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GideonJK's avatar
GideonJK
6 years ago
Solved

Shephard blackface and glitches after huge ME2 update (reinstall no help)

This is my third ME2 playthrough (201 hours on record so far). I played for probably a solid ten or so hours with no problem - then Origin decided to download and install a massive update, over 7GBs. (I don't understand this, it seems game-sized.)

While it was downloading, I could still play, no problem. Afterwards, I got the following error messages once the connection with Cerberus Network was made:

"The following downloadable content is corrupt and cannot be used. Please re-download this downloadable content and try again. DLC_EXP_Part02" (apparently it refers to the Arrival DLC)

"Unable to authorize the listed DLC. Please log into Cerberus Network with the account used to purchase the DLC.

Kasumi
Firewalker Mission Pack
..."

Attempting to resume results in: "The selected save game cannot be loaded. The following downloadable content is missing: Normandy Crash Site, Zaeed, Firewalker Mission Pack, Kasumi, Lair of the Shadow Broker".

For context, I have obviously a number of DLCs, and I also installed two mods (that I remember) before I started my last playthrough: ALOT textures and Shorter Loadings. As a result, I repaired the game files in Origin. Seems like it redownloaded all my DLCs. This seems to work for the first problem, but the DLC_EXP_Part02 one persists.

However, now there are graphics glitches everywhere, including blocky blackfaces for Shephard and other characters (it can differ between situations). Kelly's suit (for example) is all black, the floor near Shephard has no textures as well, and some walls have strange animations when moving the mouse (e.g. the wall next to the elevator on the combat information center). I included two screenshots (apparently I can only upload three files).

My guess was that the update messed things up for ALOT. I couldn't find my ME2 backup, so after backing up my save games, I completely reinstalled the game. Unfortunately, the graphics are still the same, even though I renamed the place where I thought ALOT was situated (under Downloads).

So I thought about completely uninstalling ALOT. The Nexus page says: "To uninstall, use the Installer's backup & restore functionality (see guide above)." I don't see a guide, but I do have ALOTInstaller.exe. Opening up, it says that ALOT is not installed, and I can only backup ME2, not restore it.

So now I'm stuck since even a complete reinstall of the game doesn't solve it, and it seems that ALOT wasn't the culprit after all. I disabled high quality bloom, dynamic shadows, light environment shadows and film grain, and also updated my NVidia driver, but no luck.

My dxdiag is attached (I see that it contains a few problem signatures). Thanks for your help!

  • holger1405's avatar
    holger1405
    6 years ago

    @GideonJK 

    • Make sure Origin is Closed.
    • Go to your "Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect 2\BioGame" folder and move the "Config" folder to your desktop > Test.

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  • holger1405's avatar
    holger1405
    Hero+
    6 years ago

    @GideonJK 

    • Make sure Origin is Closed.
    • Go to your "Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect 2\BioGame" folder and move the "Config" folder to your desktop > Test.
  • GideonJK's avatar
    GideonJK
    6 years ago

    Thanks for your reply, this actually seems to work. 🙂 Well, I think so. (I think I understand your solution - the game generates the config files with default values if they don't exist, so it's just a way to set everything to default.)

    Running the game, I got a warning that my hardware appears to be unsupported. It looked like * when running it the first time. I then looked around the game files and found MassEffect2Config.exe (which by the way contains a link to tech support, so I'll use that next time). I could set up everything except the graphics card though.

    Next time around, it still looked like *, but I could set the resolution to 1280x800 IIRC, and the game seems to play fine, although I'm still not sure if it detected my NVidia card.

    It now looks slightly off but I think it's because I'm used to playing with ALOT for so many hours. At least the horrible glitches are gone.

    Appreciated!

  • holger1405's avatar
    holger1405
    Hero+
    6 years ago

    @GideonJK 

    You're welcome!

    @GideonJK  schrieb:

    Thanks for your reply, this actually seems to work. 🙂 Well, I think so. (I think I understand your solution - the game generates the config files with default values if they don't exist, so it's just a way to set everything to default.)

    Precisely.

    AfaIk ALOT changes the "GamerSettings.ini", and with the ALOT files gone, the graphic glitches you experienced appear.

    For the GPU:

    To make sure that your games run on the NVIDIA GPU and not on the Intel GPU.

    • Open the NVIDIA Control Panel > 3D Settings > Manage 3D Settings.
    • Go to the ab "Program Settings" Tab > Search for "Mass Effect 2" in the first drop down menu.
    • Go to: "Select the preferred graphics processor for this program" > Select the GTX 1050 > Apply.

    Then you should be able to set the resolution back to the native 1920 x 1080 of your screen.

    You also can reinstall ALOT if that is correctly set.

  • holger1405's avatar
    holger1405
    Hero+
    6 years ago
    @GideonJK  schrieb:

    This is my third ME2 playthrough (201 hours on record so far). I played for probably a solid ten or so hours with no problem - then Origin decided to download and install a massive update, over 7GBs. (I don't understand this, it seems game-sized.)

    To elaborate on this.

    If you install an update for a game, Origin will verify the integrity of the game files.

    If this game is modded Origin can't find the original game files, because they got modified by ALOT,

    So Origin will do what it is suppose to do if it can't find the Original game files, replace the non Original files with the Original files.

    And in case of ALOT, that is basically the entire game.

    Therefore it is very important that you turn automatic game updates off and also don't install updates by hand if your game is modded.

  • GideonJK's avatar
    GideonJK
    6 years ago

    Ah, thank you so much for your help. After setting my graphics card for ME2 in the NVidia control panel, it automatically set the resolution to 1920 x 1080 in-game. I thought something was still a little off.


    As for your other tip on not installing updates, good to know. Strangely though, Origin was already set to not installing updates for games (Origin -> Application settings -> Client update -> all values grey/zero). I don't know what happened to trigger this last update.


    I'm also glad to have a probable explanation on why the update was so huge.


    I see you posted a crapload of solutions already - you're doing God's work.


    Peace out

  • Wipeout052689's avatar
    Wipeout052689
    5 years ago

    I signed up for EA JUST to thank you for however you figured that out. I just bought a new rig with a gtx 1050 and was getting that word triangle shadow thing. This fix of putting config on desktop was beautiful. I had said f it a couple weeks ago and decided to try again tonight. Bravo

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