tl;dr Summary of success at the end of the wall o' griping.
I tried for hours... HOURS... to sort out this glitch. Every time it seemed there were other trigger points in the battle that were delayed or overlapping. At one point it had spawned about two waves at a time during the SECOND leg (not the glitched third leg). At another point in the middle of the battle I heard the voiceover script for the "Well this is the place for the natural gas drill site..." Seems like a lot of things not working right with this mission.
FINALLY, I was running circles around the Architect's legs in the third wave in an act of desperation, trying to get something to trigger, and I look up and see that the weak point was open. I ran back to cover and managed to stay alive long enough to finish the battle (despite running out of ammo and running like a madman to find a crate I hadn't depleted).
I don't know what the ultimate trigger was, but I can tell you I used this chain of events:
- I didn't skip through the opening cut scene when the Architect first appears
- I finished off all the Remnants that appear after the Architect takes off the first time
- I ran on foot to the second location, down the hill with the Remnant I finished off. (By the time I got there it was already trying to blast me with the purple shield stripper cloud. And it created a first wave of "friends" while I was en route.)
- I tried to follow it's flight path to the third location.
- The weak spot didn't open at first. I fought off one wave of "friends" then started running around it and directly underneath it. By the time I circled it once I saw the beautiful purple glow of victory.
- It's POSSIBLE this weak spot was partially obscured from where I was initially taking cover. I remember being surprised that I couldn't see it and thought it glitches out again. I ended up repositioning to a better spot anyway, but be aware of that.
And with that, my work here is done.
