Wow, so I finally figured out what it was, and yes you can laugh at me. Apparently I had a camera fade-in that was activated when my game mode began. I completely forgot that was there after re-doing the intro/menu of the game. To me it appeared that it was because of possession, because when I disconnected the possession node, it stopped happening. Turned out it stopped happening because I was getting my game mode variable from my pawn variable, and was no longer getting the pawn variable. Goes to show how the issue may not be where you expect.