Dragon Age Inquisition Xbox 360 "The disc is unreadable"

[imagination_mine]

I am seeing identical behavior a few hours into play.

To Reproduce (for me):

0) Roll up a male elf mage.

1) Play through until the Fallow Mire becomes accessible

2) Travel to the Fallow Mire

Expected:

The map should load, yeah?

Observed:

The three-card info screen displays for an unusually brief time before the screen goes black with the flashing loading icon in the corner. Then this error appears, every single time.

What I Tried:

I've cleaned disc, restarted the Xbox; changed disc for a DVD movie at suggestion of The Internet

What Is Weird:

The disc can and will load Fallow Mire for my housemates, who are playing a human rogue and quinari warrior. Only I seem to get this problem.

What I am describing here might be a separate bug than the more universally showstopper behavior described above.

I saw the same error occur once while attempting to engage the vendor's table at the Hinterlands Crossroads. This seems like a game-state bug because of its consistency for me on my Xbox.

If it frustrates me enough to try starting another playthrough and I see this still I'll chime back.

[Thetandingo]

This is extremely frustrating. 

Main quest was giving me the error after I was 75 hours in. No way around it. I played side quests and tried returning to the main quest: no dice.

The advice at the time was to delete everything and reinstall. Admitting the lost time was crushing, but I did it anyway and rolled a new character.

In the opening hours got this error AGAIN along the critical path. This time the advice I was able to find on the internet was to dump the xbox cache (3 times in a row), delete the 4 install files, dump the cache again, and reinstall. I did that. What do you know? That worked that time.

Now, AGAIN, I'm getting a critical path disc unreadable crash in Crestwood any time I go near that story-critical cave (trying to avoid spoilers) but the aforementioned voodoo cache/reinstall rigmarole isn't working this time. 

I'm now out of options. It's very, very hard to remain "cool" about this. Does anyone in the community recommend a next step for me?

Does anyone at EA or Bioware have thoughts or feedback? The silence around this topic isn't incouraging.

[nathan00700]

I'm having the same problem. I got the game as a Christmas gift but I've been unable to play it until 12/29/14 because I didn't have a proper hard drive to install it on. Once the hard drive finally arrived yesterday, I installed it, popped in Disc 2, selected "New Game" on the start screen, and it said the Disc is unreadable.

I figured it was just my disc, so I went to Gamestop, exchanged the game for a new copy, and came back to put in this new Disc 2. I made it past the start screen, took half an hour to painstakingly create my character as I always do (male elf mage), and watched the first cutscene. When it got to the second cutscene, I got the Disc Unreadable message AGAIN when the Seeker approached my character. I even heard her start talking even while the error message was onscreen. 

So I read what people have been saying, deleted the game (but forgot to delete the system cache), reinstalled it, quickly created a generic male qunari mage, and his cutscene went on longer than before. So I thought, "cool, it worked!" Then I created my previous male elf mage again, thinking that all was well, but it gave me the same error message at the same place as before! In hindsight, I should have seen how far it got with my generic character but I'm just really losing my patience.

Reinstalled it for a second time after deleting the entire game and the system cache, and I can't even make it into the character creation screen. I've tried it several times with various character combinations. It got worse. 

This is frustrating. I've been looking forward to this game for so long. It was frustrating enough that I couldn't play the game until I had a hard drive. Hell, it was really frustrating seeing everyone else enjoy the game while I didn't even have it yet. But now that I do have it, I can't play. EA WHERE ARE YOU?!

[Thetandingo]

On another forum I read that someone had success downloading the free English Voice Pack from the marketplace. I did that.

Just for the permanent record: No dice, I'm afraid.

Well, no DA:I for me until the next patch or another possible fix comes up. Money well wasted.

[satiivaindiica]

SAME **bleep** HAPPENING TO ME IM INFRUIATED MY BROTHER HAS A XBOX ONE AND HASNT HAD ONE ISSUE BUT MINE KEEPS POPPING UP THE DISC CAN NOT BE READ MSG GLAD ITS NOT JUST ME

[SkillJam]

Well i had this cant read dics problem, and i had it with few games but dragon age inquisition had it most, almost every half hour i got cant read disc error and what really helped me? Pot tweak on laser in disc drive. I had it set up to 6,3k ohm, so i lowered it to 5,3k ohm, laser get slightly stronger and can read every game. Now i can play every game without that error, its awesome. It should be safe if you dont go lower than 3k ohms, normal stats from factory are between 4k ohms to 6,4k ohms. You can find many tutorials on youtube how to do that, you will need just multimeter and screwdriver. It really helped me and i hope that it will help other people too.

[Wool4Sheep]

Also have this issue and like others it seems seems to be a set location the issue happens at.

For me it it attempting to use the war room in sky hold after having completed most of crestlands. I thought perhaps it was because I had left after a quest and not got a related lot update, so I went back and finished the area, and that's not the issues

I have tried uninstalling and clearing cashe but that has not helped, as others have mentioned a particular spoilery cave I'm going to try and going back to a save before then, but I would be very supprised if you can complete the game without going there. Hopefully by the time if finished grinding all the other areas a patch will be out.

[leomatrix2004]

Hi, this happened to me for the first time a couple of hours ago. I have been playing DAI since last year and I'm lvl19 (132hrs of gameplay) and the game has never crashed on my Xbox360--until now. I think the problem might be on the disk because it crashes ("The disc is unreadable") whenever I get to that upper river in Emerald Graves. The first time it happened I had just closed the rift by the river (northwest). I was able to close the rift but when I went to the river I got the "The disc is unreadable" msg. I reloaded and when I got closer to the river it crashed again and again. So I decided not to go near it again and it worked. I was able to play for hours without DAI crashing but in order to get to other parts on the map you MUST cross the river or follow it. So there it was again. It doesn't matter which part of the river I get close to that my game always crashes. What I don't get is that my disk is pristine without a single scratch--it looks brand new. I don't know what to do, for cleaning the cache didn't solve my problem. Anymore suggestions? Since it crases in the same "place" (anywhere along the river) I think that session of my disk might be corrupted. What do you guys think?

P.S.This is a bummer because I like to finish all the maps and leave no quest incomplete at all.

[NicolNiccolon]

A couple of days ago, my DA:I deteriorated and it seems it is not playable now due to disc problems.

It started approx. 10 days ago with missing game icons on the XBoX360 start page - soon followed with "disc unreadable" errors and now I suffer from freezes at load screens…. very annoying.

As I am at about 150 h gameplay, the disc already has spun a gazillion times in the drive. As I have read elsewhere, the developpers have, in order to shorten game load times, forced a split disc / hd loading procedure… stuff is loaded simultaneously from the game disc and from the hdd. That's why we don't have the option to install all files on the HDD.

The problem with that approach is that the game disc is always spinning (having caused the reported problems with the loud disc drive operation, mostly in earlier XBoXes). Discs that spin and are read constantly over a long time get hotter and hotter and thermal degradation on the disc is exponentially faster than at ambient temperatures (the famous entropic destruction of everything). Maybe the disc get 'literally' burned due to longtime spinning and being read. As a consequence, I think material stress just destroys the game discs much faster than what we normally experience from standard disc usage - I think this is what is happening to me right now. 

I know there are other issues with freezes during loading, and there are disc errors in completely new discs which indicates that my theory might not apply everywhere, but I think it's rather consistent with my 'experimental' findings...

If thermal degradation of the game discs is an issue, it should be temporally remedied by using 'new' game discs…. the problem is I am not willing to buy a new disc… I want a disc replacement! AND I'd like to have the option to install EVERYTHING onto the HDD - I'd rather have longer game loading times than disc errors and subsequent game freezes...

[lac-junior413]

I have the same error.

I tried to clean the cash and format the Xbox360 put the error continued.

This error happens always in the same location in Emerald Graves.

This error this not happening in other maps I went through.

This error this not happening in other games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sJR_gACfbg