Corwin romance - did I screw up, and if so, where? [SPOILERS]

Ballad

So I just finished my first playthrough of the game. I was under the impression that I was "in romance" with Corwin, having talked to her about my feelings towards her, of her child and whatnot. Yet, at the very end when I'm imprisoned in my cell waiting for the verdict, she talks to me as if we were only comrades. She asks me to sacrifice myself for the city like a real hero would, then leaves. And that's the last bit of dialogue I get from her before the game ends. I also get a journal update saying that Corwin seems to believe I was the one who killed Skie.

Is this the only possible outcome to her romance, or did I miss a lovetalk or screw up the romance somewhere? I've looked all over these forums but can't find this being discussed anywhere. Though I really liked the ending in general, not getting an emotionally satisfying conclusion to the romance really irks me.

Any input is greatly appreciated!

Ballad

Turns out I did indeed screw up. I looked up the dialogue strings on NearInfinity and there are supposed to be at least 5 lovetalks before the end. These lovetalks go by the global variables of bd_CorwinRomance1, bd_CorwinRomance2, bd_CorwinRomance3, bd_CorwinRomance4 and bd_CorwinRomance5. When each lovetalk is completed, the global variable is set to 2. I only got up to bd_CorwinRomance3, which is the dialogue where she asks about you having children. It seems that I went through the game a little too quickly for the romance to reach its proper conclusion.

Now, are there are any console commands I can use to "force" the missed lovetalks? I really don't feel like backtracking several chapters just so I can experience few strings of dialogue. Maybe @bengoshi could help, or at least direct me to someone who can?

Jarrakul

If it works like the old BG2 romances, there should be a Corwin Romance Timer variable (what it's called, I don't know). If you set that timer to 1, the next lovetalk should fire almost immediately (although in some cases you have to rest to trigger it). I'm afraid I don't know anything more specific than that, though.

Ballad

Yeah, that's what I thought, too, but I can't find any such variable. At least not under any of my saves on EEKeeper, and I have no idea how to browse all the possible variables on NearInfinity (is it even possible?). I also tried AdvanceRealTime(99999) to no avail.

Ballad

Just for future reference, in case anyone else has this same question, Corwin does have a different dialogue at the very end if you have completed all the required lovetalks. She no longer believes you did the deed and tells you she loves you.

I never managed to get all the lovetalks manually and cannot figure if there is a timer you can modify with the console. My only theory is that her lovetalks are bound to specific parts of the game and if you progress too fast or too soon, the romance ends in limbo.

There are six, not five, lovetalks in total with the following variables:
bd_CorwinRomance1
bd_CorwinRomance2
bd_CorwinRomance3
bd_CorwinRomance4
bd_CorwinRomance5
bd_CorwinRomance6

To get the final dialogue, all these variables need to be set to 2. You can do this in EEKeeper or via the console using C:SetGlobal("bd_CorwinRomanceX","Global",'2'). In addition to that, there's a variable called bd_Corwin_Romance_Active which also needs to be set to 2.

If anyone out there has the specifics of how to complete the romance the proper way (ie how and when to experience all the lovetalks before the end), please let me know.

Lapetus2000

Did you explore every bit of every map, particularly by walking the shroud away?
I ask because there are hidden overlays on every map, some of which triggered a conversation with Corwin when walked over, similar to a trap I suppose.
These overlays can be revealed by pressing CTRL+4. Shows all traps, which was why I used it, but also show other triggers, but there is no way I can see to tell which trigger is for each event/conversation/etc.

Ballad

@Lapetus2000 , oh dear, that would definitely explain it. I usually just explored the area maps with Glint under invisibility/sanctuary and only took the rest of my party to the main attractions/bigger fights. I also know I missed at least one in-between area and a couple of sidequests (albino wyrm cave, ghost ettin) in the underground river area.

I should've known. These games are not known for rewarding a stealthy/nonconfrontational approach.

Abi_Dalzim

Speaking for myself, I've never progressed past the second talk on any playthough, so I'm stumped as to where/when the third one's supposed to trigger.

Cerevant

If you have debug mode off it is basically impossible to break the romances.

Technical details:

* Love talks are initiated with ground triggers - don't ctrl-J!
* There are no timers
* I'm pretty sure that as long as you don't fail the romance, a lovetalk will fire even if you missed the previous one

Abi_Dalzim

@Cerevant: I'd figured out those first two points already, but that still leaves me clueless as to where all the trigger points are. And I've beaten the game twice now with Corwin in the party, so I still feel like I'm doing something wrong.

Cerevant

@Abi_Dalzim

The triggers aren't spots - they either cross the entire map (wilderness) or a choke point on the critical path (indoors).

Check some of your save games and see if bd_Corwin_Romance_Active is 3 in any of them - that means she ended the romance.

Ballad

@Cerevant , can you tell us where these trigger points are at, exactly? More specifically, which zones/areas are they located in? My bd_Corwin_Romance_Active is still 1, yet I haven't been able to progress beyond the third lovetalk. I think this is due to my tendency of exploring zones with an invisible scout and only taking the rest of the party if there's something that warrants my attention.

kanemi

A bit late, but I believe that the 4th one might be in the Underground River in Chapter 10, and the fifth might be right at the end of Chapter 11? I am not sure about the fifth one, as it didn't trigger for me (yet, strangely, the sixth one did), but based on videos for other romances, it seems like they all trigger right before the end of the chapter. That being said, I have no idea why it wouldn't trigger for me... The sixth one seems to trigger automatically as well, after the final battle.

Abi_Dalzim

I've found all the lovetalks by now, there's one in the Dragonspear dungeon in the room with the lift, I forget what the fifth one was, but the sixth was in Dragonspear after returning from hell. That said, I never ran into her ex who I've read is with the crusade, so I don't know where he fits in.

Rezkalla

Abi_Dalzim said:

I've found all the lovetalks by now, there's one in the Dragonspear dungeon in the room with the lift, I forget what the fifth one was, but the sixth was in Dragonspear after returning from hell. That said, I never ran into her ex who I've read is with the crusade, so I don't know where he fits in.

You run into her ex when you go undercover in the Dragonspear courtyard. You have to find Caelar's seal to do that. Later, during the assault you can have Corwin kill him, so that's cool.

I never got Corwin to start any romance although she kept saying things like "Can true love bloom, even on a battlefield?" But that's it. My character was female but I thought she would start the romance anyway. I ended up switching her out and in the final bit, when charname was escaping prison, Corwin tried to stop her so my charname killed Corwin.

Tarmus

Ballad said:

Just for future reference, in case anyone else has this same question, Corwin does have a different dialogue at the very end if you have completed all the required lovetalks. She no longer believes you did the deed and tells you she loves you.

I never managed to get all the lovetalks manually and cannot figure if there is a timer you can modify with the console. My only theory is that her lovetalks are bound to specific parts of the game and if you progress too fast or too soon, the romance ends in limbo.

There are six, not five, lovetalks in total with the following variables:
bd_CorwinRomance1
bd_CorwinRomance2
bd_CorwinRomance3
bd_CorwinRomance4
bd_CorwinRomance5
bd_CorwinRomance6

To get the final dialogue, all these variables need to be set to 2. You can do this in EEKeeper or via the console using C:SetGlobal("bd_CorwinRomanceX","Global",'2'). In addition to that, there's a variable called bd_Corwin_Romance_Active which also needs to be set to 2.

If anyone out there has the specifics of how to complete the romance the proper way (ie how and when to experience all the lovetalks before the end), please let me know.

I just did some research with SoD and EEkeeper. Looks like you need only 4 lovetalks to be completed. According to EEkeeper, global varaible bd_CorwinRomanceActive will be set to 2.

Arcalian

I was romancing Corwin, think I got a bug. In the caverns under Dragonspear, she talked to me about not wanting to let someone else in like she did with a woman after her child's father. I assured her I would wait for her. She was grateful. Almost right after, *Glint* started talking like I was romancing *him* instead. I shut him down in a hurry. I think it was because we had just found one of his relatives down there, but it wasn't the final one.

jastey

Did Glint never talked to you before? He has a male PC romance.
All SoD romances start and go parallel until one of the romance interests starts a "chose one" dialogue with the PC. If the PC then choses this NPC, all others are shut down.

ThacoBell

Don't worry, Glint tends to move pretty fast. That doesn't mean the romance with Corwin has shut down. GLint tries to romance me every time I do a playthrough and I still haven't figured out how to avoid it without telling him to shut up.

Ashtray

Guys, I got this.

1. First of all, devs were genious enough to make all of your romantic relationships go to hell if you EVER tell ANY of your companions that you're not attracted to anybody. I've been developing relationships with Viconia, Neera and Corwin, but after I decided to tell Vic that noone has "caught my heart" — not only hers, but other two romances closed as well, and I never gave any further dialogues till the very end of the game.

2. But surely I was not satisfied with it, so I dug into the depths of Internet and found... well, nothing, except for this thread, and the fact was pretty unexpected and disappointing. But nevertheless, from here I learned that you CAN manipulate your romances via Editor — the question was, what do you actually do to make all of the dialogues appear.

3. And it turned out that the answer is ridiculously simple — all you need to do is take the variable of a dialogue you're intereted in (like "bd_CorwinRomance1" for example) and set it's Value to 1. That's it. The moment you'll load this savefile, the dialogue will start.
There's a possibility that you'll also need to set bd_CorwinRomanceActive to 2 if you want to see her dialogues 5 and 6 ('cause her romance starts after dialogue4), but it may not be necessary (Im too lazy to check lol).

Hope it'll help if someone ever face same problem. All in all, I made an account here only to post this text

Vicen

I could never get the romance talks (5, and 6 to be exact) below to activate for Corwin...after going to the warrens I tried to go back to the Underground River near the coordinates you gave...but, no such luck to get a romance talk to activate. Dragonspear Castle Basement area talk did not go off either...Corwin said she needed some time to think things over and has not said a word since. I did not pick the "friend" option or "the go away" option either.

5 Bd5100 Underground River (Inside) 4064, 1540 Bdrom16
6 Bd4300 Dragonspear Castle basement Area Bd4300


I have BD romance 4 with a variable of 2 at the moment and then Corwinromance active is set to 2 as well

Any ideas on how to proceed to activate said talks?

Mycenius

Just on a belated note regarding this - the 3rd location in this list for Corwin (Deadman's Pass) seems to be unreachable - its in an unpassable area of the map near the top right and I have never been able to get any characters to move even remotely near this location...

1 Bd1000 Coast Way Crossing 1324,2976 BDRom01
2 Bd7100 Troll claw woods 3556, 1276 BDRom06
3 Bd7300 Dead Mans pass 4208 604 Bdrom13
4 Bd5200 Underground river (Warrens) 1440,1340 Bdrom18
5 Bd5100 Underground River (Inside) 4064, 1540 Bdrom16
6 Bd4300 Dragonspear Castle basement Area Bd4300

However after exploring all of the Deadman's Pass map I do usually have these variables below suggesting it has triggered correctly (so I'm wondering if it's a typo and the location should be something like 4208 1604):

bd_Corwin_Comments = 1
bd_Corwin_Romance_Active = 1
bd_CorwinRomance1 = 2
bd_CorwinRomance2 = 2
bd_CorwinRomance3 = 2

FWIW on my current playthrough I'm monitoring to see if bd_Corwin_Romance_Active changes to 2 automatically AFTER the bd_CorwinRomance4 entry has appeared and is status 2 like the three above. Just to verify the guidance above that that is when the 'main' romance dialogue activates and kicks in (after the 4th trigger)...

jmerry

That region for Corwin in BD7300 has a > shape; one of its legs crosses the road between the displacer beasts and orogs. The coordinates you listed are in the middle of where it crosses the road. It's not hard to reach at all.

The problem is that the region is set up wrong, and thus never actually triggers the talk.

Here's the script (bdrom13):

IF
	Global("bd_corwin_romanceactive","global",1)
	Global("bd_CorwinRomance2","GLOBAL",2)
	Global("bd_CorwinRomance3","GLOBAL",0)
	InParty("Corwin")  // Corwin
	IsOverMe(Player1)
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetGlobal("bd_CorwinRomance3","GLOBAL",1)
END

IF
	Global("bd_corwin_romanceactive","global",1)
	Global("bd_CorwinRomance3","GLOBAL",1)
	InParty("Corwin")  // Corwin
	IfValidForPartyDialog("Corwin")  // Corwin
	!ActuallyInCombat()
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		ActionOverride("Corwin",StartDialogueNoSet(Player1))
END

On the first pass, set a variable. On the second pass, have Corwin talk to the protagonist.

What's wrong? The region doesn't have the "trap resets" flag. You go over it, the variable gets set, and then it never triggers again. That second pass doesn't happen, and Corwin doesn't initiate that conversation.

You should be able to get the romance talk anyway - once you pass that point, force-talk to Corwin. It's not a fatal bug, but it is a bug. Reporting to the EE Fixpack.

(Update: it's not just this region. All of the regions involved in the SoD romance talks should have the reset flag, but only a few of them do. Lots of stuff to fix.)

The_Baffled_King

Mycenius wrote: »

Just on a belated note regarding this - the 3rd location in this list for Corwin (Deadman's Pass) seems to be unreachable - its in an unpassable area of the map near the top right and I have never been able to get any characters to move even remotely near this location...

As jmerry has pointed out, the coordinates you give are in the middle of the road and are not at all hard to reach. Moreover, given that each romance "location" covers a sizeable area, it's misleading and fundamentally wrong to represent them as a single X/Y coordinate. For example, the "location" for Corwin in Dead Man's Pass covers 5% of the entire map (at a rough, eyeballed guess). If you enable the cheat console, and press CTRL+4, these regions, as they are called, will be shown on-screen (along with other regions not relevant to romances).

jmerry wrote: »

The problem is that the region is set up wrong, and thus never actually triggers the talk.

This is also largely wrong. Although the "Trap Resets" flag is not set, the second block can and does fire, and Corwin will initiate the conversation in question (try it yourself on an unmodded game). I can't explain why, unfortunately.

jmerry

Neither can I. That one region is the only script or dialogue which can set bd_CorwinRomance3 to 1. It has to activate before the dialogue can fire, and once it does it won't activate again. There are plenty of other reasons for Corwin to talk to you, but the odds of one triggering right there?

The_Baffled_King

jmerry wrote: »

It has to activate before the dialogue can fire, and once it does it won't activate again.

No, the part that I've bolded is the part that I'm saying is wrong - wrong for reasons I can't explain. In other words, the region named "Corwin Romance 3" does trigger more than once. Try overwriting bdrom13.bcs with the following:

IF
	Global("bd_corwin_romanceactive","global",1)
	Global("bd_CorwinRomance2","GLOBAL",2)
	Global("bd_CorwinRomance3","GLOBAL",0)
	InParty("Corwin")  // Corwin
	IsOverMe(Player1)
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetGlobal("bd_CorwinRomance3","GLOBAL",1)
END

IF
	Global("bd_corwin_romanceactive","global",1)
	Global("bd_CorwinRomance3","GLOBAL",1)
	InParty("Corwin")  // Corwin
	IfValidForPartyDialog("Corwin")  // Corwin
	!ActuallyInCombat()
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetGlobal("Baffled_King_Unique_Var","Global",1)
		SetGlobalTimer("Baffled_King_Unique_Timer","Global",ONE_HOUR)
		ActionOverride("Corwin",StartDialogueNoSet(Player1))
END

IF
	Global("Baffled_King_Unique_Var","Global",1)
	GlobalTimerExpired("Baffled_King_Unique_Timer","Global")
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetGlobal("Baffled_King_Unique_Var","Global",2)
		ActionOverride(Player1,CreateItem("BAND01",0,0,0))  // Circlet
END

IF
	IsOverMe(Player1)
	Global("Baffled_King_Unique_Var","Global",2)
	GlobalTimerExpired("Baffled_King_Unique_Timer","Global")
THEN
	RESPONSE #100
		SetGlobal("Baffled_King_Unique_Var","Global",3)
		ActionOverride(Player1,CreateItem("BAND04",0,0,0))  // Circlet of the Archmagi
END

(Block 1 is unchanged. Block 2 now sets a unique timer and unique variable as well as getting Corwin to initiate dialogue)

Walk into the region in question. Corwin will initiate dialogue. Leave the region. Advance time by one hour. Charname gets a mundane Circlet in their inventory. Walk back into the region. Charname gets a Circlet of the Archmagi in their inventory. Plainly this sequence cannot happen unless the region is activating multiple times.

The_Baffled_King

Mycenius wrote: »

FWIW on my current playthrough I'm monitoring to see if bd_Corwin_Romance_Active changes to 2 automatically AFTER the bd_CorwinRomance4 entry has appeared and is status 2 like the three above.

While I'm here, let me save you the effort. The short answer, eliding various details, is "yes, kind of". The variable "bd_corwin_romanceactive" is set to 2 in Charname's (textless) reply to the Corwin dialogue "Thank you, <CHARNAME>. Thank you for understanding.", which ends that dialogue sequence. The variable "bd_CorwinRomance4" is set to 2 earlier in that dialogue sequence. The dialogue sequence cannot begin unless the variable "bd_CorwinRomance4" already had a value of 1. Corwin will initiate this dialogue sequence immediately after the variable "bd_CorwinRomance4" is set to 1, provided the party is not in combat.

jmerry

That does narrow things down - the "trap" is definitely being activated and running multiple times, despite everything saying it can't.

For convenience, I'll use a chapter 8 save I have to test, and the "Rasaad and Safana Romance 1" region - another of those that lacks a reset flag.
And ... yes. That region's script runs repeatedly. The extra block I inserted ran six times in a matter of seconds. What, in the name of Oghma, is going on here?

The_Baffled_King

jmerry wrote: »

What, in the name of Oghma, is going on here?

If you ever find out, please let me know!

jastey

Script blocks repeating although there is a check variable can be: a glitch - just had one reported for transactions in a dialogue that was reproducible locally, but not after playing again from an earlier save. Or there is another instance somewhere that resets the trigger variable back so it gives true again. Or an engine bug/"feature" we didn't catalogue yet, like the old engine didn't evaluate triggers in cutscenes.
Does a search for the trigger variable with NI for dlgs and bcs' give any hits?

jmerry

Not a glitch - I asked over at G3, and got this response from argent77:

The "trapped" state is relevant for event-based triggers (triggers with id values < 0x4000, e.g. Entered()). The romance-related region scripts in SoD mostly contain blocks with IsOverMe() and other non-event-based triggers, however. That's why they can always trigger when characters are inside a region, regardless of their trapped state.

Which explains the difference I observed compared to the bounty hunter triggers near Wyrm's Crossing (Nestor and Tel-anon). Those use Entered() rather than IsOverMe() for their triggers, and thus only go off once - if you pass by with a decent rep once, visiting later with a low rep won't spawn the bounty hunter.
Also, make that "entirely" rather than "mostly". The SoD romance region scripts don't contain any event-based triggers.