In a world where each passing day seems to bring some new revelation about how rickety the support structures underlying our lives are, I’m not certain of much anymore. I can, however, say one thing with absolute conviction: I’ll die before I delete Undertale from my PC.
In this age of Steam accounts and cloud saves, uninstalling games from our hard drives should be no big deal. At the press of a button, we can have it all back in pristine condition, without so much as a moral-alignment-shifting decision out of place. There are some games, though, that I and Kotaku staffers just can’t stand to leave behind — not even temporarily. Such as…
Undertale
I got the true pacifist ending in this mega-hit indie RPG and have no desire to upend that. All my weird virtual friends are so happy, and the game even guilts me about it if I try to reset. Deleting the whole game, by Undertale‘s logic, would be akin to destroying the whole damn world. And for what? To free up a couple hundred megabytes of hard drive space? That’s messed up, man. I’ll just delete the new Assassin’s Creed again.
Pyre
Due to Pyre‘s open-ended narrative structure, every player’s relationship with its huge cast of impressively fleshed-out characters is a little different. Despite a few disastrous decisions, I really liked how my story ended and – sort of like with Undertale – I want to keep everybody in a state of joyful stasis. The revolution succeeded, and my favourite characters found love, friendship, and camaraderie. There might be trouble ahead (after all, Pyre‘s central conflict arose in the aftermath of a different well-intentioned revolution), but for now, my ragtag fantasy road trip family is on top of the world.
The Witcher 3
For me personally, this is partially practical – I never don’t want to replay The Witcher 3, after all – but Kotaku‘s own Luke Plunkett put it best: “Geralt lives forever.”
XCOM 2
For me, alien-splattering turn-based strategy XCOM 2 is just one game among many that I’ve promised myself I’ll eventually get around to replaying with a crap-ton of mods installed. (Spoiler: that rarely ever happens.) Also, my squad survived so many ridiculously unlucky twists of fate. How can I consign them to the fires of eternal digital permadeath now?
Deus Ex
Heather Alexandra keeps the original Deus Ex around because, quite simply, it’s one of the best games of all time. “Deus Ex is one of the smartest-designed games I’ve ever played and it also has one of the best mods – The Nameless Mod,” a massive single-player Deus Ex mod that took over seven years to develop, she said. “I revisited both a few years back and have never found it in me to delete because I always feel like I should go back and really dive into them. But that’s just a time investment I can’t make.”
Star Wars: TIE Fighter
Luke Plunkett says he’s been transferring a single save from this space flight simulator game “to every PC I’ve owned since 1995.” I can’t wait to be outlived by Luke’s video game save.
Persona 3
Gita Jackson’s PSP barely even works anymore, but she’ll never delete 100 per cent accurate hip Japanese teen adventure Persona 3. “I have a save file on my PSP that doesn’t keep a charge anymore,” she said. “It’s right before the final boss, and I refuse to delete it, but also refuse to open it again.”
Spec Ops: The Line
Riley MacLeod keeps subversive war shooter Spec Ops: The Line around as a memento from a tough time. “I played it during Hurricane Sandy and it was really impactful to me — besides the obvious subject matter, a game never felt like that to me before. I didn’t know they could do something like that. So I always want to keep it around to remember that.”
P.T.
Kirk Hamilton keeps P.T., the now-delisted “playable teaser” for Hideo Kojima’s now-canceled Silent Hills, around for the most fitting reason possible: irrational fear. “I also will probably keep P.T. on my PlayStation 4 forever,” he said. “I know there’s a workaround to re-download it even though they took it off the store, but I figure, why test it?”
Comments
23 responses to “Nine Games We’ll Never Uninstall”
No surprise, considering it takes 18 months to finish the tutorial.
X-P
And 3000 hours to download all the updates
I think I’ve spent 100hrs in Velen too.
Geralt died in my playthrough because I’m a Shit Dad (I didn’t even realize there were multiple endings and stuff until after I finished) so the game is definitely uninstalled and I don’t particularly ever feel like going back to it. Didn’t even play the expansions despite owning them because it just didn’t make sense to me with the finality of the ending I got.
He doesn’t actually die, that ending is intentionally left open for the possibility of him surviving, thus the expansions.
Mission Log:
“
Geralt found the last Crone in the swamp village and killed her. He reached down to her stiffening corpse and removed Vesemir’s medallion, the one Ciri had kept what seemed like an eternity ago. This would be a memento of his two lost friends. What happened then, you ask? That, my dear reader, is another story altogether.”Implication was that he dies. I don’t care if that’s what *actually* happened or not, that’s what I got out of it.
Fair enough, I just mean you could still play the expansions without feeling like it makes your ending not have happened. Also the first expansion iirc was based before the ending of the main story.
after like 7+ hrs of download? lol
I delete things I don’t have intention of revisiting after I’m done (like Homefront 2) but for the most part i just keep buying bigger HDD heh
is it me or is Kotaku AU fading away?
And Gizmodo AU too.
Has Giz canned comments?
Seems stupid if they have. Giz US is perfectly fine with them..
Yep, comments has been canned. No explanation was given.
Kotaku and Gizmodo is not what it once was.
Ah. Not just me then.
Alex is on holidays, so I guess it’s just Adam as far as daily contributors go, right now.
Luke Plunkett says he’s been transferring a single save from this space flight simulator game “to every PC I’ve owned since 1995.” I can’t wait to be outlived by Luke’s video game save.
Fair enough too.
I’ve been thinking about replaying TIE Fighter for about 8 months now… I really must look into getting it, and some HD patches running on Windows 10.
I should do the same for the MechWarrior games too frankly.
The only PC games I keep installed are my favourite free steam games. If i delete them, the get removed from my library, so they stay.
I’ll never uninstall the Scott Pilgrim vs the World game on my Playstation 3, either.
It’s mandatory for all computers I own to have whichever version of Civilization is current at the time to be installed on them. Even if I never play it.
Mass effect trilogy.
There is never a point in my life where I don’t feel like doing another playthrough, even when I have just finished one.
Not particularly replayable games.
Most of these are the types I download, play-through, finish and uninstall.
More likely to keep “never ending” games installed like Path of Exile, WoW, Warframe, Overwatch, Fortnite, PUBG, CS:GO, Borderlands 2, Binding of Isaac etc.
Alternatively, a single player game which isn’t too story heavy. Something I can just into and just blast sh_t for a bit (Doom, Warhammer: Space Marine, Dying Light).
And then there’s The Elder Scrolls. The single series which draws me back every time I “quit” gaming for a couple monrths. “Maybe it would be fun to just play Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowing again with some crazy mods”.
Before I know it a couple weeks have passed and my HDD is packed to the gills with newly downloaded games.
Kirk, regarding PT redownload method tested and confirmed… lost my original when i swapped hdd’s and all my data was corrupt when i tried to restore it to the new drive.
Mine is Monopoly Tycoon, cause I can’t find the original disc and I can’t find where I can redownload it online (for a price, like GOG)
P.T. fir me too. Too scared to play, too scared to uninstall.
LFD2, TTD, Minecraft – to name a few of my go toos