“Can you wait until I get until the next save point?”
I wonder how many relationships have been ruined by this phrase. One person doesn’t want to lose their gaming progress and the other wants to do something that may have been planned well in advance.
So saving everywhere is sweet, right? Well, it completely nails that particular problem. But is it perfect?
As far as I can find, the first game to offer save points was Final Fantasy IV on the Super Famicom. Prior to that there were places where you could save, sure. In Final Fantasy it was the inns. In Dragon Quest it was the king. And in many Famicom RPGs you could save outside of towns and dungeons at any time.
This was notorious in Final Fantasy III where the final dungeon was a huge romp with no way to mark your progress midway. That dungeon was something to power through or to give up at.
If you operated solely under the concepts console RPGs worked with, the mid-dungeon save points in FFIV were a blessing. Of course many games, PC games, were already allowing saving anywhere.
Ys did it. Plenty of other dungeon crawlers did it. Many games that weren’t RPGs were letting you save your progress anywhere.
That’s terrible, isn’t it? That the games wouldn’t let you save anywhere, that is. It is your progress, and the game dares to not allow you to keep it.
Except it really changes how the game plays, I think. That defines the rules of the game. I’m much more cautious when a misstep could cost me hours of gameplay. It adds a layer of real world tension when I can’t save at any point and reload anywhere.
It’s worth noting that Dragon Quest hit a happy middle ground by having any game over send you back to where you started.
But having to quit at a particular moment and not being able to save progress is damning. It has had me left consoles running for hours because I had a sudden thing to do. This mindset also makes it hard for me to play a game before I have to do something “important” like go to work (which is important) or eat dinner or meet a friend or something.
At least, on console games.
Isn’t it funny that many handheld games have save anywhere or suspend save features for the games when nowadays you could just put the handheld to sleep? Still, this feature is not available in most console games.
I’ve been playing the PSP release Trails in the Sky First Chapter (空の軌跡FC) on my Vita for the past week or so and have really been enjoying it. But it, like most Falcom games as I have played, lets you save anywhere.
This has been damning for me.
Since it looks like a classic console RPG I think like it is one. I keep waiting for save points to save at. And since it is also being played on a handheld I always just put the system to sleep when duty calls.
The other day I got into a battle that I couldn’t win. I had to give up. And then I looked at the save file I was about to reload.
It was an hour prior.
Honestly, that was lucky. I had saved several times where there were gaps.
The save point is a nice reminder that “Hey, maybe you should save the game. You have been playing for a while.”
But it also tells a lot. Once the save point appears you know something is going to happen. You either hit the midpoint of a dungeon or are about to fight a boss. It’s a big flag telling the player that something is going to happen.
In-game spoilers, if you will.
While I am glad many games are starting to instate anywhere saving, I still don’t like it entirely. Often, it helps to break the game.
A big choice is about to happen in the game? Save, try one route and if it doesn’t work, reload. It just cheapens the whole experience.
This is where FFXIII-2′s bad load times have been helping me in that regard. Since it takes forever to reload saving anywhere doesn’t have that much of an impact. But in games like Fallout 3 where I could save and load in an instant, it was far too tempting to abuse it.
That comes down to the players choice, of course, but it is part of the rules of the game, isn’t it? When I can save and how much effort it takes to do so are not simple functions but rather define how I will play and even enjoy the game.
