Save Systems - Some Thoughts on How Save Mechanics Have Evolved

Saved games are kind of like officiating: the subject most often comes up when something has gone wrong. I had been playing Rebel Galaxy for about twenty hours when my save was corrupted. Apparently, a bug has existed for a long time with the game that several patches still hasn’t squashed. This bug results in mission cargo getting stuck in your hold, which also results in you being unable to complete certain mission types. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter also had a rather annoying autosave feature. There wasn’t anything drastically wrong with it, but there was a point where the game went a healthy forty-five minutes for me without saving due to when and where it would save. These two games got me thinking a lot about the subject of saved games.

Even though saved games aren’t a particularly sexy game mechanic to discuss, the evolutionary history of them is certainly interesting. Every person who played console games during the cartridge era likely has a story about losing a saved game. Back then, games like The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy used save batteries. According to DK Oldies, there are just over fifty games that used save batteries. There really wasn’t much to what these early games could do with saving. There was only enough room to allow for typically one to three saves after all. Other games used some form of password system in lieu of saved games. Despite how annoying those passwords could get, pen and paper were often more reliable than say my Final Fantasy cartridge ever proved to be.

Computer games on the other hand had access to disks they could write to. Either they could write to a floppy disk, or later they had access to hard drives. For the most part, these games employed manual save systems. The only limitation for the most part, unless a certain amount of save slots was designated, was how much free space you had access to. The only games that tended to buck the trend were Roguelikes, which were the domain of crazy people. Okay, so they weren’t actually crazy.

Rogue, Hack, and the rest in this genre followed core design philosophies that saved games were only meant for suspension of play. The idea was that if you could easily return to some form of recent checkpoint, it removed a great deal of tension from the game. This contrarian saved game philosophy perhaps more than anything else gave birth to the numerous variants in saved game designs ever since.

One of the most noteworthy games I can recall that was stuck in the middle of this debate was Alien Versus Predator which was released on PC in 1999 to a mixed reaction. While most elements of the game were praised, the game featured a fairly atypical design decision: there was no in-level save feature. The developers wanted to create a sense of tension around every corner with their game to mimic the Alien movies. If you could simply reload to a checkpoint or save point from a few moments earlier, they argued it would remove that tension.

Opinions on this decision were needlessly to say sharply divided. While today that might seem weird given the mainstream acceptance of alternative save mechanics, this was one of the earliest examples of a higher-profile game following a design philosophy similar to Roguelikes. The backlash toward this decision was sufficient enough that when the Gold Edition of the game was released a year later, the developers added in a saved game function.

The impact of the Rogue like saved game philosophy can be seen in countless modern games. Games like Dark Souls offer a singular game save per character which is automatically updated on a consistent basis. Games like Crypt of the Necrodancer, Spelunky, and Rogue Legacy have come up with new twists on how to follow the core tenants of Roguelike saves while still offering an ability to maintain progress between deaths. Many games feature hardcore modes which enforce Roguelike save mechanics on the player. Save functionality has over time become a key element of gameplay design rather than simply a means of tracking progress.

At some point though, autosaves in lieu of manual saves became an “in-thing” with games that didn’t really take advantage of it. My memory tells me this coincided with the advent of hard drives on gaming consoles. Figuring out the history of this is a little out of the scope of this blog post. While games often had and still do to this day have an autosave file while also allowing the player to manually save the game, some started to see autosaves as sufficient.

While this manner of checkpoint system offered a great deal of convenience, the player implicitly trusts the developer on two key points: checkpoints are sufficiently frequent, and saved games are stable. With access to manual saves, if one saved game is corrupted, an earlier one is typically available to the player to restore. With autosaves, well, you get my situation with Rebel Galaxy. Infrequent checkpoints are perhaps the more common issue. Alien: Isolation (what is it with save systems in Alien games?) is perhaps the game that most recently found itself the subject of this complaint. Many players complained about losing over half an hour of progress at various points.

It is not as if unlimited saving doesn’t have its own issues. Fire Emblem Fates and XCom 2 are both recent strategy games for which unlimited saving mid-mission can compromise the experience. Most players have heard of the term “save scumming,” the practice of loading an earlier save to undo a result the player didn’t like. While almost any genre can be impacted by this, the strategy genre might be impacted the greatest by this practice outside of Roguelikes, but those typically require actively manipulating files. This is even more applicable to games like XCom 2 and Fire Emblem which feature permanent death (though in Fire Emblem, this is only true on Classic mode). Part of the thrill of these games for many players is that any character can die at any turn.

While it’s easy enough to dismiss players engaging in save scumming as refusing to play a game properly, it isn’t always necessarily the case that the game is optimally designed around save limitations. For instance, XCom is fairly rigorously balanced around the ebb and flow of combat and losses. Units have fewer experience levels. They top out at a certain point. Replacement units are available at a reasonable cost, and can immediately use leveled equipment.

Fire Emblem on the other hand is much more rooted in the RPG genre. Units range from levels one through twenty and also can be promoted to advanced classes. Losing too many units early on starts to lock you out of child units (in recent titles) available later in the game, which become your primary means of resupplying your ranks at some point. There are some methods of getting around this mind you, but let’s leave that aside for a moment as this is not really meant to be me railing against Fire Emblem, which is a series I like a lot. Fire Emblem has less of an ebb and flow to this and more has a brick wall you tend to hit if you lose too many units along the way. For years, many complained about the series’ permanent death mechanic. This resulted in Casual mode being introduced in Fire Emblem: Awakening. In Casual mode, units are not permanently lost, but rather are lost for the rest of the battle.

After playing both Awakening and Fates, I’m not sure the developers have figured out how to balance these two different options yet. Short of playing on Lunatic, there are few times in the game you’re in danger of your entire party wiping in one battle on Casual. And are Casual players looking for an easier game, or are they just not a fan of the permanent death mechanic? It’s interesting to step back and realize much of this is rooted back in how the saved game functionality of Fire Emblem works.

After writing this, I still have no good answer as to why both Rebel Galaxy and Ethan Carter only offer autosave functionality. Unlike many examples referenced here, neither game utilizes save functionality that impacts gameplay. I will likely always be in the camp that thinks games should default to allowing manual saving unless there is a design mechanic justifying an alternative. For all the convenience of autosaves, there are just too many examples of something going wrong for my liking. Maybe I’ve just never gotten over losing my Final Fantasy save so many damn times.

I played Fire Emblem Awakening on Casual-Hard, partly because it was my first Fire Emblem game and partly because I wanted to be able to save mid-battle. Starting a level on Classic is a commitment to finishing that level - if you don't have time, you can close the 3DS, but you have to either finish it or quit to switch games. When going into that game, I was very inexperienced when it came to turn based strategy and permadeath, so I likely would have quit out of frustration if not for the casual mode. I did have a full party wipe a few times, by the way, but more of my losses were due to Chrom dying (that's still an instant loss in Casual).

I played Fates: Birthright on Classic-Normal, though, and I have played a decent bit of Awakening on Classic-Normal as well. That first playthrough on Casual-Hard was what got me into Fire Emblem, though.

As far as X-Com goes, I was never really able to get into X-Com 1 or 2.

I can see where the developers of AvP were coming from. When you can just manually save anywhere, I feel free to fuck around and do anything. There are countless times where I've felt like doing something stupid in Half-Life or Doom or any game where you can manually save - I'll just save, do it to see what happens, then reload and continue on my way. That definitely takes away a lot of the tension.

"If the alien is around this corner, it will kill me and I'll die - should probably save first! Oh, damn, it was there, guess I'll reload to five seconds ago and find a different way around."

Like you, I still prefer manual saves in most games. At the very least, keep the last three or four autosaves instead of just the latest, but honestly I'd rather just mash F6 or something and go on with it.

@justin258: I played through Awakening and Fates: Birthright on Casual-Hard. I just recently started Conquest on Classic-Normal. I'm trying to actually remember what the save system was like in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn at this point and if there were in-level saves. In my mind I think I remember some sort of in-mission save and resume option that deleted itself after you resumed, but it's been so long since I played either of those games.

The two modes are rather interesting to me. I'd sort of like to see what they could do balancing the maps around both of these options, because the goal of what you're doing changes if you're risking permanently losing units at any particular moment. I had sort of forgotten about instantly losing if Chrom wipes as it's been a while since I played Awakening. Anyway I didn't want to dive too deep into Fire Emblem balancing. It was just one of the more interesting recent games I could think of where this topic was applicable.

I think I meant to, but then forgot to mention the issue with games that commit you to completing large sections of gameplay without a checkpoint option available.

That was cool, thank you.

Reading this, I realize that mandatory, single autosave systems a la rouge-likes and dark souls are not on the spectrum of checkpoint-vs-manual-saves, its a different beast altogether. I think it is a better tool for achieving tension than the no-mid-mission saves of AvP, but maybe that only works because death is not permanent in the dark souls fiction.

Its also interesting to think about how genre conventions and expectations are the result of technology with regards to saving. Genres with with PC roots save the gameplay state while the legacy of consoles (and arcades) is saving only mission progress and leaderboard relevant stats. No one expects in mission saves in Bayonetta, even through they are completely possible. Super Meat boy constantly records the game state, but only for the crazy playback in the end, not for gameplay purposes (I wonder if they tried that).

That was really interesting, thank you for that write up. I never really considered the effect of Rougue-likes on save games beyond the genre.

This is actually something that has come up recently with regards to Fallout 4. They are trialling a new survival mode at the moment that requires you to eat, sleep drink etc. But they have also made it so that you can only save in beds found throughout the game world. Stability concerns aside, this is a pretty big shift for how the game is played. Normally you can save whenever you like with and on as many save files as you like, to the extent that the console versions even have a quick-save.

There aren't any checkpoints, so if you die it just goes back to your last save. But normally, because you can save as much as you want, there is no risk at all in the gameplay. If you get beaten by a tough enemy, just reload to 10 seconds ago and try again, or reload to 2 minutes ago and avoid the encounter entirely.

Actually changing the saving structure to just at beds effectively transforms beds into checkpoints. And suddenly you actually need to think about if you want to engage a strong enemy or a group of enemies. Or if you want to risk dying of thirst to explore somewhere before saving.

It's an interesting case of a game changing it's save structure.

This was a really cool idea for a blog! Nice write up duder.

There's definitely a lot to say about Save Systems.. Curious what you think of Quick Save & Quick Load. These are branches of manual saving but create some interesting behaviour patterns in players, especially in the "instant-fail" scenarios we see in Steatlh games or similar (think trial and error in Hitman or Dishonoured). I think the shorter the path to Saving and Loading the more both functions are used. In a way (and this is a stretch) The Sands of Time (and Braid after it) have the "ultimate" Quick Load system by way of the Magic Time Rewind Potion. This is a side-step of sorts to saving/loading but it achieves a really similar function in the player's mind, without actually writing/rewriting data at all. (I love rewinding time, personally.)

You mention checkpoints and these to me are the biggest difference in modern vs old save systems, not auto vs manual so much. Today you often save whenever you want (though you may restart at the nearest checkpoint) but back in the day you had to work to save. In all the jrpgs I grew up with you lived and died by the dreaded Save Point. As well, in those games you had no way to load your game without exiting to the main menu, and again I think this creates interesting behaviours in players. While Save Points are similar to the idea of "Save after every level" there's a lot of differences, maybe most important is that you can just miss a Save Point in dungeons/maps of certain complexity. As well, the pacing of a more open genre like an RPG is not usually as consistent as a corridor shooter. So whereas shooter levels often have consistent length (which is why I think we are so good at feeling we are near the end of a level) in jrpgs and other open genres this isn't really the case (we just hope we are near the next save point).

Word.

I've told this story many times on GB but yeah, I was scarred by this too: FFVII, 90+ hours spent, last fight of the game, 1 save file.... and my little brother overwrote it.

That was when I learned to keep multiple save files! It was also when I realized "hey, by having multiple files, I can more easily try different paths". This was a bit world changing. Up until then I was very much used to having 1 slot for a save (Zelda style).

It's interesting but, thinking about what you wrote, I realize now that as save options increase (multiple slots, save anytime, auto save, quick load) as players we begin to play a different, sort of meta game vs the game itself. As if we are using "saves" as a resource or tool to conquer the game. This speaks I think to the "purity" of roguelikes, and their "dismissal" of save systems as a tool. Well, something like that!

Anyways thanks again for the awesome food for thought.

@hawkinson76:I am in total agreement that the Dark Souls method of achieving tension not only achieves the same desired effect, but is a lot fairer toward the player. One of the reasons I didn't like DeS as much as later Souls games actually is the lack of as many shortcuts as the later titles had. To me, the key is the player having a constant "sense of progress," even if they're repeating content. AvP was a little too overkill as much as I admired at the time with the sentiment they were going for. Also, from what I remember, the levels were too long for that design. Also, that game had facehuggers that instantly killed you.

@paulmako: I am extremely interested to see how they implement that survival mode. New Vegas did some pretty interesting things with hardcore mode, but this sounds more akin to what the mod community came up with. Using beds as checkpoints, as you mention, so drastically changes the flow of that game in a way that I hope they properly account for. That's kind of some of the stuff I was talking about with Fire Emblem.

@geraltitude: As someone who plays a lot of stealth games, I can't agree with you more. I know I've had to keep careful stock of my behavior when it comes to quick save/quick load as it's so easy to abuse. That same type of behavior comes up a lot with emulators/the Nintendo Virtual Console. You go from old games like Zelda where there is very little saving, and suddenly you can save anywhere at any point as much as you want. I'm with you on rewinding time. Sands of Time was one of my favorite games from the PS2/XBox period.

I like the feel of games like Persona 3 and 4 when it comes to modern RPGs. So since you could only save back at the hub in each game, 3 had it so you need to make a judgement call while climbing the tower whether or not you want to thoroughly explore a floor knowing you'll have to traverse x amount of floors before you'll get back to a save point. Persona 4 was a little bit different than 3, but had larger floors. They're both nice compromises between allowing saving anywhere and not allowing saving inside a dungeon. I know when I went back to play Final Fantasy III on the DS, not being able to save in-dungeon at all got to be too much as the game went on.

Ugh, I sympathize with your FF7 story. If given ample opportunity, I will rotate saves like a mofo.

Thanks btw to everyone for all the great responses!

Right now I'm playing Hell Yeah: Wrath of the Dead Rabbit and the save system drives me nuts. It checkpoints fairly often, but checkpointing saves everything. Didn't hit a checkpoint after collecting that money and dying? Money's gone. Didn't hit a checkpoint after flipping that switch and dying? That switch is un-flipped. Didn't hit a checkpoint after revealing that part of the map and dying? That map's hidden again. Did you hit a checkpoint with barely a sliver of life left? When you die, you're coming back with barely a sliver of life. That last one is the absolute worst since they tend to drop checkpoints right before hard parts. Have fun dying over and over. And the checkpoints are invisible so you don't even know it's coming!

A few short years ago, I almost would have expected checkpointing like this. Nowadays, I'm like "I got that hard-to-reach collectible next to the spikes once already, don't make me do it again!" or "for the love of god if you're going to resurrect me right before the room filled with slime spitting enemies and the giant laser spamming cyber monkey, give me my life back!!"

@sinusoidal:The most recent game in which I ran into the annoying checkpoint issue with was Just Cause 3. While Rico restarts each time with a full health meter, escort vehicles don't. Thus it's pretty easy to arrive at a checkpoint with an escort near death, thus making the mission near unwinnable (my "favorite" checkpoint sin). And those missions can be pretty long. There was one case I had to restart the mission from scratch, and one case where I came very close to doing so.

I feel like there's an entire blog that could be written just on checkpoint design.

Do you remember Vice City? You had to drive back to one of your safe houses to save. It didn't save by the end of a mission. It's insane by today standards. Back then it was just really annoying.

@szlifier: I found San Andreas to be more egregious than Vice City on that front. I mean they both badly needed more checkpoints, but Vice City was at least on a much smaller map. I know San Andreas had some very minimalistic checkpointing, but it was kind of random, and often times the game still made you drive like five minutes back to the start of the mission on death. What was more insane about it was just how long it took Rockstar to change this design. Even GTA 4 had pretty minimal checkpointing from what I remember, and mostly on longer missions.

I never got around to playing GTA 5, so I have no idea if it's any better about it. I didn't much care for San Andreas and kind of got burned out on 4 about 80% the way through and stopped playing.

Great blog @cav829!

For me I find save systems make or break a game especially if it's a long game. There's nothing I hate perhaps more in games than 2 issues related to save systems, too infrequent of checkpoints in long games (in mind something where you are in danger of losing 45minutes-1hr+ of progress) and saves that lock you into unwinnable situatiion (less frequent but there were some Ps1 games if memory serves that if you saved past of the Point of No Return and couldn't win... well).

It's why I found Adventure of Link abrasive because the save spots were so far from dungeons. Same with Shadowrun Returns. And part of what I used to love about SNES era Final Fantasy games. You always generally knew in those games every dungeon would have 1-2 save spots and you'd have to economize in random battles accordingly. It helped make those smaller trash mob battles have greater weight because they were a component of a larger challenge as opposed to just an annoyance that you'd mash A through.

It's also a reason I like the old Mario games better than the new ones. The save systems in the NewSMB games just trivializes the game.

I don't think save scumming is always bad, although I certainly agree it can cause lesser enjoyment. Definitely in Fire Emblem like you mentioned. I've been playing Mass Effect lately for the first time, and I've had fun occasionally reloading a save to see what a different dialogue choice would have done etc that I wouldn't have cared enough about to do a second playthrough. Obviously a second renegade (going Paragon for this one) playthough is probably optimal but I don't really have the desire to do that.

But I get the whole Walking Dead one save of integrity approach too (you make your choices and you gotta live them).

Save systems seems like a minor thing, but in a way they are also kinda everything.

@slag:Thanks!

What you touched on there regarding narrative choice and save scumming actually is one of the primary reasons Life is Strange was my personal favorite game last year. That game is basically "Save Scum: the Video Game." I admire the fact they basically took this fundamental issue all games with narrative choice have due to the way we play and interact with video games and save mechanics and baked it into the game itself. Instead of putting the onus on the player or restricting the player, the developers took it on themselves to say okay, so what happens if you can save scum every decision? How can we still tell an interesting story if you can see the immediate result of every choice you make and undo it with the press of a button? It resulted in a narrative that takes advantage of the game medium in ways narratives generally can't.

I was trying to think of some recent examples of games putting you in unwinnable situations (not just the mission checkpoint resulting in a need to replay a mission issue), but that does seem to be less common these days. I imagine those Resident Evil HD remakes still have that issue though since the originals did where you could get into situations where there wasn't enough ammo to realistically beat a boss.

As a longtime PC person in the 90s I always found the lack of quicksaving on consoles to be an annoyance.

Save States through emulation actually really help me enjoy older 2d games. I'm fine with dying in Dark Souls because there are mechanics that drive you to run the environment again (souls) , but with old 2D games you repeat the level just to get better at beating the level, and I can't enjoy repeating a level as many times as Vinny does to die at the boss and do it all again.

I hate how PC FPS don't have F5 to quick save and F9 to quick load anymore to me they feel like they devolved devs need to bring this back.

Boy, did I need to read this.

Yeah, I'm in agreement that separate save systems have their particular niches, but overall I prefer manual saves and quicksaving (perhaps this is due to the fact that I've been a mostly-PC gamer since 2008 or so) since it renders me responsible for the presentation of continuing the game between gameplay sessions. There are some games which do checkpointing okay and which are designed for it, some which don't and aren't, but too often lately have I been screwed over by such systems. Especially on GTA V's launch, where for weeks the game would CTD right after a checkpoint on the last objective of a mission 2/3 of the way through the game, and with regards to Max Payne 3, in which the combat system's changed just enough compared to its predecessors to make me utterly terrible AND unable to deadhead through missions via savescumming or cheating, where I had to get things exactly right without decent FAQs and surviving every weirdly-timed QTE. (And yes, I'm aware I'm perhaps missing the traditional "point" there.)

I can understand that some games are designed aesthetically to be more immersive or rigorous experiences partly due to their game-saving implementation but the costs outweigh the benefits often enough to make the checkpointing trend into a bit of a pet peeve of mine personally. Thankfully it's usually pretty unobtrusive.

(Of course, I'm also of the opinion that as a PC player I should have a more user-managed gaming experience given the operating system. I also believe that cheating-sans-microtransactions and savescumming to artificially induce or facilitate game progression are justified in certain cases where performance and effort don't allow one to advance through the game quickly enough to be practical IRL... if not even serving as an improvement on the user experience when compared to the absence of it as an option, which understandably not everyone will share my opinion on.

... I loved cheats as a kid. Especially Big Head Mode, debug modes, feature-unlocking text strings, good times were had once.)

One thing about password-based saves was that in the pre-www era, they were a very great way to share saves. Magazines would also publish passwords for "all levels" or "all items" saves which was kinda cool.

Obviously passwords only work for certain kinds of games where the save state is small enough.

I think the ideal saving system depends on the kind of game for sure. In some games having a manual save that saves anywhere would just break things too much. But most games do have the major problem that it's rarely clear what exactly will get saved and what won't. It's always nice when a game is designed in a way that makes it hard to have saved yourself into a disadvantage or corner.

If a game does go down the quick-save route I believe it's absolutely vital that the game surfaces the last time a quick save occurred somewhere in the pause menu. The Last of Us did this perfectly yet the number of games that have adopted the system seem few and far between (there was a game the crew Quick Looked recently that had it but I can't remember which).

I'm not at all concerned by the idea of games offering save scumming options. It allows each player to play the game as they choose without having any impact on those who want a more hardcore experience. Similarly Fallout offering survival mode means those who want that experience gives them an option to force it upon themselves without relying on their own mental fortitude to avoid abusing the system.

Personally I hate having to replay any section of a game so the addition of frequent auto-saves and/or any time manual saves has been fantastic.

@arbayer2: I've always found it a little weird that some players take such umbrage how an individual wants to play a single player game. I mean some of the most fun I used to have in gaming is playing GTA Vice City with cheats. Taking any part of player customization away from the player to tailor the experience toward what the developers want is kind of an unwritten contract that hey, we're offering you *blank* in response.You could summarize it as the "are you making the experience better/more interesting vs. are you artificially increasing length/difficulty" issue.

I never played Max Payne 3, but I've heard from plenty of people that the infrequent checkpoints in that game were a problem.

@quantris: Yeah, I can remember all kinds of games I used to rent as a kid and pull passwords out of magazines for as I only had the game for a day or so and wanted to just skip ahead. I mean I could never see a great use case for bringing them back in lieu of save games at this point, but there were certainly neat things about password systems that have been lost to time or are now monetized via microtransactions similarly to cheats as Jeff has talked about on the Bombcast.

@stinger061: Yeah, that level of communication to the player would certainly be greatly appreciated from more games! I'm with you that more games should communicate that better to the player.

@cav829:

@floydeo:Oof, River City Ransom's password system was awful, if not the worst of the NES games I played.

I remember Faxanadu being pretty awful as well. The passwords weren't quite RCR long, but they were up there. And the font was pretty annoying.

Then you had Mega Man 3, which added in blue dots on top of red dots. I'm sure this played havoc with people suffering from certain types of color blindness.

The worst one I've ever seen though was GI Joe: The Atlantis Factor. I mean, what the hell were you supposed to even do with this? Copying this down meant drawing out fourteen 3x3 grids or trying to annotate in some way where everything was positioned the fourteen grids.

I have a love-hate relationship with the proliferation of auto saves in modern games. Most of the time they are fine, but in just about every case I'd prefer to have the option to make manual saves - or at the very least have multiple auto save slots, not a singular save that is constantly overwritten.

My most recent frustrations with this system occurred in MGS 5. There were two incidents that I'll talk about: the first happened in the mission where you're destroying tanks and other various military vehicles in order to aid a rebel group. (Sorry, I don't remember the mission name or number - I haven't played MGS 5 in a long ass time)

This mission is timed, and you basically get paid for each vehicle you destroy. You're only required to destroy a few in order to pass the mission, but you'll get bonuses if you can do all of them - a feat made quite difficult due to the mission being timed. Believe it or not, I was on my way to destroying every single vehicle on my first try at the mission. I was firing some rockets at the very last tank, and I decided to take a risk by running directly towards it in order to get a better shot. Unfortunately, I got killed, but I figured "ah, no problem. There was probably a checkpoint right after I destroyed the last vehicle." I was wrong. Image my surprise as I was placed back at the very beginning of the mission.

I tried and tried but I've never gotten as close to destroying all the vehicles as I did on that first try.

My second incident is a bit of a spoiler, so I'll be vague. I did a mission that resulted in someone I liked and used a lot permanently leaving, never to return ever again no matter what. This caused me to flat out quit the game. There are two possible solutions for this issue, the first is having manual save slots or multiple auto save slots, and the second is WARNING THE PLAYER BEFORE THE GODDAMN MISSION.

Sorry, I'm still bitter about that. I still think more games need to give us both options for saving.

@poisonjam7: Man, I did that tank mission like 10 times trying to take out all the tanks before giving up in frustration. Having to start the mission over from scratch every time was the main reason.

FYI, if you didn't know, they later patched it so you could get Quiet back if you beat mission 11 seven times without killing or leaving Quiet behind.

I wonder why developers don't experiment with hybrid systems. I would be very interested in a design that employs frequent developer designated checkpoints like BioShock Infinite, but has a secondary, limited manual save system, sort of like classic Resident Evil, where perhaps you have a finite save resource that you can employ at any time, but carefully and non abusively because you can run out.

Meanwhile some developers including the much praised Naughty Dog still can't figure out how to build a consistent check point system, having to do a really long and troublesome gunfight over again multiple times because of some bullshit happening and because there's no mid fight check point always sucks.