Kinda feels like déjà vu, doesn’t it? In autumn, Returnal, a PlayStation 5 time loop game about killing your way to salvation, vexed players with its lack of manual saves. This week, Deathloop, a PS5 and PC time loop game about killing your way to salvation, is doing the same.
Deathloop, the latest immersive sim from Arkane, the makers of Dishonored, casts you as an arcane assassin in the thin-lapeled 1960s. You wake up on an island that cares not about the rules of time; at the end of every day, that day starts over, like that one movie starring Bill Murray. It attracted eight megalomaniacal “visionaries,” who flock to the island to partake in one eternal, ageless, kickass party. Your goal is to eliminate all eight in one single “loop” in an effort to break the cycle. (This, I do not understand. A never-ending party sounds awesome!)
Because of its looped structure, there’s an autosave function, but I understand that it’s fairly sparse, with checkpoints only coming when you complete specific actions or cross the threshold into new areas. It’s an intentional design choice, one meant to prevent players from messing something up, reloading their most recent save, and trying a segment over again. Arkane wants Deathloop players to liveloop with the consequences of their actions — mistakes or not.
“We always say our games are better when you go with the flow, when you roll with your mistakes and improvise solutions to those problems,” Arkane’s Dinga Bakaba told PC Gamer.
I haven’t played Deathloop yet (thanks, Bethesda), so I can’t personally attest to how frustrating or not frustrating the lack of a save system is, but it’s safe to say that some players aren’t taking so kindly to it.
“This save system blows,” one person wrote on Reddit, expressing frustration that there’s no apparent way to save after 40 minutes (or more) of play time. Others echoed the sentiment, saying that, thanks to the lack of manual save, Deathloop is effectively unplayable if you can only set aside 15-minute increments. And that lack of time is definitely a reality for many players, particularly parents and those with frenetic schedules.
Read More: Returnal’s Lack Of A Save Feature Is Ruining Players’ Runs
As it stands, the system has its defenders, with some folks saying a sparse save system makes Deathloop more fun. Our gaming press corps colleagues at TheGamer and PC Gamer defended Deathloop’s structure, noting that an absence of manual saves ramps up the stakes, heightens the tension, and really puts the immersive in “immersive sim.”
Those are fair points! But also, if you don’t want to use a quick-save function, you could just…not use it.
It’s worth noting, too, that Deathloop’s save function sins are not quite as egregious as Returnal’s. Runs in Returnal could easily last several hours. (In May, following widespread backlash, Returnal dev Housemarque told Axios it heard player concerns and was looking into a solution.) With Deathloop, meanwhile, there are at least autosaves within each cycle.
Kotaku reached out to Bethesda for comment but didn’t hear back in time for publication.
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