So far, it's been fixed!
Interesting turn of events on my end:
I tried to copy "Patch0_Hotfix4.pak" to another location on my drive, but I was getting an error stating that the file could not be read / moved.
So I just deleted it.
I didn't run any file verification or anything, I just went into the game and it loaded up fine. Even my latest save loaded up without any issues!
Double checked the folder where that file originally was, it's not there. The latest file is Hotfix3.pak.
Going to play the game and hope it doesn't die on me.