Encountering a bug I haven't experienced in previous playthroughs:

When I approach the Fort and Spike speaks to me, I refuse to pay and then it says that I got the mission Duel with Spike- 1 second later, the game cancels it and he acts as if he beat me. I should note that the way the camera acts, it SHOULD have broken chat, but it INSTANTLY enters chat again, not giving me time to do anything.

I have no idea what is causing this, but it's happening very consistently.

I CAN pay him or even simply jetpack over him, so this is hardly gamebreaking, but it's annoying.

Any ideas as to how I might fix this? I want to kill him and get xp for it, lol.

No idea on fix, I just got used to making saves before any npc interaction including Spike and I got this very same behaviour. What was even more strange, after finishing discussion, no other npc except one trader would talk to me forcing me into reload and do over. After that it was good for the rest..