Removing Quicksave Raises The Stakes For Players (And Developers)
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A lack of quicksave raises the stakes for players, and developers.
Quicksaving has for decades been a go-to for PC gamers, whose index fingers are always hovering in the vicinity of that ‘F5’ key, ready to strike whenever we enter a situation where we either a) just got past an extremely difficult point that we didn’t want to repeat or b) wanted to do something stupid and experimental that would almost certainly lead to our deaths. Without quicksaving I would never have attempted to wipe out the entirely population of Nuka-World with a Big Boy in Fallout 4, or walked over lava in Skyrim, or attempted an audacious triple assassination on innocent civilians in Dishonored.
Quicksaving is both a safety blanket and an opportunity to momentarily break free from your ‘sensible’ or roleplaying approach to playing a game. ‘m fairly certain that the vast majority of videos we see where players mess with the AI in Oblivion to start townwide riots, or pull off incredible stunts in GTA V, wouldn’t exist without the quicksave.
In recent years, two parallel trends have been emerging. First, the quicksave has become more and more prevalent in console games, where previously it was the reserve of PC. It’s not quite as snappy as the single-button press on a keyboard, but many a pause screen or menu now pop up with a ‘quicksave’ button displayed in the corner.
But there’s also a growing number of games in which you’d normally expect to have a quicksave opting against it. Deathloop is a case in point. Arkane’s immersive sim is descended from the Dishonored series, and lends itself very naturally to a quicksave. Its encounter design is of the sort that you want to goof around with the multiple avenues of approach (or avoidance). Like in Dishonored, you have myriad powers at your disposal – from teleportation to mind control – and they’re all beckoning to be toyed with in the most destructive way possible.
But, as the name suggests, Deathloop has death designed into its narrative. The idea is that you, Colt Vahn, are stuck in a single-day time loop where the day resets once the clock strikes midnight, or once you die. To break the loop, you need to kill seven so-called Visionaries, who are spread all over the island, in the span of one day.
In a format inspired by the roguelike, when the loop restarts you carry certain abilities, weapons, and your ever-growing understanding of the level layouts and Visionaries over to the new loop. If you could just quickload upon death, it would defeat the point of the game, which relies on both a looping narrative and the ever-increasing suspense and stakes as you get closer to your goal.
Allow me to share with you a moment I captured in Deathloop that perfectly illustrates the high stakes and drama that result from a lack of a quicksave feature. But first, a little context: it’s the last part of the day, and I’ve killed all but one of the Visionaries. All I need to do is knock off that shithead Alexis Dorsey, and I unlock what’s pretty much the epilogue of the game. If I die, I have to restart the day, and go through killing the seven Visionaries all over again.
I creep into the building where Dorsey’s hosting a party, using the Aether slab to make myself invisible and sneak in unnoticed, then this happens…
My game was ‘invaded’ by another player controlling Julianna – a recurrent threat that can jump into your game to try and kill you once during each phase of the day. Like me, the player was also invisible, and despite our wispy purple outlines, they and I completely failed to spot each other as we entered that same room from opposite sides. I went through the next door towards my objective, not realising that this other player was right in front of me. After a moment of confusion when I failed to understand why I couldn’t walk through the doorway (it was blocked by the invisible player), my nemesis removed their invisibility cloak, and I reacted instantly to stab them in the back, removing the biggest obstacle standing between me and successful completion of the loop – and in turn the whole game.
It was an incredible moment of serendipity, as had I moved just a couple of seconds earlier then it’d have been me on the wrong end of the backstab, and I’d have lost a good couple of hours of progress. With a quicksave, my life or death in that moment really wouldn’t really have mattered. As it stands, it became a defining part of the game’s journey, perfectly capturing the high-stakes feeling that Arkane wanted to instil in people playing this game.
But stripping away the quicksave can be a double-edged sword. Another immersive sim, the indie game Cruelty Squad, also eschews the quicksave. Now, for the most part the lack of quicksave again has the effect of raising the stakes. The levels aren’t too long, and the game is designed around speedy restarts and learning enemy placements (not entirely unlike Hotline Miami).
However, Cruelty Squad has a few quirks that undermine its quicksave feature. The game has extremely punishing fall damage, which jars with its overall tone of being something of a psychedelic power trip. It’s no fun to kill your target, wipe out dozens of enemies in a level, only to explode into giblets because you jumped over the edge of an escalator and dropped about 15 feet.
In another design hiccup, at one point I fell into a trap that I couldn’t have predicted the first time I encountered it, which left me stuck at the bottom of a pit and unable to escape. I had to restart the level, and this was one of the longer and more confusing levels in the game. These are small flaws, but they’re compounded without the quicksave because you’re stuck with the consequences of those flaws. The quicksave is not only a ‘Get out of jail free’ card for the player, but for the developer also. Make no mistake, Cruelty Squad is briliant in its own way, but it doesn’t quite feel refined enough to not have a quicksave.
To omit a quicksave from a game is making a statement – it’s siding with challenge and suspense over playfulness and experimentation. It also requires extreme care from the developer. While seasoned studios like Arkane and Soulsborne masterminds From Software know how to build a lack of quicksave into the very fabric of the game – making it a meaningful part of its philosophy and themes – devs need to be careful when they decide to strip such a fundamental power from the player’s fingertips.
