Twilight Centauri wrote...
I don't know if this is just my copy, but, well, I've found two serious bugs in the game, and one even breaks the game. In the town of Lothering, after you unlock Sten from the cage, he will not join my party. I even went into the party screen but he didn't even show up on the screen to select. The second bug is in the Inner Circle quarter, where the elderly mage has set up a barrier stopping you from progressing forward unless she is in your party. The same happened with Stern, where she doesn't show up in the party menu as selectable and every time I try to talk to her or approach the barrier the same cutscene happens as when you first open the door containing the elderly woman and the other female mages. Am I doing something wrong or is this the game itself. Well, whatever it is, I can't progress further. Please help.
You're not doing something wrong, its that the game was released with sloppy scripting in the convos. I didn't have the problem with Sten because of flags that were set based on what actions i performed leading up to the point where my convo branch worked properly.
I did have the exact same problem with the inner circle. I went from the castle ("there has to be a better way than using blood magic" path) to the inner circle, convinced the templars that i could handle it alone and went in to meet with Wynne, who responded exactly as you described.
To fix this you'll have to use the console and enter the command "runscript zz_cir_debug", then select "Set plot flag", "MAIN", and keep selecting "next" until you reach WYNNE_PERSUADED. Set this plot flag and then talk to her. This will cause a branch of the convo to run that actually works. I am not sure if you'll need to clear this plot flag after you're past the barrier or not - but i suspect that might be the case. I'm at that stage now and doing so with my run through.
Bioware, this is sloppy coding on your part and you should be ashamed of yourselves for releasing a product where the critical path has not been fully tested. Reminds me of Obsidian's NWN2 game breaking "Duncan Shard" quest at the very start when that game was first released. I know you folks do care about what you release (been in the NWN community since 2002) and that you've still got some exceptional talent on staff (GZ comes to mind), but really - if its not fully tested its not ready regardless of the pressures from EA.