So, this huge black bar always shows up on the videos. While it doesn't break gameplay, it's still a huge annoyance since I'm missing on what's going on and I don't want to have to open the installation folder just to watch those. What could be causing this and how do I fix it?

I'm playing on Windows 7 32-bit and my DirectX is up-to-date.

I'm running the game fine* on Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) and DirectX that was up-to-date... maybe in 2009-ish? My wild guess would be that it's either the driver for the graphics card or a program that was running in the background at the time. Try updating the graphics card driver - and if you're using nvidia, don't forget to disable the telemetry afterwards (I think the service was called "Nvidia Telemetry Container").

I'm sorry I can't be of more help. There might be someone in the community able to present the perfect solution to you within the next few hours - or never. So my advice would be to contact GOG's support about this issue. This might also lead to patches for future players. ;)

Best of luck!


* It crashed once on me when I tried to reload a save slot after dying.

So, this problem is actually caused by a windows update (kb2803821). Disabling it solved the problem.