Chapter 21 of Doom: The Dark Ages, or the Final Battle, is all about defeating the demon Prince Azhrak at the end. But as one would expect from a dark fantasy game like Doom, you will have to defeat Azhrak several times. Every time you get his health low, he will get stronger and regenerate his health. This will happen 2 times. So, it is quite obvious that if you are not skillful enough or are just playing the game on a higher difficulty, you will be dying a lot in this chapter. If you don’t wish to use the extra lives, you will have to restart the whole level again. But here’s where the bug lies. As per player reports, after getting defeated by the final boss of Doom: The Dark Ages, the game just doesn’t load. It crashes while loading the level again. If you too are encountering the same issue, consider reading this guide for more details.
Well, this bug isn’t just limited to players playing the game on a PC. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S console players have also reported that the game doesn’t load again in the final battle once they die. This is a serious issue, as this renders your whole in-game progress useless. At first, we thought this might be due to save file corruption happening on PCs but since console players are also affected, we are now speculating that this is related to how the game has been coded. So, basically, this issue can be fixed only if the developers intervene. But have they intervened yet? Let’s find out.
Doom The Dark Ages Crashing at Chapter 21 Issue: Is there any fix yet
As of now, there has been no official fix or acknowledgment provided by the developers regarding this issue. But since many players have already sent support tickets regarding the same, it is only a matter of time before the developers chime in. However, since there is no official confirmation on this, you will have to wait. That said, now you are left with trying a bunch of effective workarounds that have been successful in fixing the issue for some. Here are they:
Disable iGPU Drivers (PC)
One of the most common fixes for this crashing issue is to just disable your system’s iGPU drivers. How? Go to Device Manager and select the Display Adapters tab. Here, right-click on the Intel or AMD Driver for CPU and select Disable Driver. Once done, restart your PC and then launch the game to check whether the issue persists.
Rollback/Update GPU drivers (PC)
Another workaround worth trying is to use an older version of your GPU drivers to prevent the game from crashing. Doing so did fix the issue for some so we recommend that you try it as well. Head over to the official Nvidia/AMD website and select the GPU that your system has. Now, instead of downloading the latest drivers, download an old one (for Nvidia GPUs: version 576.28) and then check whether the game crashes. However, if you find out that the drivers are already outdated, try installing the latest ones and then check.
Console-specific Workarounds?
On consoles, there isn’t much you can do except wait for the developers to release an official fix for this issue. While waiting for a fix, you can try starting a new save slot and playing the game from the very beginning. Unfortunately, this is currently the only way to ensure you get to play the game instead of constant crashes while loading the same.
If we get additional information regarding this matter, we will make sure to update this guide at the earliest. Until then, make sure to visit DigiStatement for more such guides on all things gaming.
