Sunday, June 23, 2024
Recording Your Progress
Almost
every game has some form of system by which the player can save their
progress since a developer cannot expect them to complete the title
in one sitting. How this manifests varies wildly from the freedom to
save as many times as the player wants to a
single save slot only available at designated intervals to an autosave system out of
the player’s hands. Yet people do not often consider how this
pervasive element of game design shapes the titles it is a part of
and visual novels are particularly influenced by this factor due to
their longer length and choice based nature. The structure of the
visual novel has to be considered when choosing a type of save system
as the aim here is to prevent the frustration of having the replay
content while still shaping how people engage with the game. It is
this tension which makes this such an important element to consider
within the overall theming and presentation of a visual novel. Let’s
save our progress and examine the ways save systems change the
foundations of a game.
Freely Save
By
far the most common type of save system chosen for visual novels is
the save anywhere and at anytime style with no restrictions. The
reason for its popularity stems from the convenience it offers the
player as it lets them dictate their own play experience around the
time they have available. Player control is at the core of
this type of save system and this philosophy is generally extended to
the rest of the game through a variety of choices for the player to
explore. Due to the prevalence in the medium this save system has
become what player’s expect from visual novels and the majority of
them adhere to this preconception since it has a high degree of
utility for them. As a genre slice of life and romance visual novels
are the prime example of this trend, such as title like Aokana or Riddle Joker.
This is due to their flexible structure stemming from the way each
route acts in a self-contained fashion and few of them use negative
outcomes to their choices, which means they do not care if what order
the player engages with their content.
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| It is hard to feel pressured when I know I can just reload a save |
There are several noticeable
drawbacks to this approach to saving with a prominent one being the
inadvertent endorsing of save scumming. In many games player’s will
reload a previous save if they are not happy with an outcome, be that
a choice or a suboptimal battle, and visual novels suffer from this
more than most due to this ability to save and load from any part of
them game. As such player’s have little incentive to accept the
consequences of their actions and continue down the path to its end
and they will instead reload and pick the optimum option which undermines any
sense of tension and weight the choices might have possessed. Fate
Stay Night acutely suffers for weakness since it has a large amount
of bad ending which help provide tension to the narrative, but they
are weakened by the player’s ability to instantly load the previous
choice the moment they realise they made the wrong one. On top of
this being able to save anywhere makes it difficult to shape the
pacing of the game since a player might decided partway through a
route that they want to experience another route now and leave the
first route behind to return later. This means the developer has no
idea what the player might be doing at any point in time and has to
assume they are following along in a linear fashion which is often
not what they are doing. Enforced route order is one way developers
have to regain some control, but it comes at the cost of the feeling
of player freedom, which is what a lot of games with overarching
plots, like Wonderful Everyday and Ever 17, have chosen as their
solution.
Autosave Only
On
the opposite end of the spectrum there are visual novels which forgo
any form of manual save system and instead take this function out of
the player’s hands entirely through autosaves. This is where the
game will save of its own accord at intervals set by the developer
and the player is forced to wait for them if they want to preserve
their progress. From this system a power dynamic favouring the
developer’s intended pacing and interaction appears in
which the player is funnelled into specific lengths of play section.
A risk exists in this approach that the player might lose interest in
the title or become frustrated in this restrictive autosaving due to
them feeling as if their limited time is not being respected. The
result of this need to balance the desires of the two side has led to
this style of save system being limited to games which are either
forced into it by technical limitations or those possessing a
segmented structure where saves are frequent. As evident from these
two extremes, autosaves are not a popular method in visual novels as
player agency holds a great importance in the mind of developers.
However, when they do appear they allow for some no standard
narrative structures and mechanical elements not normal found in the
medium.
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| VR titles offer an interesting angle on the medium |
On the one hand take ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos, a VR visual
novel, where the nature of its chosen platform demands the inclusion
of an autosave system. Navigating menus in VR is awkward at the best
of times and so asking the player to constantly be moving in and out
of them to save their game would not be conducive to a pleasant
experience. As such the autosave ensures the player's focus can be on
immersing themselves in the events in front of them, which is VR’s
greatest strength, rather than constantly reminding them that they
are standing in the middle of their living room with a pair of TV’s
strapped to their face. On the opposite end we find games like 428:
Shibuya Scramble, where the title is constructed on lots of distinct
smaller sections for easy and frequent autosaving points. These saves
are often enough for the player to be able to have their desired
length of play section without the developer losing control of the
game’s pacing since they determine through the length and content of each
section. It also helps that the game leans into this modular nature in its structure with it expecting the player to jump around
between scenes and perspectives and this makes the autosaving feel
natural due to the convenience it offers by allowing for this
distinctive method of traversing the narrative.
Single Save Slot
In
between the extremes of the free save and the autosave sit save
systems where the player is provided with only one slot to save in
and must choose to override the previous save in order to preserve
their progress. Presenting the player with saves as limited resources
where they have to trade one for another creates a scarcity dynamic
which encourages saves to be seen a valuable. This creates some
interesting behaviours during play with some players saving at every
opportunity presented to them while others may choose to see how far
they can get without saving as a sort of challenge. It is difficult
for a developer to control what kind of reaction they get out of a
player since there is still an important element of control in the
player’s hands. As such this style of save system is not common in
modern visual novels for exactly this reason and is instead a
historical relic present in older titles due to hardware storage
limitations.
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| Ah the past, limitations and all |
Take visual novels on the DS as an example, the majority
of these employ a single save slot system since the DS cartridges had
extremely limited space available on them. We can see this in the DS
era Ace Attorney games where the structure of the title gives
specific narrative pauses for the saves to occur in and also it has a
linear progression so the player does not feel as if they might need
an old save to redo a choice. The remasters add a standard multi save
system, but it feels odd when put alongside the game’s structure as
it is clear that this a later addition due to how unnecessary it
feels to use more than one save slot. Linearity and designated save
intervals were common features among DS visual novels and resulted in
them having a somewhat similar overall feel to them.
Conclusion
Saving
progress is a key system for both players and developers and this is
especially true for visual novels due to how influenced they are by
even the smallest change in their structure. The most common type of
save system employed in visual novels is in the save anywhere kind
due to the convenience it offers the player, but at the same time is
can make controlling the pacing and overall experience difficult. An
autosave system on the other hand give the developer the ability to
precisely dictate how the visual novel should be played at the cost
of potentially alienating players who only have limited time. Between
them sits the single save slot system which gives saves a feeling of
scarcity and encourages the player to consider the importance of when
to save. Each type offers something different for a visual novel
developer and they are worth considering as you design your own
titles.
