods, and it still froze. But with same clean patch and formal wear it worked fine. The only difference with wearing armor or wearing formal wear.
If others are having this issue even after trying the other suggestions here, then try this. Hopefully it helps. Thank you dethnitebob for your prompt reply.
Problem solved, now on to kill the next bug.