Barik romance bug

[Estelindis]

I've encountered a bug: it seems impossible to complete the Barik romance. In multiple Disfavoured playthroughs I have attempted the romance and failed at the final hurdle. At the waterfall, Barik tells my character that he respects her but there can't be more between them. "The armor was but one of the many things that separate us. Archon."

In every case I fulfilled the following conditions (which I understand to the romance's prerequisites):

• gm_dishonored < 6
  
• Loyalty >= 3
• Ashe not dead
• Player is Disfavored Path
• Amelia not dead
• Verse not sacrificed
• Verse not killed by Ashe in act 1
• Player didn't tell Barik they would kill Ashe

In my most recent playthrough I even attempted to tailor the entire game around Barik's preferences, in every situation doing whatever seemed to make him most pleased. Additionally, in this Barik-centric game, from start to finish my character only incurred a single instance of minor fear with him (unavoidable if she doesn't drop his armour quest), which she cancelled out via avoiding a random encounter of Bane. He was literally at zero fear. In that playthrough her gm_dishonored value was also zero. Also, in a different playthrough, I tried not bringing Barik along in the party for any section of his armour quest where the game would let me leave him out of the party (seeing as he tried strongly to make us drop it). Nothing made a difference. No matter what hoops I jumped through, this content was locked away.

I know at least someone has been able to get further: here's a YouTube video of the romance. If that didn't exist, I'd assume the romance is intended as a tease that can never actually be consummated (Obsidian seems to like those!), and that nothing could lead Barik to feel differently about our characters. But clearly someone played through it - so why not the rest of us? Plenty of other people on other platforms have said the same as me: they seem to fulfil every requirement but can't complete the romance. Truly, if it wasn't for the YouTube video, I'd think no one was able to get it.

Every other bug I've encountered in this not-insignificantly-buggy DLC I've been able to get around by reloading. Sometimes I've lost many hours of a playthrough (thinking particularly here of the bug if you examine the mural in the Wound without first being told to do so). But at least some effort on my part could regain the content I would've missed. Here is seems like absolutely nothing I can do can let me conclude this part of the story. Please, for me and many others like me, fix this bug.

 

[Estelindis]

Well I submitted a help request to Paradox technical support on the grounds that it doesn't look like devs or publishers actually check out this forum anymore, but they just said they couldn't do anything about bugs and directed me to post here. Even though in my support request I told them I'd already made a bug report and linked to it here...

I guess all I can do is try to make this bug report better by attaching a savegame.

 

[weird32]

Okay got frustrated modified the scripts file of "vx1_wme_barikbath.conversation"
so talk node "68" Refusal is switch with talk node "69"= Sexy times in

E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Tyranny\Data\data\design\conversations\worldevents\vx1_wme_barikbath.conversation

https://imgur.com/9lb0oix

I essentially switch the conditions on why Barik will block our advances (Note I think you still need to keep Ashe alive since Node 88 is where he explicitly states that he will never sleep with the protag)

the file is here up for 30 days

https://ufile.io/3iu02

OR
Download the zip file if you want

and paste it here E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Tyranny\Data\data\design\conversations\worldevents

Disclaimer: PLEASE SAVE FIRST YOUR vx1_wme_barikbath.conversation ORIGINAL FILE as a backup if anything goes wrong

 

[Estelindis]

The fix worked perfectly. Thank you - you're a star!

 

[PersistentEffort]

This may be long overdue, but I've identified the cause of the problem. I can confirm that it's a bug, AND is impossible to achieve.

The conditions for the node that leads to the 'washing' is coded incorrectly. The first post enumerated the conditions for the conversation node to trigger, which is not reflected in the code. Among the others, these are the offending conditions:

<ExpressionComponent xsi:type="ConditionalCall">
<Data>
<FullName>Boolean IsGlobalValue(String, Operator, Int32)</FullName>
<Parameters>
<string>06_Companion_Sacrifice_Verse</string>
<string>EqualTo</string>
<string>0</string>
</Parameters>
</Data>
<Not>true</Not>
<Operator>And</Operator>
</ExpressionComponent>

<ExpressionComponent xsi:type="ConditionalCall">
<Data>
<FullName>Boolean IsGlobalValue(String, Operator, Int32)</FullName>
<Parameters>
<string>comp_verse_act1_killed</string>
<string>EqualTo</string>
<string>1</string>
</Parameters>
</Data>
<Not>false</Not>
<Operator>And</Operator>
</ExpressionComponent>

The first checks whether Verse was sacrificed to Nerat. A value of 0 means that Verse is not sacrificed. HOWEVER, the not is value true, which checks for the negation of the condition. This means that it will return false if Verse is not sacrificed.

The second checks if Verse was killed in Act 1 (when Ashe asked for it, I believe). A value of 1 meant that she indeed was killed. The not here is false, so it's straightforward. It returns true if Verse was killed.

This is an impossible set of conditions to meet; there is no way to fulfill it because Verse cannot be killed in Act 1 and sacrificed to Nerat in Act 3. This alone qualifies it to be a bug. Furthermore, the 'comments' in the code were identical to the ones enumerated by Estelindis above. These comments are not reflected in the code because of the offending conditions.

I took a crack at it and flipped the not in both conditions, and was able to arrive at the intended 'washing' scene.

P.S. Does anyone know what gm_dishonored is? Is it the fear of the Disfavored faction?