Oh man... I already wasted a 72 days' playthrough because the game never triggered Stilgar's mentioning of Chani and the plot pretty much refused to move forward, but it sure didn't stop me from wiping out every single Harkonnen fortress without a care in the world, only for Thufir to say how I need to bring Chani over... and I had no way of getting to Oxtyn-Tabr without Stilgar telling me about it, even when I would fly right above its location. Off to the mirror and restart.
Now, this next playthrough seemed to go nice until I made it to the point when I asked Gurney to stay in one of the Western sietches (there was one Fremen inside though). I had already been told about Chani, but wanted to have Gurney start training the troops before collecting her so I wouldn't waste time. And when I asked him to stay... Chani (whom I had not yet met at that point!) appeared out of nowhere, did her night sky love confession thing and the damn kiss cutscene happened right there in the sietch, with Gurney and the Fremen right there in the background of Paul and Chani's shades, lmao.
I was afraid I had screwed up my game again so I loaded back to the palace and figured I just had to get Chani first because reasons. But I already had Gurney and Stilgar in my troop and didn't want to leave them on the palace because I needed Gurney out there and Stilgar with me. So I left Gurney in I think an empty sietch (bad idea!) and went with Stilgar to collect Chani. I did the deed with her, then left Stilgar at Oxyn-Tabr, went to get Gurney and upon landing I got the vision from Jessica about her getting horny with all the sexy stuff. Anywho, I took Gurney to the sietch that already had like two Fremen training combat, left him there, picked up Stilgar over at Oxyn-Tabr, then came back to the palace and sure enough, Jessica reported Leto dead and Leto of course was perfectly alive and well in the main room. Of course, I had never received the Harkonnen message and he never left on his punitive expedition (which I had witnessed in an earlier playthrough).
Like Christ, I already have both my savestates from after the Gurney business, no way for me to get back. Do you know if this glitch renders the game unbeatable? I don't think Leto being technically alive must be a deal breaker, but I so don't want to find out it actually is precisely that when I'm done with another two hours of this crap.
I mean, I like the game, but if all this is strictly on the source code and not on DosBox being hokey, then... it's one badly coded game. Even for 1992 standards.
