How do you best handle "story/progress flags" without using the Persist behavior?

Recently started retrofitting a project that was using the persist behavior to keep track of this sort of thing. I can't use persist anymore because I am writing my own save system as well.

I feel like I am overcomplicating this, and I don't know the proper terms to google in order to find useful information, so any help or resources on this would be very appreciated. Anyways, here is a scenario to illustrate:

I have a "BarrierSprite" and an "EventDictionary". This barrier prevents the player from moving forward until something is accomplished. Currently my barrier considers the following:

1. What is the name of the event that triggers me? Typically this is done by a player colliding with an invisible object, or killing a specific enemy, or collecting an item.
2. Does the barrier trigger another event when it is triggered?
3. Am I turned "on" or "off" by other events? In other words are there any events that prevent me or are required to be triggered before I can be triggered?

With the persist behavior this more or less worked fine, but even then it felt bloated and now that I am trying to track this myself its not ideal.

Do I understand correctly that when you load a saved game or return to a previous location, you re-evaluate all events for each barrier to decide whether to remove it or not?

That seems way too complicated. I would just keep track of inactive barriers in a separate array or dictionary. When you need to remove one, call a function that marks it as “removed” in the dictionary and destroys it. When loading the game or location, destroy all barriers listed in the dictionary.