Why is my wife messed up?

My wife, Mjoll the Lioness, walks in place and tries to walk through walls and objects. If I take her with me somewhere she won't fight, she just stands still and takes damage, even if I order her to attack.

It started when I fast travelled to my house at Lakeview Manor. A bandit said they have my wife, which started a quest to free her. Instead of going to free her right away, I went into my house, and about 30 seconds later she materialized out of nowhere. The quest was marked as completed, and she's been messed up since then.

I loaded a save from before this happened, she was still messed up even though when I saved that game she was fine.

I have a character from my old Skyrim game with 360 hours of play time, and have never had a problem. Since I cleared the game's cache and started a new playthrough it's been freezing up, people have disappeared without being killed and now my wife is messed up.

How do I fix this?

I'm playing Skyrim - Legendary Edition on the Xbox 360.

Solution 1:

It sounds like your game skipped some scripts in your wife's rescuing quest.

I believe your wife is still "captured" and was never freed. So Mjoll's scripts make her act as though she is still captured, which probably tells her not to do anything until the quest runs through itself.

The only thing that would save your wife at this point is loading a previous save that is before your quest completed itself.