Hi all,

So this will be my first Fallout game, and I'm curious how saves have worked. (Obviously, nobody's played 4 yet, so I'm assuming the mechanics will be similar to Fallout 3/NV - of course, there could be modifications this time out, but let's assume for now it works similar to 3 [unless someone's heard otherwise]).

Can you manually save anywhere, or only in certain spots (ie. Alien: Isolation)? Can you keep multiple save files and rotate them?

Also, does it autosave, and if so, does it keep more than one autosave, or is there only one? If you, say, mess up a fight or conversation, can you jump back to just before that happened if you don't have a manual save?

Just curious - thanks. =)

I'm guessing they will be identical to Skyrim's save system. That's just a guess though. What I would *like* is separate save files per character, similar to the way Mass Effect did it.

I would honestly take a bullet for whoever thought up the 3 save game files system in Skyrim. I can't count the number of times that something corrupted my main file going through a door and I had to fall all the way back to the 2nd or 3rd file to keep from having to restart the game.

I agree, Skyrim's save system was the best Bethesda has done so far. It has helped me out of jams a number of times.

In all of Bethesda's open world games you can save anywhere, anytime. Skyrim had an autosave system where it cycled through three saves, and you could adjust what would cause an autosave (changing cells, fast travel, open inventory, etc). It's very likely Fallout 4's save system will be similar.

Bethesda games are the save anywhere at any time model, not the find a save station or wait till you've completed a mission point model.

Thanks for the feedback. That 3 save system sounds great - I hope that's in. I'm assuming manual saves are additional to those?

Yes, with an additional slot for quick saves on PC.

you just save the game anytime you want there's also auto saves in addition to manual saves

Yep, you can save anywhere and as much as you want. So, if you feel like jumping your character off a roof to vent your frustrations you can save, jump, reload and do it again.

I (as much as many others) are hoping for a separate character save file system as well.

Let me just tell you something right now, keep a rotation of at least seven manual saves. And save often. That will save you so many headaches when you get stopped in the tracks by a bug - a bug that most likely disappears if you reload an older save and try again. That's just good practice for Bethesda games in general.

Money is on it being like Skyrims, with the Three Auto Save system...which is useful, as you...just never know.

I personally keep one Prime Save, and two-three backup saves.

I always make a save game as soon as the game LETS me, and then ~never~ touch that savegame. I can always start a "new" game at that point (usually before you finalize your character, so you can change name/appearance/stats and so on).

After that sacred un-touchable save, I'll usually make saves before important junctions in the story, although I almost never go BACK to them, if I am honest with myself --- going that far back in the story, I always forget what I did, when, and in which "iteration" of the game. But by the same token, it is nice to have a few "old" backups in case something drastic happens to the two or three "live" saves that you cycle among. The Autosaves are just gravy, pretty much only used when something bugs out or if, eg, I get stuck at the bottom of a vault and can't find my way out I can just say "Screw it" and reload the save before I entered.

The savegames usually have a picture taken when you make the save, and the date/time stamp but unless you manually do a /savegame command from the Console, I think it just labels them numerically (Save 004 and so on), with the zone you're in, perhaps. I much prefer being able to name our own games (without using console commands) so that I can name a savegame as, "Pre-settlement-start" so that I know I can roll back to that point if I start building my settlement and get screwed up and mis-managed and just want to start a clean slate without the wasted resources I spent while tinkering. If I have to remember that Save 034 was the savegame that I need to load, it would be harder to do.

Skyrim did this for us! Unfortunately it didn't let us tweak stuff before we exited out of the cave under Helgen. Hopefully F4 will give us one last chance to edit our character so we don't have to play through the whole intro or pay the "Face Butcher" 1,000 caps to tweak our nose a little.

I just don't overwrite old saved games; it's not like modern hard drives need to be concerned with saving space. I've never bothered cleaning up old stuff on my hard drive and after two years (and the accumulated data of a dozen years prior to that) I still have 380 gigabytes free on my data drive.

EDIT: My Fallout New Vegas saves folder has 290 files in it and is 1.5 gigabytes after 300-some hours of play time. My Skyrim save folders (I created a backup of my original save folder after starting a new game) have 250 files and 2.5 gigabytes of data after another 300-some hours of play time.

I'd need to play for another order of magnitude - or create a new hard save every six minutes - in order to start actually noticing the amount of data that's being taken up by saved games.

They don't, but I like to keep as few saves as possible for organization purposes, in case I need to backtrack for whatever reason.

What a wonderful idea. Considering I always delete my save files after I'm done with a character, I won't have any problem with space.

Great tips/feedback all - thanks =)

Doesn't it take forever for the game to save (or for the save/load menus to come up) if your folder has hundreds of save files in it?

I learned after FO3 that the best tactic for me on saving was to keep about 10 save files, and then just right over the older files. Generally I made the saves after I completed a sizable quest, whether it was story or side quest, so that if I discovered I'd missed something down the road that I should have done I could go back and clean house.

Nope. The number of files doesn't impact that at all after you fill up the amount that it looks up when you open the save/load menu (which is only around ten).

I'm actually hoping they add a 4th and 5th as well. With Skyrim I lost tons of hours because all three of my autosaves had some kind of issue. I'd have instances where one two of them would be auto-death saves by falling through the map and then bam! 3rd save corrupted. The sad thing is that I manual save a lot too.

The amount of issues I had with Fallout 3 and New Vegas were almost nonexistent though aside from all of my 360 save data getting corrupted for Fallout 3 on a huge playthrough (to be fair I hadn't played in weeks though).

On topic: I would expect a Skyrim save system. They aren't going to just throw away that kind of cushion and they sure as hell aren't going to say "hey let's just get rid of manual saves altogether and make an one autosave playthrough!"

A profiles saving system would be a good change.

That said, I would enjoy a Dark Souls saving system. No save/loading headache. When you "die" you could find yourself unconscious in a hospital or somewhere a few days later with some kind of a penalty.

Bethesda really does one of the best save file systems in the business. I was recently playing the DLC from BioShock Infinite, and I had forgotten how terrible the save system was in that game. Autosave only, only a single playthrough can be going on at a time, and no way to force a save so you can shut it down without losing progress--you just have to push forward until you see the save symbol appear.

I hate fixed-location save stations, and I really hate autosave only. Having an autosave system in the game is great, provided that it's in addition to the ability to manually save when and where I want.

To be brutally honest on this issue, the ONLY people that will claim Skyrim's save system was "great" were those that suffered thru prior games save systems. Bethesda's games save systems have always been extremely open and flexible but the fact that the world is so open and subject to script trigger issues, modding issues and NPC scripting that all lead to inevitable save game issues.

I doubt anyone has ever played a Bethesda game and not run into some instance of a save causing some potential game breaking issue that required them tor revert to an earlier save.

That being said, the only absolute thing I can say about Bethesda save games is:

SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE (don't overwrite old saves) and SAVE (did you SAVE recently?).