Rise of the Tomb Raider PC face-melting glitch spotted

Rise of the Tomb Raider has received a warm reception on PC since it’s release last week, with it’s solid technical performance being of particular note, given the recent spate of bungled console ports. I picked the title up myself a few days after launch and despite the boilerplate story for the most part I’ve been really enjoying the rewarding exploration and fun combat that the game has to offer. I’m looking forward to seeing it through to it’s conclusion.

I say for the most part as I’ve been encountering a glitch that has been rendering some of the cutscenes downright terrifying. Like many elements of Rise of the Tomb Raider, the glitch seems to be taking it’s cues from Raiders of the Lost Ark, with character’s faces straight-up melting off, often mid-conversation. The glitch seems to be tied to the facial animation, as the faces will melt and distort in different ways as characters move or talk.

So far, the issue seems to be mainly limited to the character Konstantin. It’s happened in multiple scenes, one of which I managed to capture on my phone’s camera which you can see below.

My apologies for the quality, and be warned this video contains spoilers for Rise of the Tomb Raider’s first third.

Performance has otherwise been very good, with a solid 60fps framerate on my eighteen month-old rig, even during the chaotic scripted sequences. I’m yet to find any other reports of this specific issue occurring, however I have been able to replicate the issue on the cutscene recorded here. I have not noticed anything remotely similar during gameplay; it seems to be limited to cutscenes only. Has anyone else been experiencing anything similar during their play and/or discovered a solution? If so, let me know in the comments below.