Gaming trends that irk you

[Winthur]

Oh, you mean Fallout?

Nice one, I'm gonna go see how fast NMA will ban me if I suggest we've ever had a Fallout trilogy.

[GloatingSwine]

Nice one, I'm gonna go see how fast NMA will ban me if I suggest we've ever had a Fallout trilogy.

If you claim it was 1, 2, New Vegas you might get away with a mildly raging dumpster fire.

Though in ideology you can see how 3, 4, and 76 form a trilogy.

Not a trilogy of good things of course.

[Knaight]

Dare I suggest a mention of a the endings of a certain RPG trilogy which, as the culmination of the story, very definitely attracted a huge amount of critism?

On the one hand, we all know you mean Mass Effect. On the other hand it's probably telling that if you took Mass Effect out there's no shortage of candidates waiting to jump in its place. People clearly tend to care, for all that game stories are usually pretty bad.

Personally I mostly don't care about plot in videogames - provided it doesn't do something too boneheaded*, I'm fine. Setting? Aesthetics? Tone? Mood? Those all matter, and given the way reviews routinely have sections for "graphics" that are definitely not just technical specs but involve art direction this seems like it's not exactly uncommon.

*Blackguards comes to mind. There's a scene where they kill off a character which I assume is meant to come across as the setting being dark, but actually just comes across as the writers arbitrarily killing off a character in a deeply stupid fashion that doesn't remotely hew to existing characterization and relies on three other characters to simultaneously hold the idiot ball in their best death grips for a good minute straight. That hit the "[expletive] this, I'm out" button.

[Triaxx]

Though I actually liked F3, even 4. 76... I enjoyed what I played during the free week... I'm not particularly in love with it as a solo game, nor do I have any interest in large group play. But when private servers come out, and we have the ability to limit the number of people we can invite? Absolutely, I'll play the heck out of it.

Also everyone forgets Fallout Tactics, and that makes me sad.

[Winthur]

Also everyone forgets Fallout Tactics, and that makes me sad.

I will totally play it online with you. Unlikely hours of squad-on-squad matches got me out of some teenage emo funk in, like, 2008, I loved that stuff.

[Vinyadan]

If that's the case, then good or bad stories wouldn't matter to the gameplay public. The fact that people do care--that by your own admission, the gameplaying public is upset when game writers force their characters into bone-headed decisions--should probably indicate to you that story does matter. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that in the genres of game where story is important, a bad story can have as bad an effect as poor gameplay.

Compare the public reception of Bioshock with that of Bioshock 2. If you were to look purely at gameplay, Bioshock 2 iterated and improved on Bioshock's combat in nearly every way. Splicers acted smarter and had a greater enemy variety. The weapons that the player could use were both more varied and upgradeable. In the sequel, the player could even shoot a gun with one hand while wielding a plasmid in the other. Gameplay-wise, there's no comparison.

The problem with Bioshock 2, though, was its story. The original Bioshock's story featured an antagonist that was well-thought out and well spoken, and the story itself served as both a critique of Objectivist utopias and a disassembly of the idea of a video game protagonist following the railroad of the plot. 2's story, by comparison, features a villain who's a Communist. And, that's about it. No critique, no disassembly, no clever ideas, just a railroad that the player follows. That brilliant story in the first game is the reason why Bioshock is a staple part of gaming history, while Bioshock 2 has been relegated to the scrap heap of bad sequels that failed to live up to the first edition. Story absolutely matters.

I think you are right in the main point, but also that you are marginally wrong. From my point of view, Bioshock 2 had a problem in wonky difficulty levels: protecting the little sisters while harvesting could be frustrating, and then you had the Big Sisters, through which you could push by mere grinding, since you could always be revived, another frustrating way to handle things. The plasmid that let you use only the drill felt too powerful, because of how OP the ice effects were, and seemed like the only way that made sense to play.

However, I've never seen anyone call Bioshock 2 bad, nor do I consider it bad. It has slight weaknesses and slight improvements, and includes monsters that had been excluded from the first title. Also, Lamb clearly isn't just a communist; Ryan focused on success and business, while she focuses on religion and family, which, however, she sees as scientific phenomenons of people's inner reality.

The real problem with Bioshock 2 is that, having been developed by a different team than the one of the original Bioshock, it could not go too far with innovation. Instead, they followed the model they were given as closely as possible. The result is that the game doesn't really feel like a different game, more like a massive stand-alone expansion, but innovation has a value in and of itself (see: Doom, HL2).

Bioshock 2 is a strong game, although it isn't loved as much as 1 or Infinite. But I agree that, compared to Infinite, it's a good example of how important a story is: as I said earlier, I think that Infinite is too easy, which detracts from exploring the gameplay and automatically makes the mechanics more superficial, but it also possibly has the most masterful and careful storytelling of any game, which makes it better than Bioshock 2.

[Erloas]

I don't think people forget Fallout: Tactics, so much as everyone just acknowledges that it was never meant to be Fallout 3. It was, as the name implies, a tactical combat game set in the Fallout universe.


I would say that story is a lot more than just plot. Because you can take LotR and the plot is basically "underdogs infiltrate enemy stronghold to destroy powerful item" which is also the basic plot of several Star Wars movies, I think a few Bond ones, and dozens of comics. Setting and tone are integral to a story and you can't really separate them. The same way that a parody can have the same basic story as the original and come across very differently (see most of Pratchett's books, Mel Brooks movies, Monty Python, Douglas Adams). A story is all of it.

Take also Borderlands, the gameplay is good but not exceptionally unique, same with the plot, the setting and style are not common but not rare either and nothing about any of it really stands out on its own. The characters are over the top in general but they fit the setting perfectly. When you combine it all, it all just works together, and I think fairly importantly, you couldn't really drastically remove or change any one part without a lot of it falling apart. The story of Borderlands is great, but much of the plot is relatively simple.

[Rodin]

If you claim it was 1, 2, New Vegas you might get away with a mildly raging dumpster fire.

Though in ideology you can see how 3, 4, and 76 form a trilogy.

Not a trilogy of good things of course.

Wouldn't the first Fallout trilogy be 1, 2, and then Tactics?

I mean, it would still get you tossed through a window headfirst, but Tactics is much closer to the original 2 than New Vegas was.

------


Actually on-topic (for a change): Pre-loading that is allowed days in advance. I'm fine with pre-loading if it's done the previous day, to give people time to download so they can play as soon as it hits. But I've had Fire Emblem Three Houses on my Switch since Monday, and I think the pre-load started even earlier than that. If the game is ready enough to pre-load it, let us freaking play the game. I don't care if you have to put a warning on saying "there will be a day 1 patch on the actual release date", let me play the damn game that's sitting on my system. I'm sure there's some business decision justifying it, but it drives me bonkers all the same.

[Yuki Akuma]

Actually on-topic (for a change): Pre-loading that is allowed days in advance. I'm fine with pre-loading if it's done the previous day, to give people time to download so they can play as soon as it hits. But I've had Fire Emblem Three Houses on my Switch since Monday, and I think the pre-load started even earlier than that. If the game is ready enough to pre-load it, let us freaking play the game. I don't care if you have to put a warning on saying "there will be a day 1 patch on the actual release date", let me play the damn game that's sitting on my system. I'm sure there's some business decision justifying it, but it drives me bonkers all the same.

The business decision is "Gamestop will sue us if we let you play early".

[DataNinja]

The business decision is "Gamestop will sue us if we let you play early".

Also, I assume that it's to try and help their servers, so that the download requests are spread out and not all concentrated immediately at release minute.

[Vinyadan]

Wouldn't the first Fallout trilogy be 1, 2, and then Tactics?

I mean, it would still get you tossed through a window headfirst, but Tactics is much closer to the original 2 than New Vegas was.

I'd go with FO 1, 2, NV because of the Black Isle-Obsidian lineage. Tactics and 3, 4, and 76 were developed by others.

One gaming trend that irks me: while I don't think it's frequent by now, FPS with limited numbers of saves for chapter. I understand the idea of strategically employing them and adding a complexity layer, but they actually just make you waste a lot of time replaying the same sections over and over.

[warty goblin]

I don't think people forget Fallout: Tactics, so much as everyone just acknowledges that it was never meant to be Fallout 3. It was, as the name implies, a tactical combat game set in the Fallout universe.

Lord I wish I could forget Fallout: Tactics. A perfectly solid base hamstrung by an interface I could only describe as actually sadistic. I mean Fallout's interface was painful enough, and that only made you manage one person. Under the weight of a squad the same conventions just start causing real pain. Truly a shortlister for "more unpleasant to control that Neverwinter Nights 2", and that's not a good list to be on.

[The_Jackal]

If that's the case, then good or bad stories wouldn't matter to the gameplay public. The fact that people do care--that by your own admission, the gameplaying public is upset when game writers force their characters into bone-headed decisions--should probably indicate to you that story does matter. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that in the genres of game where story is important, a bad story can have as bad an effect as poor gameplay.

If that's true, then why did the same people who bought Mass Effect 3, shrieking about the terrible ending with the Reapers winning go on to be disappointed even more with Mass Effect Andromeda? You could argue that a bad story will hurt subsequent sales of games, but I haven't really seen evidence that supports that thesis.

Story absolutely matters.

Really? What consequences have bad stories had to the survival or lack thereof of gaming franchises, big or small? Treyarch squirted out a series of badly written excremental narratives with their follow-ups to the Modern Warfare series, and it had no effect. Destiny and Destiny 2's alien pantomime is painful to sit through, and those titles are phenomenally successful. Every iteration in Bethesda's stable of sandbox games gradually abrades away RPG elements in favor of core gameplay, and it was only when the jump from single-player to multi-player produced a buggy garbage-fire with recycled graphics that their star began to fall.

[Zevox]

Really? What consequences have bad stories had to the survival or lack thereof of gaming franchises, big or small?

Several Capcom franchises have struggled at times as a result of their inexplicable desire to change the main character or reboot the franchise entirely. Ace Attorney went dormant for a while after Apollo Justice soured a lot of people by screwing over its former main character, Phoenix, in order to introduce the new one, and when Dual Destinies was announced with Phoenix returning and Apollo reduced to secondary protagonist status it was considered a great return to form for the series.

In a more extreme example, the attempt to reboot Devil May Cry failed because of things having nothing to do with its gameplay, which was good even if many would argue it wasn't up the standards set by the best games of the original series, but everything to do with it replacing the series' characters, settings, and writing with new versions that had little in common with what people liked about the original. And in similar fashion to Ace Attorney, the recent release of Devil May Cry 5, which returned to the original version of the series, was considered a triumphant return to form.

Or hey, here's a big one: Metroid. Other M was absolutely hated for its writing and portrayal of Samus, and it left that franchise completely dead for six years, after a period where a Metroid game came out almost every year from 2002-2010. Since then the only new Metroid titles released were a couple of small 3DS games, one of which was just a remake of an older game, and the other of which was apparently a weird FPS that nobody really liked. It still remains to be seen if Metroid Prime 4, which they announced a couple of years ago and seem to be taking their time with to make sure they get right, can bring it back properly.

[huttj509]

Also, I assume that it's to try and help their servers, so that the download requests are spread out and not all concentrated immediately at release minute.

And, as a 3rd thing, it's actually to avoid the "Yay the game's released...now I need to wait for the download" issue. Yes, it still needs to download the game if you have the digital copy, but you can have it do that overnight in the background if it's just the time that's an issue (rather than download size costs, or particularly low bandwidth).

When 3 houses is released my digital copy will have a similar onboarding time/experience to cracking open a physical copy.

I think release dates and not undercutting distributors is the primary reason, with the other 2 reasons being answers to "why pre-load at all?"

[Razade]

If that's true, then why did the same people who bought Mass Effect 3, shrieking about the terrible ending with the Reapers winning go on to be disappointed even more with Mass Effect Andromeda? You could argue that a bad story will hurt subsequent sales of games, but I haven't really seen evidence that supports that thesis.

Because of previous game's successes. You can't just go "Hey, they made this game everyone disliked. The others? Naw, they're not factors". Bioware's made games people love and that builds trust in the consumer. You also don't have numbers of return purchasers to even begin to make that an argument with any real weight that a bad story and good gameplay wins over a good story with bad mechanics. Or just a medicore story with good mechanics. To showcase this, look in the same company. Dragon Age. Origins was praised but Dragon Age 2 was panned even though the story and characters are considered better. ][ all but ruined the reputation of the game to the point that Dragon Age: The Next One is pretty much DOA.

Or just look at Andromeda and how it was almost universally panned. Not just because of bad gameplay...because it had that...but because the story was awful. Do you think whatever comes next in Mass Effect is going to fare well with two hits on the writing side? I doubt it.

Really? What consequences have bad stories had to the survival or lack thereof of gaming franchises, big or small? Treyarch squirted out a series of badly written excremental narratives with their follow-ups to the Modern Warfare series, and it had no effect. Destiny and Destiny 2's alien pantomime is painful to sit through, and those titles are phenomenally successful. Every iteration in Bethesda's stable of sandbox games gradually abrades away RPG elements in favor of core gameplay, and it was only when the jump from single-player to multi-player produced a buggy garbage-fire with recycled graphics that their star began to fall.

Fable comes to mind. It got pumped out just on merit of the team having oodles of cash and a rock star developer at the helm. Spyro took a serious hit because of how short the game was, how loose its story was and how content lacking it was. How could anyone forget Sonic 2006, which really did a number on the series because of just how bad the story was. There were other problems too but the story of the game is absolutely on the list of reasons everyone hates it.

How could anyone forget how badly written the Game of Thrones Telltale game was? Or their Batman game? Or really any of their games that weren't The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead of Tales from the Borderlands? The Game of Thrones one was so bad that they didn't bother doing a follow up to a cliff-hanger they created. Then they declared bankruptcy. There's always Agony or, in a similar vein, Dante's Inferno. Both games panned for their story.

Dante's Inferno seems to be the poster boy for this. The game's mechanics and overall design were praised, highly, but the story wasn't. They were going to do sequels of the game but the game didn't sell well enough. The company was shuttered.

[Rynjin]

If that's true, then why did the same people who bought Mass Effect 3, shrieking about the terrible ending with the Reapers winning go on to be disappointed even more with Mass Effect Andromeda? You could argue that a bad story will hurt subsequent sales of games, but I haven't really seen evidence that supports that thesis.

...Because sequels to bad entries in popular franchises tend to do very well, in almost any form of media. It's the one AFTER that which is the real decider. Fans of a franchise often give studios a chance to "redeem themselves" with a sequel before jumping ship.

You can follow this pattern in long running movie franchises pretty clearly if you adjust for inflation. Look at the Terminator franchise, which many people agree goes off the rails at the 3rd movie. Terminator 3 and Salvation make about the same amount opening weekend, while Genisys makes about 2/3 of that. The total domestic profit over its lifespan follows a similar trend. The only difference is Genisys made more worldwide...though that's the case for a lot of movies post-2010, and wasn't as common before that since the Chinese market for cinema has become so huge recently.

And don't dare try to tell me people watch Terminator movies for the story any more than they play a lot of the games you mention below.

Really? What consequences have bad stories had to the survival or lack thereof of gaming franchises, big or small? Treyarch squirted out a series of badly written excremental narratives with their follow-ups to the Modern Warfare series, and it had no effect. Destiny and Destiny 2's alien pantomime is painful to sit through, and those titles are phenomenally successful. Every iteration in Bethesda's stable of sandbox games gradually abrades away RPG elements in favor of core gameplay, and it was only when the jump from single-player to multi-player produced a buggy garbage-fire with recycled graphics that their star began to fall.

Because none of those games are in genres that are particularly narratively driven. CoD games exist for the multiplayer, Destiny exists to make people grind and pay for microtransactions, and Bethesda's sandbox games trade on setting, atmosphere, and exploration as their core draws.

Compare/contrast most RPGs, which live and die on their story. Particularly RPGs from new franchises.

People have given you plenty of direct answers to your question, but I think you're just being deliberately obtuse in the examples you're picking. This isn't an all or nothing game, where story always matters or never matters. It depends on the context.

How could anyone forget how badly written the Game of Thrones Telltale game was? Or their Batman game? Or really any of their games that weren't The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead of Tales from the Borderlands? The Game of Thrones one was so bad that they didn't bother doing a follow up to a cliff-hanger they created. Then they declared bankruptcy. There's always Agony or, in a similar vein, Dante's Inferno. Both games panned for their story.

Not to nitpick but Telltale went under largely due to horrible mismanagement of funds than anything to do with the quality of their products. they bought too many licenses too fast and couldn't make enough profit off their games to sustain that.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning might be a better example of an RPG with pretty great gameplay killing a studio because it didn't sell enough, in large part because R.A. Salvatore's contribution to the writing was so yawn inducing (though admittedly the MMO-y sidequests didn't help).

[Razade]

Not to nitpick but Telltale went under largely due to horrible mismanagement of funds than anything to do with the quality of their products. they bought too many licenses too fast and couldn't make enough profit off their games to sustain that.

Yeah, I know. That doesn't change the fact that most of their games were not well received thanks to the writing. I used them as an example because the story is all that Telltale really had for its games.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning might be a better example of an RPG with pretty great gameplay killing a studio because it didn't sell enough, in large part because R.A. Salvatore's contribution to the writing was so yawn inducing (though admittedly the MMO-y sidequests didn't help).

It was supposed to be an MMO after all, it makes sense that its story played out as it did. Doesn't mean it was good, you can't market something like an MMO for a single player experience. KoA: R was just a mess all around. If you're going to nitpick however, Amalur's studio didn't die because they didn't sell enough copies. They'd never have been able to sell enough copies to keep them from going under. No matter what game they released, 38studios was insolvent. If it weren't for a loan from the state of Rhode Island, they wouldn't have even been able to put a game out. They could have made Minecraft and not broken even. 38studio makes Telltale's utter joke of a business model look like the bastion of good management.

[Lord Raziere]

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning might be a better example of an RPG with pretty great gameplay killing a studio because it didn't sell enough, in large part because R.A. Salvatore's contribution to the writing was so yawn inducing (though admittedly the MMO-y sidequests didn't help).

Yeah, when I played that game, I certainly recognized the Salvatore's writing style in there. lots of fantasy fantastical jibber-jabber, little substance. everyone talked real old folksy like, which I guess was supposed to be intentional given that its a Fae world based on the concept of fairy tales, but it just felt....odd hearing them speak and their faces and eyes just be dead to the world while they do so. its a shame because it had a great combat system, and a great concept, but there was no emotional impact to anything sure the visuals were great, the combat was great,and the character customizable enough to have fun with wherever you go, but the story was "hey your not dead thats weird, oh hey turns out you can defy fate when no one else can, we don't know why. uuuuuh, fight stuff? and then......" I don't remember you fight the big dragon and its like, you supposedly made a deal with said dragon before you died or something? okay. what does this mean? not clear, but your killing this fate dragon now, they're dead and um, fates gone. and its like okay, its gone, now what. oh and something about elf girl your meet with sometimes just running off because Salvatore tends to make characters that do that for no apparent reason.

yeah, it was kind of underwhelming for the set up, because the set up is that your suddenly alive when you should be dead, you can DEFY FATE which no one else can do, and what is done with it story-wise just doesn't seem ...enough? like the characters weren't enough on their own, they didn't enough going for them, the story didn't have enough going for it, it needed someone who would do more with the concept and the characters than Salvatores unfortunately surface level writing, because his characters don't really have dimensions to them, they're pretty straightforward and that just didn't work with Amalur, because none of them really connected or felt real enough to care about.

Edit: Amalur actually intending to be an MMO at first explains a LOT.

[deuterio12]

Or hey, here's a big one: Metroid. Other M was absolutely hated for its writing and portrayal of Samus, and it left that franchise completely dead for six years, after a period where a Metroid game came out almost every year from 2002-2010. Since then the only new Metroid titles released were a couple of small 3DS games, one of which was just a remake of an older game, and the other of which was apparently a weird FPS that nobody really liked.

Because it didn't include Samus and instead you played the faceless federation grunts (technically seems like she showed up as a cameo, but you never got to play as her).

Still wondering who had that idea and how did it ever got approved up the chain of command.

Anyway yeah, story/characters matter.

It still remains to be seen if Metroid Prime 4, which they announced a couple of years ago and seem to be taking their time with to make sure they get right, can bring it back properly.

Whatever work they were doing during 2017-2018 for Metroid Prime 4, Nintendo scraped everything and started from scratch with a new studio this year.

One can only wonder what exactly went wrong with that 2017-2018 version that Nintendo went "nope nope abort start everything again", but they're clearly playing it extra-safe and paranoid. Even Breath of the Wild got a few glimpses at E3s despite all its delays, but we haven't glimpsed anything about Metroid Prime 4 besides the title itself.

[Winthur]

Several Capcom franchises have struggled at times as a result of their inexplicable desire to change the main character or reboot the franchise entirely. Ace Attorney went dormant for a while after Apollo Justice soured a lot of people by screwing over its former main character, Phoenix, in order to introduce the new one, and when Dual Destinies was announced with Phoenix returning and Apollo reduced to secondary protagonist status it was considered a great return to form for the series.

I'd like to note that the Japanese players (who actually buy and play Ace Attorney games; we aren't ever getting a proper AAI2 or DGS because Capcom doesn't think us Westerners are worth investing into with their spinoffs) really love Apollo and the overall cast from AA4, and the 4th game's bigger problem was weak cases and the fact that the 4th case is actually a reverse protagonist hijack as Apollo is reduced to a spectator in Phoenix's grand scheme; I'd argue it's Apollo who gets screwed over in his own debut, and not Phoenix.

[Triaxx]

I'm rather curious Warty, which mode did you play it in? Quasi-realtime (Continuous Turnbased), Squad Turn-based or Individual Turnbased? Playing in CTB exacerbates the issues, and ITB is... no. (Especially with the freaking obfuscated turn system.)

[LibraryOgre]

I'd go with FO 1, 2, NV because of the Black Isle-Obsidian lineage. Tactics and 3, 4, and 76 were developed by others.

One gaming trend that irks me: while I don't think it's frequent by now, FPS with limited numbers of saves for chapter. I understand the idea of strategically employing them and adding a complexity layer, but they actually just make you waste a lot of time replaying the same sections over and over.

This triggered one for me: Not being able to name my damn saves. What I am doing? Where am I going? What just happened? Nope, I get a location and a time.

Console-first design sucks.

[Drascin]

In a more extreme example, the attempt to reboot Devil May Cry failed because of things having nothing to do with its gameplay, which was good even if many would argue it wasn't up the standards set by the best games of the original series, but everything to do with it replacing the series' characters, settings, and writing with new versions that had little in common with what people liked about the original. And in similar fashion to Ace Attorney, the recent release of Devil May Cry 5, which returned to the original version of the series, was considered a triumphant return to form.

Hell, I would argue DmC's gameplay was probably better than average for Devil May Cry games! It just didn't matter because the story and characters were impossibly bad and it made the whole affair extremely joyless.

[Winthur]

Hell, I would argue DmC's gameplay was probably better than average for Devil May Cry games!

I agree, because the average implies we include DMC2.

[Traab]

This triggered one for me: Not being able to name my damn saves. What I am doing? Where am I going? What just happened? Nope, I get a location and a time.

Console-first design sucks.

Yeah thats a bit annoying. How hard would it be to let a person overwrite the title of the save file? A brief description so you can keep track of what unique thing you are doing in this one would help?

[GloatingSwine]

Wouldn't the first Fallout trilogy be 1, 2, and then Tactics?

Not really. Tactics doesn't pick up the narrative or thematic threads of the previous games in the way New Vegas does, because as a squad tactics game its goals were different.

So no matter what you think of it as a game, it doesn't extend a putative "Fallout trilogy".

[Ignimortis]

Hell, I would argue DmC's gameplay was probably better than average for Devil May Cry games! It just didn't matter because the story and characters were impossibly bad and it made the whole affair extremely joyless.

Only if you count 2 and maybe 1 into that average. 3 and 4 are far superior to DmC in all ways, despite the second half of 4 being a mirror of the first but with Dante. The only good thing about DmC was some more emphasis on parrying instead of Royal Guard-locked move...but everything else felt worse, the enemies were extremely uninspired ("hey we got humanoid dudes all around, and also some dogs that are the worst enemies because they have no windup for some moves"), and the upgrade system was half made of "more damage pls".

[Rynjin]

Yeah thats a bit annoying. How hard would it be to let a person overwrite the title of the save file? A brief description so you can keep track of what unique thing you are doing in this one would help?

Probably not super hard...but why is it necessary?

In older games, with rudimentary journals and whatnot, sure I can see the value. But in a modern game you have an entire menu dedicated to telling you what you've done and what you're currently doing, plus your own memory to fall back on to fill in the gaps. It's not a needed feature, and for every person that might be able to make use of it, there are 3 more that don't need it and get annoyed by it taking longer to save every time.

[Rodin]

Probably not super hard...but why is it necessary?

In older games, with rudimentary journals and whatnot, sure I can see the value. But in a modern game you have an entire menu dedicated to telling you what you've done and what you're currently doing, plus your own memory to fall back on to fill in the gaps. It's not a needed feature, and for every person that might be able to make use of it, there are 3 more that don't need it and get annoyed by it taking longer to save every time.

This is why I think all* games should have three save systems.

1) Normal save feature. I bring up the menu, hit save, it brings up date and time (which is actually extremely useful a lot of the time when you're deciding which save to go back to), but has the save name in a dialogue box I can overwrite if I so choose. This lets me separate out different playthroughs, or lets people separate out different profiles (if you are sharing a family computer, for example).

2) Quick save. I hit a button, it saves with date and time. At least 10 should be maintained at all times so I can go back to the specific point where it all started to go wrong.

3) Auto-save. Again, multiple autosaves are desirable. When you first enter an area, when you enter combat, when you complete a quest, etc. Enough to prevent losing anything if you forget to save. Once again, date and time is desirable here.


*except games which are deliberately restricting saves, like those with permadeath.