Opening Scene Character Bug

[Noxvern]

Okay, I've searched millions of sites and it seems that nobody has happened to this or maybe it has happened to very few people, but I can't find a solution.

My problem is that in the opening scene, everything works correctly, but when my character approaches Hadvar for the creation of said (bearing in mind that I have Alternate Start installed and therefore this is avoided) it starts to walk in another direction (turns and goes in the opposite direction) and does not let me continue. It doesn't only happen to me with Hadvar, but also when I have to follow the Captain or even when the character is going to be "executed". It doesn't matter what I do, it always goes in the wrong direction... I've tried with console commands to rotate the character, to change its position, etc. and it doesn't seem to have an effect.

The thing is that I have more than 1200 mods in my game and going one by one trying which one is the cause is going to take me more time than I am going to be playing.

Despite having Alternate Start, I always like to have the vanilla start, so as not to break the "magic" of the story.

Has this happened to anyone else? Does anyone know what may be causing it?

PS: I have noticed that if I use some command to have control of the character or to be able to see it in third person, my character's arms are embedded inwards, does that have something to do with it?

[scorrp10]

That event is scripted, meaning at the time your character is instructed by the script to advance from current position to a specific marker in that cell.

 

Potential issues:

The opening sequence script is overloaded by some other mod, and there is something wrong with the overloading script.

Some mod is changing that cell, and the marker reference you have to proceed to is no longer pointing at the spot by Hadvar, but references something elsewhere.

Some mod is overloading that cell, and it has a different navmesh, so your character can't properly pathfind to the indicated marker.

 

I would start by using SSEEdit to see which mods overload the Helgen cell, which mod has final priority, and what exactly is the impact.

[wfandrews]

One of the reasons people use LAL is to skip the opening scene, which as scorrp10 has noted is heavily scripted.

 

If you are going to go through the opening scene it is recommended that you not mod your game except for maybe the unofficial patch and SkyUI until you emerge from the Helgen cave. Right after emerging from the cave you can save and then start adding mods to that save.

 

If you try to start with a modded game from the cart ride or before the opening scene has completed you will almost certainly run into problems.

[showler]

I'd argue against that recommendation. Adding mods at that point can still cause problems.

 

If you start in the LAL starting cell and allow all your mods to finish loading and running their scripts before choosing the vanilla start you shouldn't have any problems.

 

If you are having problems then it is not related to the opening being scripted, it's a mod screwing things up that needs to be fixed.

[wfandrews]

I have never had a problem adding mods at that point in over ten years of playing almost every version of the Elder Scrolls. I have certainly discovered mod conflicts, which is why I use that as a test when I start a new game with new mods. After I get that starting smoothly with my new game I start the game with LAL and go from there.

 

How do you add mods and make sure they will run smoothly in a new game? Do you just download and install the mods you are going to use and hope there are no conflicts. I have found that there are times that even using LOOT and xEdit sometimes I still get a mod conflict when I start a new game with some new mods added.

 

I'd argue against that recommendation. Adding mods at that point can still cause problems.

 

If you start in the LAL starting cell and allow all your mods to finish loading and running their scripts before choosing the vanilla start you shouldn't have any problems.

 

If you are having problems then it is not related to the opening being scripted, it's a mod screwing things up that needs to be fixed.

[showler]

You have to test mods in different ways. And then you start a new game from the beginning before actually playing.

[scorrp10]

Actually, among best ways to test is to start a new clean game. When you have already started a game, a lot of things get initialized, instantiated, etc and many things are literally 'baked' into your save with no trivial way of changing them. Though what I typically do is not pick 'New' in the main menu, but rather open the console and type 'coc qasmoke'. This loads you into a test area as a generic male lvl 1 Nord in iron armor. If something works in brand new game, but does not work when loading a prior save, it means that mods in general are compatible, but something already in a save is not playing nice with new things.

 

Simple example: you have Bijin NPCs installed. But then you come across 'Women of Skyrim' by LamaKreis and install that mid-way through game. Next time you are in Whiterun, you see Carlotta Valentia sporting a real ugly neck gap.

If you start a brand new game and use player.placeatme to summon her, she looks fine, no gap. The problem is that Bijin sets her weight to 80, and that is how she is written in your save, and whenever she is loaded, her body is rendered at weight 80. Carlotta in LK's mod uses original weight 0, so the head mesh has slimmer neck, hence the gap.

 

Same way with mods that change interiors. Practically any mod that alters a vanilla player home (i.e. Breezehome) will caution you to NOT use it with a save where (Breezehome) was already bought.

[wfandrews]

Which is to say, do not install or update a mod mid game unless the mod author specifically says it is alright to do so on the mod page.

 

Does not mean that that you will break your game, just one of those "better safe than sorry" things.

[HighGrit]

I understand this post is ages old, but since this was one of the top and most recent posts I found in searching for a fix, I felt that posting my solution here may save someone a lot of time and searching. So, none of the solutions here helped me, but they got me thinking "MOD ORDER". Now granted I only have like 6 animated related mods atm, but I placed LAL BELOW ANY of these animation mods, ran LOOT to find any issues, booted up the game and BOOM problem fixed. If you're running a lot more mods than I am, you may run into an issue so be aware. Otherwise I hope this helps.

[AaronOfMpls]

Yah, Alternate Start - Live Another Life does need to go near the bottom of your load order.  With few exceptions, the only mods after it should be AS-LAL plugins (that add more starts), and your Bashed Patch (if you've made one with Wrye Bash, to merge leveled list changes and such).