I sensed something wasn't quite right with the scene, but pushed that thought to the corner of my mind and took a couple minutes to dispose of some junk items weighing me down, tossing the detritus onto the elevator floor.
After refilling my cup of coffee in the real world, I accepted the elevator door in the virtual world wasn't going to open anytime soon, so I dropped two grenades and Piper and I exploded into fountains of blood. The elevator, of course, remained perfectly sealed.
I reloaded the game from a different save file at a point a few minutes earlier in the mission, and made my way back to the elevator only to find myself trapped again. I reloaded and backtracked to the other elevator, planning to head downstairs and exit the tower. Its door closed, the music began, the music stopped, and two truths smacked me upside the head, one immediately followed by the other: elevators no longer work in this game; I've probably lost an afternoon's worth of progress.
I bit my lip and loaded a save file from a couple hours earlier. My second time through the east side of post-apocalyptic Boston, I didn't allow myself to enjoy the game's distractions and instead beelined for the tower, picking off a handful of super mutants out of habit. I stepped into the first elevator, the one that had got me midway through the mission, the one that had worked previously. I closed the door. Music. No Music. Stuck. The problem had seemingly followed me from one save file to the next.
When a game asks me to give dozens of hours, I in turn trust that my progress will be respected. As an adult, I have less and less time for games, and the couple of hours without distractions is precious. To lose that progress is discouraging, but what's worse is weighing my solutions:
- Do I choose an even older save file, and progress to the same point in hopes the game has repaired itself?
- Do I abandon this mission and hope all elevators aren't stop signs preventing me from moving forward?
- Do I restart and repeat the same dozen hours, trying to recreate the character from memory and a good bit of luck?
Whatever I do, I feel as though the game could break at any moment, making any additional investment meaningless. At best, I'm treating my play time like an unpaid quality testing assignment. At worse, my investment proves to be a wash, and late in the game this bug prevents me from reaching the conclusion.
So that's where I'm at. Nine hours in, I'm stuck in an elevator wondering if it's even worth getting out.