I hope this helps everyone.
I was blindly clicking around after starting a game, pressing escape and entering the pause menu. with the problem we were all experiencing, you wouldnt be able to differentiate between the menus. but if you are able to click on the options menu, which is the fifth item in the list (drag your mouse around and search for anything that may highlight, make a noise, etc), you will pop open a menu with several clickable tabs. click on the fourth one, and you will see several menu items that appear like they could be drop down menus. the first one (top left area) is the rendering menu. you may see the letter "o" there, maybe something else. I cannot confirm whether or not we are all seeing exactly the same thing or not. click that drop down menu, set to the first option, and voila! you now have text! its set to software rendering, and I haven't tested anything else yet since I just did it and decided to post this immediately after.
hope this helps, and feel free to contact me for screenshots if you need any more help.