Ok, so: RDR2 is
literally unplayable for me.
In a scale MS Solitaire to Deadly Premonition, RDR2 breaks all records of unplayability, easily passing DP as the least playable game I've ever played.
So there is this error called ERR_GFX_STATE which clearly nobody knows what it is, and why it happens.
What happens is that whenever you start a game, it crashes to desktop right after loading and before rendering the first in-game scene.
Rockstar acknowledges the error, and suggests to launch the game with a command line option. (Tried)
Some say its caused by the graphics cache, and suggest to delete it from the game settings folder. (Tried)
Some think it's caused by the graphics API, and say to switch from Vulkan to DX12. (Tried)
Somebody say it's because of the fullscreen mode, and suggest to try windowed or windowed borderless. (Tried)
Some fixed it by launching the Online mode, and then loading the Story (single player) from there. (Tried)
I've also tried reinstalling the game; deleting all the settings files (both RDR2 and Rockstar Launcher).
I've even formatted the PC. I mean, it was long overdue, but it was working relatively fine otherwise...
Some believe it's a game progress issue, as in: something in your game caused a breaking bug, which might corrupt the save.
Unfortunately you can't just start a new game, oh no. You can only
continue the game, and then, from the in-game pause menu, you can save/load/start a new game. CLEVER!
It's less clever when you have a game-breaking bug that prevents folks to load the game altogether.
Anyway, I've tried all the things to make Rockstar acknowledge I don't want to load the cloud saved files, but just starting from scratch.
For example, deleting the local saves and then, when the launcher complains about the missing local files, ask it to copy the local files (which... don't exist) over the cloud ones.
Did it work? For sure it didn't fix the ERR_GFX_STATE crash, and I'm not even entirely sure if I'm actually loading a fresh game, as, like I said earlier, there is no load menu in the title screen...
Now.
I've got ~20 hours played, and I'm wondering if it might make sense to beg Valve for a refund, buy Disco Elysium instead (which is nicely discounted for a few more days), and buy RDR2 in a couple of years, when it's discounted to 75% and hopefully well patched.