So, after playing the game for hours last night and having just finished the quest "Beyond the Beef" I exit The Ultra Luxe and save at the front door. I turn off my PS3 and go to bed. Today I get home from work and load up my save. As soon as the game boots up the message flashed on the screen "Arcade has died. You have lost Arcade's Better Healing Perk. Quest failed 'For Auld Lang Syne'" . . .

wtf? I was just standing there in front of the casino when I saved. No fighting. Just standing there! How can he have died? Was it a heart attack? AIDS? Suicide? And his body is nowhere to be found. I got it, must have been aliens... the bastards!

I have 47 hours played. My last backup save was at 30 hours. Is this what they expect from us, making backup saves every hour so we are safe when the game screws us? I guess I'll play on but it svcks that I lost a companion simply by saving at the end of my play session.


Personal bugs list:

1) Weatherd 10mm bug after adding lazer sight.
2) Crashing in game pre-patch, on loading screen post-patch.
3) Oh My Papa quest not giving credit for Karl's Journal pickup.
4) Dissapearing companions in party.
5) Companions sent back to Lucky 38 not showing up ever again.
6) Dead companion and missing body after loading save.
...Sadly more to come I'm sure. No faith in the stability of this game.

And this is just a short list from what I've read in this forum... PLEASE FIX kthxbye

in a game know to have bugs in it your last save was 17 HOURS ago? saving once an hour is not a big deal.

Does he die instantly? If not you could always mash the pause button and turn off hardcoe mode before he has time to keel over. You'll forfeit the achievement, but who actually cares about that?

Yes, I'm used to games where relying on the autosave is the norm... so I don't think to stop and save every hour but that's my point. It's not hard to do but we should not be forced to save after every step we take to enjoy the game. And that solution isn't what we should have to expect. With the frequency of glitches relying on old saves means we have to play through this game twice just to get through it once. Complete a step... glitch ... load old save... recomplete step... save... complete next step... glitch... wash, rinse, repete. Not my idea of a good time.

Yes, I get the dead notification before I can do anything, but even if I could the fact still remains that he is not there even after dying but when I saved he was standing right next to me with Rex. Rex is still there but Arcade is dead and the body is missing.

In normal mode when i enter a building sometimes boone goes unconsious, most likely another thing obsedian over looked when they made such a wonderful smooth game...

That's terrible. I've had a similar problem a couple days ago. I loaded a save and was walking towards The Strip's entrance. Suddenly, a message appeared that read, "Quest Failed" (I don't remember the name of the quest. The quest wasn't even available to me. Never heard of it). Then it said all NCR will shoot me on sight. The minute I walked into The Strip they started shooting at me. I reloaded the save and everything was fine. I don't know what happened.

I imagine something like this happened. I've noticed this with a LOT of plants most notably broc flowers. But in your case as the game is loading it loaded up Arcade BEFORE it loaded up the ground so instead of him just standing there waiting for you to finish loading he falls through the non existent(yet) floor and dies from fall damage. I can only imagine it because I have saved in front of several plants before and when I go to reload the plant is constantly falling through the floor. Also sometimes when in the middle of a fight and I go through a loading zone door, it loads to cinematic of me getting killed that I can only guess that the game itself is still playing while you're stuck at the loading screen. Just my guess.