Hi there, sorry to be necroposting on a topic from 11 years ago, but I'm playing the game now and running into this exact same problem. Thus far I've been unable to progress past this point. I tried to run through the game again up to that point (doing almost all the exact same actions other than picking a different reply to Ryan in the void due to rapid clicking) because the autosave was back at the start, I've attempted to have Steam verify the integrity of the files, I've tried Darkchef's suggestion of running the game as Administrator, I've tried to uninstall and then reinstall the game, I've tried going offline in Steam itself, I've tried disabling the Steam overlay entirely. None of these have worked and the game continues to bring up the crash message, the exact same one that chap_o reported, the only difference being the ACI version is 3.5.1.13 instead. I did see the Steam achievement popup for the Geronimo achievement just beforehand, as well as the Bullet Dodger achievement at the same time.
I'm not sure if it would help, but I have a save file on the screen where you jump off the ship. Loading that up and trying again causes the crash to happen for me. Also just to rule out that it was the Bullet Dodger achievement, I tried going through the whole thing again and letting Joey get shot twice.
