Savefiles are gone

[oftapofta]

I've played about 5 hours and I feel like I was pretty far into the game. I had just started the Theta area when I decided to stop playing and try to fix some of the performance issues I've been having with the game, such as framerate drops and a few crashes. I verified the game cache and started the game in administrator mode only to find that I can no longer press continue and have to start a new game. Is there any at all way to restore my saves or do I have to play through everything again, cause that'd be hella frustrating.