I had a look at the code and think to have a fix for you. But since I don't have the error myself, I cannot confirm whether it fully fixes everything. (This could be because I played the old ch1, but I'm only guessing)
On the main menu press SHIFT+o to open the console, then type: persistent.end = 0
and: persistent.va = 0
each in it's separate line.
It looks like these two variables are not predefined while trying to set them for the first time.
Attention: By ignoring the error you skipped the internal game setup, so don't use your saves if you already made some. You have to start a new game afterwards or you will get a lot of similar error screens for the rest of the game.
If anyone knows how to pack this into a patch file, so it can be provided for download and it's only executed on the very first start, feel free to do so.