Quick saving, or the having the ability to save a game at any point in time, has only recently dawned on me as a powerful tool for games. Obviously, quick save is a feature generally looked at as something that makes it easier to “cheese” through harder sections of a game. You might also use it in games with player choice when you’re forced to make a difficult decision and would like to see both results before you truly proceed. It might sound silly, but I’ve actually been using it to perfect gameplay execution.

In my case, I think this idea is best exemplified in stealth games, or at the very least, games with stealth elements. Dishonored is a more recent example. It’s a game that allows the player to play through the game without killing anyone, but you can also kill just about everyone. A lot of people probably had to load saves a lot of the time if they were going for a zero kills run, whether for achievements or fun.

In many games there might be something really cool you think you can do, because the game has given you the tools to do so, but you mess it up. In Dishonored, someone might spot you, raise the alarm and force you to start killing people. This might not have been the way you intended the scene to play out. You wanted to take an air duct and drop down into the river where you could infiltrate the facility with no one any-the-wiser. An ability to save anywhere makes it easier for you to try again.

Checkpoints are pretty common now days and serve a similar purpose to a save anywhere feature. It’s just an automatic way of doing it. However, in regards to what I’m referring to, the difference between a checkpoint and saves I’ve made myself is the difference taking a scene from the top and wherever the director tells you to start. It makes it less of a task to execute any given scene how you intend.

While I know I've done similar things in the past I've never really looked at it this way until now. Recently I played through Thief II: The Metal Age and spent a lot of time saving and loading. I wasn’t doing it to make the game easier. Sometimes I was challenging myself to do things more efficiently, and sometimes I was experimenting. In some cases I’d make it through a section of a level and upon further exploration I would notice a hidden path I missed. More often than not I would load up the save and take that hidden path instead of how I did it the first time.

The Thief series has a sort of a reputation for being really difficult should you get caught, but it’s a bit overstated. You can easily take on a few guys here and there and be fine in most cases. I could kill five or six guards and the whole situation within the game would be fine, but I would still load and do it over, until I achieved a result that felt right. After all it was called Thief not Murderer. It made playing the game take a whole lot longer, but by the end I could rest easy knowing I got more out of Thief II than I could have wanted to.

I’ve started noticing this quirky behavior more and more while I play games, and the notion occurred to me; I’m the leading actor and director of a movie who was blindfolded until I reached the set, and now the script is in the process of being translated and handed to me as I go. If I don’t like the how something happened or I fumble with my lines, I cut, and do another take. It’s a silly way to look at my newfound compulsion, but now that compulsion is fun and rewarding, instead of strange and maddening.

There were scenarios in which my cover would be blown when it was just a short run to the exit. It wouldn’t take me more than ten seconds to reach it, but I would load and do it over, because the real Garrett wouldn’t have been seen at all. Instead of beating myself up about being that much of a perfectionist, I can now rationalize it by saying I’m a sophisticated artist quite devoted to my art.

This approach to playing games works well alongside my general play a game once and never again policy. It’s rare that I pursue multiple playthroughs of a game, but doing this serves the same basic purpose. By perfecting my initial playthrough I’m less inclined to be dissatisfied with how my playthrough went, so I won’t get hung up with a desire to play a game for a second time that I don’t have time nor truly want to.

I’m not saying every game under the sun needs a save anywhere feature, but there are plenty of games that would likely benefit from it if the feature was looked at in this way. More cinematic experiences like Uncharted or Last of Us spring to mind, but even in a simple platformer like Super Mario Bros., you might see an opportunity to make a really cool jump that requires more finesse than you can muster on your first few attempts, but you’re forced to replay the entire level over several times to the point where it’s probably not going to be worth it, but with a save anywhere feature, it might be.

This oddball approach to utilizing saves is just something I’ve noticed about my gaming playstyle lately. It probably sounds insane, but since I’ve noticed and rationalized it I’m more inclined to get more enjoyment out of it. We all have to be weird about something right? So we might as well try to enjoy that something.