Hello all. I have the ps3 version of Skyrim. I am playing the Imperial Questliine, but with many problems. I have encountered the Forts with no enemies, multiple times. Reinstalling game data worked once, an attack on a random NPC worked the next time (strange). What I'm stuck on is the second to last quest where I cannot report for duty.

Anyway, this isn't really a question of how to get around this, as I am not playing anymore. This is more of a patch mechanics question. When, or I should say IF, they fix this questline, how exactly will it affect my game? I have about 4 different saves at various points in the questline. My first save is right before giving the Crown to either side. The second and third are before different forts, and the last is at the point menionted above where i cannot report for duty. Does it matter which of these saves I am playing on in anticipation of the patch? Will it fix my issue even though I've already progressed so far in to the questline, or should I be playing on the save that is right at the beginning of the questline? I want to work on other quests and such while I wait for a fix to come, but I don't want all the time I spent doiing these misc and side quests to go to waste, if the patch can only fix the Imperial Questline before you start it.

Am I making sense here? I apologize if I sound stupid. I am not familiar with how all this works and I want to make sure I can eventually finish this questline, without having wasted hours doing other things while I waited. Right now, I have stopped playing altogether as I am not sure which save I should be using, or if it even matters.

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

most ptaches dont work retroactivly meaning you will have to start over

However we cant know the spcifics until the patch itself comes out

I hope I'm proved wrong for the sake of you and many other people with saves in a similar situation but on the PS3 I think it's unlikely that any patch released to stop questlines breaking will be able to fix the users savegame.

Well you cant fix a bug by patching it if you have already triggered it.

Actually, you can. Whether or not they *will* is the question.

Actually no in most cases you cant just patch over quest bugs like that.

Obsidian had to add a companion removal terminal to New Vegas becuase of the companions dissapearing bug CANT be fixed by a retroactive patch if its already triggered.

Wow this is exremely disappointing. Where exactly does the bug lie though? I mean, would I be ok if I am still on the Jagged Crown mission, and just avoid any other Imperial quests until a fix? I never had any issues before the first Fort mission so that should be ok then, no?

since the Creation Kit isnt out yet no one really knows what triggers the bug.

Ive seen mention that doing the DB questline can break leaving Jorvaskir.

NEVER get attached to your first playthrough.

It's most likely that Obsidian found it to be the easiest way to deal with the problem in that case, maybe because they couldn't detect the condition all the time and that solution allows the user to reset things if it recurred.

If there's a bug with a quest, they should be able to detect the quest stage and if the conditions for triggering the continuation of the quest are still obtainable. If not, they could fix them. Now maybe they don't have a way to directly alter a savegame file via a patch, but it's certainly *possible* to modify the program to anolyze that sort of thing when loading it, or when a quest is selected, or when a zone loads, or whatever.

Maybe they feel that's too slow, or not worth the trouble (too much work for too little benefit) or the risk (any change always runs the risk of breaking something else), but it's just code. I do this sort of thing all the time at my job. Granted, I usually fix the code so it doesn't happen again, and apply a one-time fix to any bad data or just manually deal with it rather than including that part with the patch, but then I'm not dealing with hundreds of thousands or millions of affected customers.

So like I said, it's not as clear cut as saying they simply can't fix a bug you've already run into. I'll conceed though - I don't think they will fix games that have already run into the bug either. I'm not even sure if they'll end up fixing the core bug in the first place. Much as I love their games, this is Bethesda after all.

That's what I mean about which save file to use. Is it the entire quest line or each quest separately. Technically it would be under "reunification of Skyrim". But, do I need to play on a save before that point in the quest, before the reunification quest altogether, or before Civil war altogether.

Technically, the point where I am is after the rescue from fort Katsav but before battle for fort Amol. It all falls under Reunification though.

This feels more like work instead of a game.