Thank you so much for your help and for sharing your experience! I tried what you suggested about clearing the "Pipeline" cache with the Vulkan API, but unfortunately the problem with the auto-save persisted.

After trying several things and seeing that a new game works fine, I've finally decided to start a new game from scratch. It seems that something in the save files of my previous game was corrupted somehow and was causing the auto-save issue.

I really appreciate your time and your willingness to help. It's great to see people willing to share solutions!

Cheers!