Ok after some testing and trying of suggestions given to me on this board:
My saves were all completly hosed from the patch. Moving the saves, uninstalling, reinstalling, repatching.. trying the different patch versions along the way.. all failed.
Best as I can figure, something went wrong while patching. The save game versions should have been updated to 1.41, but infact remained 1.0 the entire time. I even tried reinstalling and repatching again after moving my saves back to their right place.
I now see that other people are having the problems I have, so I can feel confident that it wasn't something I did wrong.
Old (pre-1.4) saves will ALWAYS show up as version 1.0 in your load game menu. Only saves that you save while running 1.4 (or 1.41) will show up as 1.4 (or 1.41). Doesn't sound like you're seeing anything out of the ordinary.
