A new hotfix for The Blood of Dawnwalker rolled out today, and you'll be happy to know that this one improves the game's overall stability, fixes several progression blockers, fixes an issue with controllers that was causing frame rate drops, gets rid of the famous red pipe—more on that later—and keeps dead folks from talking so much.

That last point, about the stiffs who won't shut up, doesn't figure as one of the update's highlights, which developer Rebel Wolves breaks down thusly:

• Improved the game's stability
• Fixed several issues that blocked quest progression
• Fixed an issue that blocked players from saving the game
• Connecting controllers with the outdated GameInput software should no longer cause FPS drops
• Torches can no longer grow uncontrollably

Still, it's interesting. Conversational corpses are almost always upsetting, and not just because the dead shouldn't speak, although that's certainly top of the list. But also, they never have anything good to say. If you find yourself conversing with the remains of the recently departed, you can be just about 100% sure that it's not going to be a happy conversation about how well everything is going. Quite the opposite, in fact.

There is one example of chatty corpses that weren't entirely bad, to go off on a bit of a tangent: Atomic Heart is full of them, a bizarre side effect of the game's alt-history Soviet technology, and most of the talking dead are reasonably cool about the situation. But that's also more of a 'fading echoes' thing, rather than a body that just will not die, and I imagine that would have a way of leading to more philosophical exchanges.

In any event, from the patch notes, for a more prosaic take on the topic:

• Dead NPCs can no longer start dialogues.

And then, yes, there's the pipe: "We are no longer using that one red pipe asset we weren’t supposed to use." That's a reference to a discovery last week of a placeholder asset in the game, bright red and clearly marked "Do not use this asset!" which somebody nonetheless used.

Kind of a shame that it's gone, really: I like to think of rogue placeholders as a kind of digital monument that everyone hears about, visits, and then ever-after can tell people, yeah, I saw that thing. I was there. Alas, I have not yet played Blood of Dawnwalker and so I will not get to see it, except on Reddit, which doesn't really count.

The Blood of Dawnwalker hotfix 1.0.4 is live now on Steam—the full patch notes are below.

• Stability
  • Multiple improvements to the game's stability.
• Gameplay
  • Fixed an issue that blocked the tutorial progress if Voracious Bite was used a bit too fast.
  • Fixed issues that caused Coen to get stuck inside certain houses with no way of getting out.
  • Crake can now talk to Coen even during his training sequence.
  • Dead NPCs can no longer start dialogues.
  • Fixed an issue that disabled blocking under certain circumstances.
  • Fixed an issue that blocked players from saving the game.
• Quests
  • Ocha will no longer attack Coen when attacked by guards.
  • Fixed an issue that caused Coen to get stuck in a cave in the "Deep Down" quest.
  • Fixed an issue that caused Murohn to not spawn under certain circumstances.
  • Fixed an issue that caused one of the possible solutions for the "Hive and Seek" quest to end prematurely.
  • Progressing the "On the Run" quest no longer causes infinite loading.
  • "A Lone Wolf's Hunt" now appropriately shows the difficulty level.
  • Fixed an issue that caused a soft-lock after following Sara.
  • Investigating the rag is now optional in the "Smoke and Ashes" quest.
  • Fixed an issue that caused a blocker in "The Heart Wants What It Wants" quest.
• Art
  • Coen and Iorgu will now drink from their cups even on low graphical settings.
  • We are no longer using that one red pipe asset we weren’t supposed to use.
• Audio
  • Fixed issues that caused music to stop playing in the prologue.
• Miscellaneous
  • Connecting controllers with the outdated GameInput software should no longer cause FPS drops.
  • Torches can no longer grow uncontrollably.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented Quality preset mods from applying properly.
• Plugin
  • Fixed issues with VSync when using FSR Frame Generation.