I know this is a known issue, but I can't find anything online with how to deal with it. The only "sure-fire way" to fix it is to "get out of your power armor", but that doesn't help if you never wear any.

In case anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about, it's when you're talking to someone and then after one dialogue line, they just stand there silently staring at you and the camera switches between you two like the conversation is still going. You're unable to do anything except hit "A" which only makes your character say the generic "uh huh" and "ok" which would skip dialogue lines, but only it doesn't do anything with this bug.

I sometimes get this bug, but most of the time I can at least cancel out and try again, but it doesn't seem to be an option with important NPCs in quests. Just now, I had just hunted down Kellogg and started to talk to him. I got about half way through the conversation when this bug happened and I was forced to close the game. It also autosaved mid conversation so I don't have another save close to it as the last save was before I saved Nick so I lost a little over an hour of gameplay and I imagine some of you can understand how tedious the quest to save him and track Kellogg is. Especially when Dogmeat has to stop constantly to make sure every red dot is dead.

Does anyone know a fix for this bug? I'd really rather not have to deal with this again.

@Wertologist So from my understanding, you can't just walk away from the conversation?

@SentinelHunter Correct. I was unable to do anything other than hit pause or press "A" which did nothing but make my character say "uh huh" and "ok" as if to speed up dialogue. I waited about 5 minutes and nothing happened. Had to quit.

I'm looking for a fix in case it happens again.

@Wertologist Is it possible another conversation was trying to trigger at the same time? Like did you hit a certain affinity with a companion during the conversation? I've had this bug hit me before too and it was for different reasons. I've had it happen a few times. Once I think two conversations were trying to be triggered at the same time, and another was when a companion was trying to interject with something but it bugged out and the conversation would not continue. In the case of the latter I made my companion wait a short distance away and that seemed to help. Another time I had it happen for no reason so the only thing I could think of was using the console command coc "cellname" to teleport me away. Just as an example: I'm talking to Preston and the conversation locks up. I could then do help sanctuary 0, then find a cell name for Sanctuary. Then I would enter coc sanctuaryext, and be "teleported" to that cell. Then I would save and retry the conversation. Sorry I can't help further, but if I come across something else I'll let you know.

I've bypassed tracking Kellogg in the past by just finding the Fort early on in the game and after investigating his house in Diamond City, you can just fast travel straight to him without needing Dogmeat. If you have to start over I'd suggest going that route.

But as for the bug, trying COCing yourself elsewhere inside the Fort. If not outside the Fort and retry the conversation?