Okay! So...I did some testing with suggestions offered earlier.
I followed some earlier advice about editing the save file---and I extracted the fortjoy level cache file from the saved game of my initial landing on the beach, then took my corrupted save and extracted the fortjoy level cache file--deleted the corrupted one, replaced it with the one from the intial landing at fort joy..and voila! (you actually don't need to replace the fortjoy cache file, you can just delete it and re-package the save and it'll create a new, clean one)
Everything was/is working except--with lots of weird issues. The map and world, including loot thinks you have never been there. You can re-loot everything. Some NPC's dont talk to you, pets don't talk to you, people you killed are now alive again. ETC--lots of weird stuff.
So, while it fixes the loading/saving--it breaks a bunch of other things which I can't seem to un-break.
This game that was corrupted most recently was a complete re-start without stealing anything at all--so it will happen again and again if I were to start again. So I have to stop playing until it's fixed.
The problem with the saves, I think, lies somewhere in the cache file for fort joy. It is possible to edit that cache file as plain text--but as I'm not a coder, nor have idea what to look for-- so it wouldn't help me much. But clearly, the result of the main problem is getting saved in that (and any) cache file. I think if someone knew more about coding/xml than I did (I know nothing)--the problem area could be deleted and the save could be salvaged.
But, as it stands now--fixing the save/load problems introduces a host of other weird issues. More importantly--the original bug causing this to happen will continue to happen in fort joy and whatever other zones you're in.
That means I need to stop playing until it's fixed, sadly. If anyone else has any other ides..by all means!
