I am finding it impossible to get past the Prologue of the game. Just after exiting the dungeons, talking to the guard, and hopping onto the boat with Triss and the others, the cutscene that follows with Dandelion narrating just crashes. Up until that point the game has run fine without a single issue.

Unlike other cutscenes, this one I am unable to skip through or avoid, regardless of what keys I press. The beginning of the cutscene shows a map-like view with the boat leaving the town, but as the scene transitions to another graphic which shows some sort of large ship in darkness, it just freezes. I've let it sit there for 15 minutes without anything progressing, and I have to Ctrl+Alt+Del to end the process.

I have read over the previous forum posts mentioning issues with cutscenes, and I have tried all of the suggested resolutions such as ensuring the game is set to 16:9 ratio only, as well as reducing every graphic option to minimum/disabled, and even trying to run it in windowed mode. Every attempt to overcome the problem is met with zero positive results, the game just freezes at the same spot over and over.

Oddly though, I have been able to run the full Intro movie just fine, as well as the other cutscenes up until the point of taking the boat. The game runs smooth enough, my button configuration is stable, graphics appear just fine without any loss of quality or missing textures. So other than this problem I'd say the game is running just fine.

The game appears to be updated to 3.1, and I have started the game using a save file from Witcher 1. But I doubt either of those would be causing the game to freeze at this point. Any ideas/suggestions?

Did you install any mods for your game? Either way I'd consider reinstalling and re-patching the whole game. But I'm not as tech savvy as some on these forums.

Used to have a similar problem, but the 16:9 solution covered it.

That cutscene you mention is not "skip-able". I would suggest trying the main Witcher boards, or if someone here can help, your PC specs, game specs (GOG download; Retail Disc, Steam) would help.

No mods, just the core game freshly installed with all patches. I've been running with the 16:9 ratio from the beginning, other resolutions wouldn't even load the intro video.

What is it about that cutscene that is so important to make it unable to be skipped? I have seen other posts where people have uploaded their savegame files, let another person advance from that save to the next save point, and reupload the new file. Would that work in my situation, or would I continue to get stuck at each new cutscene?