I was able to complete that battle after completing some northwestern quests and returning from the northwest to fight the battle. So I continued playing and have not encountered any bugs until today. I have nearly cleared the hinterlands region (except for Redwall) and then experienced the same crash in another rift. This is one of the two southwestern rifts in some forest region (sorry I don't remember the name), the western-most of the pair, deep in a cave just west of the large bear area where you can get great bear claws. This battle, just like the other one, also features despair demons who appear to have a nasty long-range attack. I don't know what the attack is, but it comes with a sound effect that I hear just after my screen goes dark. It's the last sound I hear from the game.
From where I sit, there appears to be a graphic effect tied to a despair demon attack which kills my video and crashes the game.
Interestingly, I have found that the system is not TOTALLY locked, but the video is. I can hit ctrl-alt-del twice (with a short pause in between) and I can tell that the system is rebooting. However, the video does not turn on again until I do a cold boot from a complete power off. I presume the system is booting because I see sudden hard drive activity, then my keyboard numlock indicator goes off, comes back on, then extended hard drive activity.
EA_David: I will send my savegame for this second battle as soon as I finish with this post. I will then see if the problem repeats, and then try dialing back my settings. I am playing on Ultra right now, with all the bells and whistles turned on, so there's plenty of room to retreat.
