So, I just lost at least an hour and a half of my time spent on Fallout: New Vegas due to user error having to do with automatic saving. How is this still an issue, after all of these years? Since the dawn of the RPG, and even back to the simplest Point-and-Click games, the general rule is save early and save often. Now, most games have an auto save feature that has almost completely taken the game saves out of the players hands.
The problem comes when there is some sort of glitch immediately after an auto-save or save point. These glitches are somewhat rare, but I have encountered two within the last few weeks. The first was on Dead Space 2 and occurred immediately following the switch from Disc 1 to Disc 2. There was some schmutz on the disc or something, and the game froze and refused to continue, forcing me to shut down the system and start from the last save point…which was of course before the disc switch. It was a bit annoying, but all in all I only lost about 10 minutes of game play.
The more recent event, which happened on Fallout: New Vegas, as I mentioned, happened within The Caesar’s encampment. The quest is to go meet with The Caesar, so I meet with his lackey and get rafted to his encampment. I walk straight through the first few areas of the camp, completely unhindered by any of Caesar’s people. I get to the area that has The Caesar’s actual tent…and the entire camp draws weapons on me and smites me almost instantaneously. I mean, there are guns, knives, fists, and even dogs. There is no two ways about it…I am completely screwed. Unfortunately, the auto save puts me in the same freaking spot, and the last time I actually saved a game physically was about an hour and a half earlier in game time.
Totally lame.
To me, this seems like a fairly easy fix. I mean, Fallout: New Vegas can hold like a hundred save spots, but only if the player physically saves the game. Why not allot some of these save spots to hold your last 10 or 20 auto-saves? Can someone answer this?
-Matty out