I was told (as a miscellaneous quest) to kill a dragon on some mountain. When I got near it I saved, then approached the dragon for the fight. A few seconds into the fight my game froze and never recovered. I turned off my Xbox 360, waited a few minutes, and restarted. I chose the "continue" option from the game's main menu. It began loading, but then froze. Again, I turned off my Xbox 360, waited a few minutes, and restarted. This time, I loaded from the save just prior to the newest save (which was only about 10 minutes older). Same thing: the game froze during loading. Rinse, repeat, and I tried loading from a much older save with the same crashed outcome.

Background info:
My game is installed to the Xbox 360's hard drive
I have the newest patch (which I believe is 1.2, but it is the newest)
I have cleared the Xbox 360's hard drive cache (which required downloading the patch again) - this didn't help

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm 50 hours in, and there is NO WAY I'm starting from scratch!!!

Bump. Come on, people, please help.

No idea. Try loading from an even earlier save point.

How many save games do you currently have?

Well, I'd estimate somewhere in the ballpark of 100 save files - maybe slightly fewer than that. I'm up to save #470-ish, and I create a new file every so often.

I think your best bet may be to revert back to 1.1. I'll try and find you the post I read with instructions. Only problem is, you won't be able to load your 1.2 saves, but may allow you to at least play the game.

Edit:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1298293-want-patch-11-back-this-might-work/