The Saving Grace

Editorial by: Maverik


Saving your progress in video games has been a standard feature in most games for many years now. It's getting hard to recall how games used to need you to start at the very beginning and work your way through to the end in just one sitting, although there are a few modern titles which still do. However, now that there are memory cards, battery backed cartridges and the like, not to mention popular gaming on personal computers, the ability to save your game is all-but universal. In this editorial, I'm going to discuss the differences saving has brought to games; the different ways that contemporary games allow saving; and some other related matters. And with that exciting introduction...


Obviously, in the days when saving was a rarity, the lack of saving had an impact, firstly, on the length of the games which could be made. After all, if a game was going to take 20 hours to play through, it could cause a few problems if you needed to do this all in one block. Necessarily, games had to be short - certainly finishable within 2 hours or so. I remember owning a Sega Mega Drive (or 'Genesis', if you are of the American persuasion) back in the early 90's, and most of the titles for the console could indeed be played through in one go within an afternoon. This didn't have as great a negative impact on the longevity of the game as you might expect, however, since most were designed with levels that had many paths through them, so you could play the same game through three or four times and hardly ever have to go the same way twice.

However, clearly, a game with no saving has problems, not the least of which being that you always have to start at level 1 whenever you turn on the console. Given that much of a game's challenge and enjoyment starts to surface later on in the game, working your way through each time to the fun parts can be pretty boring. Some games managed to address this and the game-length issue through the use of password systems - after each level, you get a password which you can enter at the title screen to instantly take you to the place you have reached. This system is used in many non-battery-backed cartridge games of recent times, too.

The password idea is a good one, and does eliminate many of the problems raised by no saving, but it does have concerns of its own. Obviously, it's a hassle needing to keep scribbling down a code every time you finish a level, and it's all-too-easy to misplace your precious password sheet, which usually happens after investing days in getting toward the end of a new title. But there are other, less obvious issues too. To my mind, 'cheating' is the primary one - it's pretty easy for some person who just wants to skip to the final level or boss to just get the password from a friend, a magazine or the internet, and bypass all of the challenges and 'work' needed to earn passage to the end of the game. Of course, it's such a person's decision if they want to do that, but ultimately it is also unfortunate if they do, since the temptation can be hard to resist if you get stuck on an area and a password is in easy reach - and many people who bypass parts of a game just don't know what they've missed out on in terms of satisfaction and enjoyment.

Another mild concern I have with passwords is that they tend to take away the sense of a 'quest' in many games. When you play a game through in a sitting, or when you save your progress in the modern sense, you certainly get the feeling that you are going through the adventure as intended and that you are completing your quest. If you plug in a password and come in halfway through, even if you have completed the first half over the course of many hours, I find it hard to feel that I am resuming the adventure as opposed to just starting a new one in a different place. Tied to this is the problem that most password systems don't record much more than which level you have reached: the number of lives you have and whatever powerups you have are usually standardised when you restart with a password, negating whatever effort you went to in collecting these things.

Saving your progress to memory card, cartridge or hard drive certainly addresses all of the concerns I've raised so far. Games can be as long as they want to be, everything necessary can be recorded, and you don't have to worry about remembering where you left your list of passwords. A perfect solution? No, unfortunately it isn't, in many cases.

In terms of saving progress, it's clearly easiest on the PC, with the large size of hard drives usually allowing for as many saves as you want to make. Most PC games let you save your progress exactly where you want and precisely record your position, whether at the end of the level or at any point midway through. I'm going to say it, though: I hate this!

The problem with being able to save whenever you want, wherever you want, completely screws up a game's challenge. That doesn't mean that the game can't be challenging. WarCraft 3, for instance, can be insanely hard on the toughest difficulty setting. But the 'save anywhere, and save often' routine does the game no favours, I feel, since it becomes all-but necessary in order to win the game that you save every five minutes at least, then load up the last save the moment you come off worst in a battle. I want to make it clear that the game does still require a lot of skill to complete and is highly challenging, but it also requires you to have a saving mentality where you must save often and load often. I don't see that this adds anything. Sure, it lets the developers make obscenely difficult strategic challenges, since you can try and try and try again to do each five minutes as well as is humanly possible, but since you can just load up your last save whenever something goes less than perfectly, what's the punishment for doing badly? WarCraft 3's levels would be impossible on Hard without the save system that is in place, but I for one don't like this constant need to save and load, and find myself doing so all-too frequently, for fear that I've lost too many units to complete the mission, when I may in fact have been able to win had I been forced to go on with what I had left.

Worse still are games that not only have save-anywhere-save-everywhere systems, but where the consequences of poor play go on for even longer than a single level. Jedi Knight 2 is the most recent example that comes to mind. In JK2, as in WC3, you can save anywhere you like. However, the problems mentioned above concerning WarCraft all apply to JK2 as well: getting through the game on harder difficulty settings is impossible without saving before every challenge, which requires you not only to be a skilled combatant and athlete, but also forces you to save, load, save, load, save, load, and so on. This isn't what a game should be about. It's worse than WC3, though, since at least in WarCraft you can resist the temptation to load up your last save after making a mistake if it looks like you're right at the end of the level. In Jedi Knight 2, though, if you finish a level with little health and ammo, you have to start the next one with these handicaps! At no point in a level, therefore, can you confidently push on after a major stuff-up - it's back to loading up and trying again. I repeat, saving and loading is not why I play PC games. And woe betide you if you forget to save for a while only to be hit by a sudden-death situation which the designers threw in knowing that people could just load up and try again if they messed up.

This is one area where console games have the advantage. Often, the restrictions on saving which limited save-space on memory cards imposes can have a huge positive impact on a game. Since players can't save mid-level wherever they want, designers have to make levels that are challenging, but not so unfairly-tough that a single mistake is always fatal. Instant death situations are therefore rare, and in order to win, players must have the skill to survive a level without recourse to constantly saving and trying again. The levels have to be easier / fairer, but challenge is much greater and completion of a level is immensely more satisfying when you have done the whole level at once, rather than piecemeal, having replayed each five minutes several times.

I gave two examples of annoying PC save systems, so I'll end with two console games reviewed on this site in which I thought the save system was done extremely well. One is the very-recent TimeSplitters 2. TimeSplitters 2 is a shooter with ten levels and an autosaving feature. What I liked about the single-player save system, though, was the checkpoint save feature. Each of the levels (barring the last) contained one, and one only, 'checkpoint': a place in the level which, once passed through, saves your progress at that point. Providing that you have completed all the objectives up to reaching the checkpoint, passing through it will record your health, ammo and remaining time on any timer that you had once hitting it. This is a terrific system, for several reasons. Firstly, it allows the developers the freedom to make levels long enough to be interesting, while avoiding incredible frustration should you die right before the end, since you don't have to go all the way back to the start. Second, you are rewarded for doing the first half of the level well, in that whatever health and ammo you had at the checkpoint will be saved and give you a better chance at doing the second. Third, if things go downhill after hitting the checkpoint, you are given the choice of restarting at the checkpoint or, if it looks like you didn't reach the checkpoint with enough health, you can restart from the very beginning if you would prefer, allowing for maximum flexibility. And finally, you are encouraged to press on even if you take a battering after the checkpoint, since, with only one checkpoint per level, there's no danger of hitting another checkpoint and erasing your first one. Altogether, a triumphant save system for a shooter, and one that would have greatly benefitted games like Jedi Knight 2.

The other great save system I'd like to mention is Zelda: Majora's Mask which appeared on the Nintendo 64 two years ago. The save system here is reasonably complicated, but, aside from one potentially infuriating problem, works exceedingly well. The save system is composed of two parts - a permanent save, and a temporary save. The game mechanics are that your character gets 72 'hours' (minutes, in real time) before the world is due to end, but you can go back in time to the start of the three days at any point you like. Going back in time also activates the permanent save feature: any major items you have collected and any bosses you have beaten will be saved, but any money, ammunition and puzzles you have completed will be reset. What I really like about this set-up is that it makes the 72-minute time limit in which to find an item or complete a level or quest really meaningful, giving some penalty for making the save and restarting the timer, but keeping what's important. The temporary save is another great idea: you get to save your game at certain locations in the gameworld, but you have to quit the game after saving, and once you resume, the save is obliterated. This means that you can't ever try something, then just load up again if it doesn't work, because there's no save to load after you resume! Any catastrophic screw-up can only be remedied by going back to when you last permanently saved. This dual save system really adds to the game, bringing challenge as well as forcing you to play on after a mistake rather than neutering the challenge by letting you keep retrying a tough area without a penalty. The only problem with the system comes if there's a power cut or other mishap after you've spent 70 minutes clearing a level and were about to make a permanent save...

I've given a couple of examples of good console save systems and bad PC ones, but this isn't to say that all PC saving mechanisms are bad and all console ones good. They aren't. But I do think that game developers really ought to think about what effect their save systems will have on the games they are creating. Will a save-anywhere system really up the challenge by allowing some really difficult tasks to be inserted into levels, or will it just result in constant trial and error until something works? Will forcing players to do an entire level without saving require constant concentration and skill, or will it make players overcautious and put too much pressure on them? These questions ought to be asked by designers, and in many cases it's painfully clear that they either haven't been, or have been answered wrongly. At the very least, I would like to see far fewer of the games allowing constant saving, and other options investigated: perhaps only allowing a save after a successfully completed objective, or just before or after a difficult section of a level?


In summing up, the expansive and lengthy games of today really do need a save system of some sort if they aren't to be cut back in scale or nigh-on impossible to complete, but that doesn't mean that either completely-free or completely-restricted saving is the best option. Each distinct game ought to have a well-planned and executed saving system, and developers ought not to be afraid to try something new if they think it'll work for their concept. But as I said in a previous editorial, just don't go too far...

Tangycheese's response:
There's nothing quite as annoying as having to do the same level again and again everytime you play a game. Anyone who bought Lylat Wars on the N64 will know exactly what I'm talking about. A game's save system is all-important, because how, and when, you are able to save directly influencea the challenge of a game. Too much, such as in JK2, and any puzzle can merely be continually repeated until it's done right. Too few, and frustration will set in whenever you die, which will greatly detract from the game's playability. TimeSplitters 2 is an excellent example of a save system well done. Strangely I have no real difference in opinion with Mav on this one. There have been too many games which have been nearly ruined by a dodgy save system in the past, and great care needs to be taken to ensure this does not continue on future console and PC games.