Dead Space How to Fix the Power Cell Bug

There is a bug that can occur, and it is highly likely that you will experience it during one of your playthroughs, wherein the power cells fail to load in. To be certain, it is not a case where there is a power cell that is locked in place and you simply need to turn off all available power-routing options. Instead, it just flat out does not spawn in the power cells.

Imagine this: it’s chapter twelve of your first ever playthrough, and you reach the part that requires 3 power cells in order to start up this giant . . . .thing. You spend thirty minutes shooting some stuff, exploring the room, and scratching your brain. The door has closed behind you and will not open again until the task is completed, but there are just no power cells to be found. On top of that, even the kenesis boxes are missing. You look up walkthroughs and other playthroughs to see if you’ve missed something. They open the door and immediately see power cells and kenesis boxes. You look the issue up to find almost nothing exists about it other than other players’ complaints about the same issue – some even having it occur even earlier in the game. You try reloading your last save, but no matter how many times you do this it just won’t spawn anything in. Thus ends the playthrough, because you literally can do nothing to move the game forward. Thus, you start over and play the entire game again. . . but the same bug occurs at the same spot, only this time the kenesis boxes have spawned in.

Well, the workaround for me went like this:
1. Changed graphics from Ultra to Low.
2. Changed from DLSS to any other option, as I’d heard this can help.
3. Cleared out Disk Space on my hard drive to increase the odds of objects being able to load in.
4. Reloaded the game from as far back as I could with auto saves.

* As a safety net, I kept a separate save file for Chapter 11, just before Chapter 12.

** It is quite possible that those first 3 steps are not necessary, but I’m including them because those are the things I changed before reloading as far back as I could. Voila! The power cells spawned in just fine and I was able to beat the game.

*** The key thing, I believe, is that you choose a reload point that is before the most recent checkpoint, so at least 10-30 minutes back if possible. For Chapter 12 you’ll want to save before moving the Marker through the second set of bridges. Once you complete that set, the door locks behind you after you go through it, and you can save there too. Reloading the save point in said room you just walked into will not fix the issue; you need to go further back. For me,I was able to go back like 10-15 minutes to a previous point before moving the marker in the first place, so that worked.