speech with NPC's does not continue even if one of the speech options is picked. This has stopped me from making progress or starting any new quests, I can no longer trade with shop owners as when I click "What have you got for sale?" they say "Take a look" (or one of the other phrases) then just idly stand there and no trade window comes up. I cannot trade with or talk to any NPC's in game and so quest progress is impossible, game completion is impossible, the game is now useless.
(Video Evidence PS3) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St-gAjL8uMw

I have this bug, however uninstalling the game data, game updates, starting a new game, and reloading save files do not work.
Any ideas on how to fix it? I pretty much can't play the game anymore since I can't choose any options when I talk to anyone.

What was the last thing you were doing before this started happening?

I was doing the quest
The Only Cure

I don't see how that could help me fix this bug. My playtime is 15 hours but I also don't see how that would affect it.

I was just curious because most of the time when I've seen people report this bug around here it started happening just after they were abusing some glitch to raise their skill level on something.

Ok. Say just to prentend I was power leveling my skill, then what? I don't see how that would affect this bug. Would it change your response?

OMG...Bethesda.
After Lag and freezes, this one could be the worst bug in the game.

Then I'd tell you to reload a save from before you were abusing the glitch and play without abusing the glitch. I find it highly ironic when people who were deliberately abusing game mechanics come here to complain that their game is no longer working properly.

Not bad at all. Good punishment for cheaters

Then you are just another mistaken fool, with another simplistic generic reponse. It's a single player role playing game, people can do what ever they please. "Abusing game mechanics" like power leveling a skill to save time, experience the benefit of it or for role playing. Herp derp.

So you are just upset that you cheated and the game broke as a result. And what you expect is for Bethesda to fix it so that you can cheat without the game glitching, when in reality the only thing they might actually do to resolve this problem is fix it so that you can't cheat in the first place. If power-levelling a skill was meant to work properly it would be explained in the game manual.

Nope. You're wrong on all acounts. I didn't "cheat", I didn't even power level a skill, which I'm starting to think you don't understand what that means.
What is with your obsession and people cheating? I can feel the heat from your throbbing boner from over here.

This is one of the worst bugs In the entire game, you cannot talk to any vendors or anyone at all and reloading saves did not fix it for that character.

I would suggest that people do not do the quest The Only Cure. I've seen more than one person have this glitch occure after doing that quest.

So you didn't do anything to take advantage of any game mechanic that the developers might not have intended? If that's the case then you have my apologies. But only a little bit since I don't appreciate being called names.

Im having the same problem, 100+ hours in the game and people wont talk to me, menus wont open, cant collect quest items. Cant even go to jail because guards wont reply :S, also very very laggy...very irritating

Probably your system might be running out of memory (VRAM), how much free space do you currently have on your HDD ?

226/298 so cant be it. I have deleted loads of saved files, only kept 5 of the latest of skyrim. system doesnt need update (4.00)

Is it a new system ? or have you been deleting large files (games, music, movies) ?

1.5 years old. but no, just deleted older game saves only. i guess it happened when i tried to steal a horn in solitude for a thieves quest, couldnt pick it up, owner saw me brake in and a guard wanted to put me in jail. then i couldnt choose the option take me to jail...been like that since that.

Since your saved files are relatively small it might help to reformat of your HDD and get a clean start, just back up any important files and your Skyrim saves, others advise to do just a Rebuid Database, but in my opinion a Full Reformat prior to a Restore will ensure the best possible performance as close to a new HDD as it can be (except for actually getting a new one).

This will not fix it forever it's just a work around since the problem is within the code. But hopefully it will give you a few more hours of fun.

Ok, thanks!

This will not fix it at all. It is the most annoying thing to suggest. It's like to tell to open the engine because the car is not starting.

Also having this problem about a hundred hours in.

Yeah a hdd format shouldnt be necessary for a game bug :S I just gotta take a break until a patch comes, cant talk to anyone so theres no point wandering around...

And I agree with you. The reason I so foolishly suggested that is that after some or any hard reset (due to freezes) the HDD could have damaged sectors from the power spike (NOT FROM SKYRYM of course ), that could cause misreadings. Again so sorry.

Just for reference one shold fix those problems booting in safe mode and then choosing the option to rebuild the filesystem and/or the "database". I don't have the link right now, but it is easy to find how to do it.

Still bugged for you?

I emailed beth and got a responce to delete the game data, that didnt work....wth theres gotta be something...havent played in days!! haha