10 replies to this topic

[ComputerSpaceFan]

Can anyone explain to me why modern console games have vastly different "Save Game" types that seem to have nothing to do with the type of game they are?

Examples:

Fallout 3
If I am in a house and I find an item, I save the game and then leave the house and get killed. If I load my saved game, I am still in the house, having just picked up the item,

Red Dead Redemption
If I am in a house and I find an item, I save the game and then leave the house and get killed. If I load my saved game, I am in the nearest checkpoint area, likely a hotel room I bought or a camp ground but I could be miles from that house I was just in. Usually I still have the item I just picked up.

Assassin's Creed
If I am in a house and I find an item, I have no option to save the game. If I leave the house and get killed the game "re-synchronizes" me so I am some recent checkpoint. I could be up on a roof, in a nearby street, wherever. It is very unlikely I have that item anymore so I need to figure out where I got it from.
Oh, and if I go back to the Assassin's Guild and quit my game (no save option, remember) next time I play, I could be half way across town.

Is it just me or are these very different save game types a bit jarring? I recall that back in the PC gaming days, most games (except arcade titles or racers) saved where you just left off, similar to Fallout 3. Why don't a lot of games use that method anymore? Do such save game files take up too much hard drive space? Is it just developers being different for the sake of being different?

Anyone know?

[Rex Dart]

Um, different teams of people make them.
Instead of asking us why various games work differently, ask each respective developer why they made the specific decisions that they did.

Edited by Rex Dart, Thu Jan 5, 2012 12:25 PM.

[moycon]

Yeah I'm pretty sure it's the programmers doing. Maybe if one guy programed every game in the world and he never did anything different in regards to the way a game saves for 25 years and then you noticed these strange new anomalies when saving, you might ask him why he recently chose to mix it up so much, but as we all know, that isn't the case.
To put it in perspective, how come all drinks labeled cola don't taste exactly the same? Right, because different companies make the product.

[Emehr]

There's no standard with this stuff. A programmer will do whatever's easiest, fastest, most efficient, or requires less work. It all depends on how much detail they want to include in the saved data.

[ComputerSpaceFan]

So is my memory of PC gaming going fuzzy in my old age? Did games back then also have strangely different ways of saving? I recall most games I played being more like the Fallout 3 model I detailed above.

[Animan]

Hey, at least you don't have to hold down the reset button anymore...

[Keatah]

I don't believe there are any rules or standards that have to followed here. It's just the way it is. No rhyme or reason.

[Rex Dart]

Yeah, sorta like asking why the A button doesn't make your character jump in every game.

[HammR25]

First Person Shooters almost exclusively use a checkpoint based system. Developers who use a checkpoint based system want you to be able to complete certain tasks before you move on in the game. It makes the overall hours played total go up. Others don't care so they let you insta-save.

Why did every PC racing game I ever played have a save in race feature until NASCAR Racing 4 came out? It didn't have one and no other PC racing simulation had one until GTR FIA GT Racing game came out 4 years later? The GTR line of games are still the only ones that have this.

[gtmtnbiker]

All of the Zelda games allow you to save at any time but you're always starting at some standard location (e.g, beginning of a dungeon) instead of where you were last.

[Video]

Different teams of people would be the easy answer. Also, theammount of space you use to save a game. The saves for say...Skyrim are HUGE, several megs (I think mine are currently at 12 megs a pop) but if you get rid of some detail, like you r"exact" locataion, what you are doing, etc, you can shrink that down quiet a bit. Having you reload at the nearest town gate for instance wouldn't need near the memory as loading you in X cave doing Y thing in Z conditions.

I prefer the more detailed save, but a few games like Skyrim,and you could easily fill up the 4 GB that the basic Xbox has for memory in a hurry, I got over half a gig of saves for mine at the moment....for that one game. (though I could delete most of them, I only really need a dozen or so, just to make sure I don't get screwed in a place I can't get out of)