Well it’s about damn time. Yep, indie RPG Shadowrun Returns’ new expansion will be adding a save-anywhere function to both the original and the new Berlin campaigns, as per the latest announcement on the game’s Kickstarter.
We were fairly annoyed at the game for not having a quicksave feature, so of course, this is excellent news. Look at this piece of announcement. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ll see today.
Save Anywhere: You can save your progress at any time during the game. This functionality will also be added to the original Shadowrun Returns “Dead Man’s Switch” campaign.
There are other goodies packed into the expansion, of course, which Harebrained Schemes is calling Dragonfall: a full-length campaign which takes place in Berlin, plenty of new content like new enemies, weapons, and cyberware and enhancements for the campaign editor, including scripting capabilities.
Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall arrives on PC (Windows, Mac and Linux) in January 2014.
Dragonfall [Shadowrun’s Kickstarter]
Comments
12 responses to “Shadowrun’s Berlin Expansion Lands In January, Adds… Quicksaves?!”
I may be in the vast minority here, but why?
Where’s the challenge if I can hit a quick F5 before any encounter and simply reload on the spot if it doesnt go too well?
Strategic saving and preparation should be a part of the game, none of the Final Fantasy’s suffered from a lack of a “save anywhere” function, and neither did the original Shadowrun
its an interesting one, i have finished shadowrun returns and found it fine without the “quicksave” but in saying that i am an old hand at tactical turned based games are they are pretty much my favorite sort of game and i have played pretty much anyone i can find.
So while it wasn’t a problem for me, i can see in some of the longer missions why it may have been infuriating to others, but there is an issue that it does make it substantially easier, don’t like an attack roll, reload ….. and so on.
My real issue here is there is no middle ground, it seems like this one change dramatically changes the difficulty for the player as you can effectively remove the random nature of all dice roll based outcomes, simply by reloading after each unsuccessful roll, it would be nice if there was a something that was in between, maybe something like more checkpoints mid mission instead of quicksave, but still this can end up being very similar to quicksave if the check points are too close, so i’m really not sure about what that middle step could be.
Middleground realistically would just be more checkpoints throughout the missions as you said, I’d be perfectly ok with this. It can indeed be like the quicksave but maybe if something like a penalty was put in if you chose to use it, a cash penalty maybe or something?
You don’t have to use it, but F5 does allow me to choose when I end a session (and by choose, get off immediately to go deal with my responsibilities). Regardless, FF had save points, so you could at least rejig your characters and save. The stupid autosave system made me pack the game in after I spent 20 minutes rejigging my characters, died, and then had to rejig them again. Tedious.
Because challenge is subjective. I don’t believe mere loss of time increases challenge. The game does that. If there’s no challenge because of the save system, then that game wasn’t challenging enough to begun with. An arbitrary loss of time and forced repetition does not add challenge. Furthermore, games aren’t just a sport to me. Challenge plays its part but i’ve no interest in proving myself to a game if the experience isn’t rewarding on a deeper level than mere challenge. Challenge is about 10% of the experience for me.
That being said, Shadowrun Returns is pretty easy and i never once ran into a saving issue with the game, it was actually ages until i realised there was a checkpoint system.
It depends on what caused that lost time
If it was caused by bad decisions, then absolutely it adds to the challenge
If the ability to save instantly before any encounter of meaning allows the player to make as many stupid decisions with no consequence, then the very challenge of the game has been lessened
If the lost time is due to poorly spaced checkpoints, then I agree with you
@wizz-fizz. I was playing on iPad and I went 45 mins without an auto save and I had to leave. When I came back all of my progress was lost. So I would have had to re-do several conversations, hunt around for all the items, do the combat sections again. Not to mention the iPad version occasionally crashes, losing massive chunks of progress. That’s a flaw.
And believe me. I love a challenge in games, but not one that is caused by circumstances I can’t prevent.
iTunes actually refunded me the $10.49 for the game. I didn’t want a refund, would have preferred to play it and enjoy it cause I love Shadowrun.
I had already finished it on PC with no stability problems, so i never bought the tablet version, but you do raise a good point, i certainly have had most tablet/phone apps crash on me at one point or another.
Oh I’m not saying that the current system doesn’t have its flaws, far from it
I, like @periphia believe that there must be some sort of “middle ground” that can be implemented instead of a save anywhere, anytime system.
Perhaps the introduction of some extra save points that will eliminate the possibility of lost progress due to time, but not so easy as to undo the challenge
45min without a save point is ridiculous
I imagine on the PC it wouldn’t be a problem at all since it’s a million times more stable and you can have it running all day while in sleep mode. It just didn’t translate to a mobile experience where I hoped I could enjoy 10-15 minute chunks when I didn’t have time to play for an hour or so.
You’re preaching to the choir though when it comes to the purity of these kinds of games. My typical mode of operation with a game like Skyrim is to crank it to the max difficulty straight away and never use a guide or reload a save to make a different decision. I enjoy it when I accidentally make an enemy or wrong choice, I enjoy it when my arrow accidentally hits a friendly and they turn against me, it’s part of the experience and narrative. I think it comes from my days long ago as a D&D Dungeon Master. Two pillars of role playing is the idea of the unknown and consequences. When you make a bad choice in D&D it feels pure and entertaining and it makes you think carefully about your actions and it makes great stories to tell afterwards. And without constant reloading, enemy encounters feel so much more scary, like there’s genuinely more at stake. That’s how I game too. When you can google anything or reload a save you completely hamstring the sandbox’s ability to properly immerse you. You end up with God like omniscience.
BUT, some people like that. I have a friend who plays Skyrim on the easiest mode and cheeses everything, and he adores it and has the time of his life.
I say why not let people play how they want? Put quick saving in for the folks who like to cheese the game. People like us will still play it pure. Everybody wins. Or, have a mode for both and call the one without quicksaves “true shadworunner mode” and the other “baby’s first RPG”. I will always choose to play the purist way possible anyhow.
Also, I like how the Ironman mode worked in X-Com, that was a great example of eliminating the save/reload exploit by saving after every single thing you did. I wonder if that would have worked in Shadowrun too?
Great ideas!
I too as a 2nd Ed AD&D DM, I think that’s where my sense of challenge stems from too.
Perhaps we could extrapolate the save feature and tie it to a difficulty level.
Easy = Save where and when you like
Med = Reasonably scattered manual save points
Hard = Minimal save points
Ahhhh, another fellow 2nd Editioner. I came back a few years ago and played with 3 or 3.5 edition, I forget. And I found it a lot more enjoyable than any other tabletop game I’ve played. Screw that bloody THACO!
I think growing up playing D&D and playing NES games like Battletoads, TMNT and Punchout made me into a massive difficulty nerd. I absolutely love games that thrash me and chew me up and spit me out but I’m in the minority. Gaming nowadays, by default, is more about welcoming people (which is a good thing in my mind) instead of destroying them. So I always appreciate it when a dev puts in hardcore-style modes like that. I think the best course of action is to offer as many options and ways of playing as possible.
But, I also understand why devs like Hairbrain take away options. Because they want you to experience the game a certain way, because they know most people will take the easy road if given the choice.
The trade off with the way SRR saves currently is that you can’t play the game unless you can complete a whole mission section in one sitting. Which makes it annoying to play on mobile devices, because generally as soon as the app isn’t running in the foreground it resets progress back to the start of the mission.
More frequent checkpoint saves could be a solution to that, but I’ll take quicksaves (and resist the temptation to reload) over the current system any day.