Lost hours of game progress because of the stupid save system

[Prelle]

The save system in this game is atrocious and sorely in need of patching to fix it. For those fortunate enough not to have played the game, they give you exactly one (1) "quick save" slot that you control, and separately autosave the game every few minutes and call it a "checkpoint" save. That's it. You cannot create and keep any further saves. This means if you forget to manually save for a while and the checkpoint save triggers in a place you can't get out of, you're ****ed. Your only choice is to reload the manual save or restart the chapter. Either way you're probably going to lose a whole lot of progress.

Thanks to this stupid system, I'm now faced with the dilemma of restarting the chapter or just uninstalling the game and hoping I can get my money back from the Epic store (fat chance). You might thing restarting the chapter wouldn't be that bad, but apparently to these idiots, it's okay for a chapter to be 10+ hours long.

For those interested in the details of my sad tale, read on. (Warning: Minor early plot spoilers ahead)

I proceeded through the game normally until reaching the train terminal where you're supposed to find a train car. After much trial and error, I figured out where you're supposed to get out of the rowboat (this is not obvious at all). Then I remembered to save the game. After killing some mutants and pulling the first lever, rotating part of the ... track? (I still don't know what those things are for), I proceeded to cross a rickety bridge, which triggered a cutscene of the giant water beast in the area collapsing the bridge, me falling into water and pulling myself out on the other side of the terminal, where I could proceed to wander around killing more mutants. So far, so good.

It's once I reached the place where you set a trap to kill the water beast that things started not going my way. I succeeded in killing the beast, then continued through the door there into what appeared to be some sort of graveyard. I wandered around a bit, listened to a tape, found a night-vision upgrade and a door I couldn't figure out how to open. Stumped, I retraced my steps back to the trap area and saw that I had missed a lever there. Pulling it rotated a second section of ... um.... track into position, so I went up to the platform to investigate.

Here I found a traincar which I couldn't find a way to access, and in front of it a dead end with piles of debris. Not knowing where to go, I jumped down to the left of the train car, on a small ledge next to the water and the dead sea creature where some spike traps had been set up. Helpfully, the game then chose to autosave right after I jumped down.

Unfortunately, there was nothing in this area and, having realized this is not where I was meant to go, I turned around and attempted to get back up on the train platform. Um... yeah. You can't. Normally, when jumping toward a low ledge like that, your character will pull himself up, but apparently they hadn't planned on anybody falling down here, so there's no place to jump that will trigger this action. I tried several locations and determined it was impossible to get back up. So, I figured I'd try the water since the giant sea creature was dead. Bad idea. Jumping in the water triggered a cutscene in which the smaller creatures ate me and I died. I was presented with two choices: Load the checkpoint save from which I could not proceed, or load my earlier autosave which was 50+ minutes old by this point.

Screw that.

After Googling to see if anybody had discovered a "noclip" cheat which might allow me to get back up where I was supposed to be, I decided to try reloading the checkpoint and exploring every possible option for getting off that stupid ledge safely. After several failed attempts in which the mutant lobsters became very well fed off my carcass, I finally figured out I could run and jump toward the area where I first landed the rowboat, and just barely make it over the water to safety.

"Success!" I cried, gleefully hitting the quicksave button to ensure that I would not have to face that stupid ledge anymore. If only I had known the trouble I had just caused myself. You see, I had arrived at the first half of the terminal again, before the bridge which gets broken and triggers a cutscene where my character swims himself to the second half of the terminal. What this means is that I can play through the earlier section until reaching the now broken bridge, but once there I am completely stuck. I obviously can't cross the bridge since it's completely destroyed for about 20 feet, and jumping off into the water results in one of two outcomes: A cutscene showing my character pulling himself back to safety near the boat landing (at the start of the terminal again), or the familiar scene of me being eaten by crab people. Either way, it is impossible to proceed and, naturally, both my quicksave and checkpoint save are within this broken area of the game.

So, my only choice now is to restart the chapter, which is several HOURS behind my current position. In brief, to get back to the area of the game where I'm stuck, I would need to:

1. Watch the cutscene of the train engineer crashing into the bridge trap and getting stuck.
2. Accompany Ana to the village where the anti-technology cultists are.
3. Rescue the woman and her child who are held captive there.
4. Escape and make my way back to the engine.
5. Listen to some conversations about a mechanic who lives in the area.
6. Travel a fair distance through monster-infested areas to reach the crane where the mechanic has taken up residence.
7. Listen to the mechanic describe the surrounding area.
8. Zipline my way off the crane.
9. Listen to the radio chatter about how Ana has wandered off and now I have to find her.
10. Travel another fair distance back to the radio tower and the pit which she has fallen into.
11. Watch the cutscene of our hero putting on her gas mask.
12. Explore the bunker, killing dozens of mutants, reactivating the electrical system and opening the external door.
13. Watch the scene of our fellow compatriots coming in to "rescue" us. (Gotta love how useful NPC's are, huh?)
14. Make my way back to the train.
15. Pick up some new weaponry.
16. Convince the big boss to let me go find some stupid passenger car so some stupid woman and her child can move in.
17. Listen to said child's whining about some teddy bear.
18. Listen to everyone else's whining about stuff in the surrounding area including a freaking guitar (these side quests seem super pivotal to the plot, yo).
19. Run down the train track to talk with whats-his-face and sleep until nightfall.
20. Sneak past / take out a group of bandits.
21. Find a rowboat.
22. Sail to the terminal.
23. Proceed to kill dozens of mutants in the maze-like terminal building, followed by a huge fish.

..... or.... uninstall? Yeah, I think uninstall.

[papalazarou]

sigh

[32anChips]

metro 1 and 2 didnt have a quick save so i think thay have made progress. i hear you about the getting stuck stuff an i was in that fish place two an got stuck but s@?t happens. i have lost all my saves and have to start again even with steam cloud on so i hape you dont get that bug later on in the game

[ʇıpuɐq uʍop ǝpısdn ǝɥʇ]

Ha, I was on the fast track to the best ending... Worked my ass off hitting all the good boy points just to make one mistake in The Tiaga, which by this point turned out to be a trigger for an auto save, which then overwrote my last save... Then I tried to restart the chapter and all my weapons are gone. I then try to restart "The Summer" in hopes to fix my gear, which worked, but now one of the characters I saved is now ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DEAD.

This save system can seriously eat the biggest bag of ♥♥♥♥♥.

[𝓜𝓐𝓧𝓩𝓘𝓜]

agreee