BioWare is reinventing save games for the Xbox One and PS4

BioWare is reinventing save games for the Xbox One and PS4

Now that the Xbox One and PS4 are on store shelves, the development team at BioWare has a serious problem to solve for the upcoming release of Dragon Age: Inquisition. In the two previous games in the franchise, players could make decisions that directly impact the state of the world of Thedas. If players continue to play on the PS3, Xbox 360, or PC, their save files will import easily with relatively little fuss, however players moving to the current-gen consoles need a way to import their world state. Instead of rigging up a complicated syncing solution, BioWare decided to launch a simple tool called “Dragon Age Keep” to solve the problem.

Dragon Age Keep is an online service that allows habitual Dragon Age players to tailor the state of the world to their preferences — essentially by ticking boxes for each decision that they might’ve made while playing. Whether or not these players have save files generated by the first two games, the Keep will allow anyone to jump into a perfectly configured world when Dragon Age: Inquisition launches later this year. The customized save games can be automatically imported to your Xbox One, PS4, or PC via Origin — or downloaded and transferred via USB, if your console is offline.

Admittedly, a series of checkboxes on a website might not sound like a big deal, but it actually solves a number of substantial problems that have been plaguing BioWare-style RPGs for years. In this article, I’ll touch on four major hurdles that the Dragon Age Keep effectively sidesteps for this upcoming release, and explain why this simple solution is BioWare’s best way forward.

Local save game loss

Hard drives die. It’s inevitable that the drives holding your precious data will eventually cease to function properly. Even some of the brightest among us have been bitten by drive failure, and files much more important than game saves have been lost permanently. If you’re relying on a drive to keep your saves safe for eight or nine years between console generations, you’re just asking for trouble. [Read our full backup masterclass to make sure you never lose data ever again.]

Most of the time, losing old save files isn’t a big deal. After all, most people aren’t going to bother loading up an old save for Madden 07 or Call of Duty 4. However, BioWare-style RPGs build off of the decisions made in each game, so that old save game from 2009 holds the key to the world you built.

If you read through a few Dragon Age threads across the internet, you’ll quickly see that a non-trivial number of people have lost their original save files. To rectify this issue, players either slog through dozens of hours of gameplay again, or use third-party tools to generate save files. These solutions certainly aren’t perfect (especially for console players), but they were the only options available until BioWare announced the Dragon Age Keep.

Cloud problems

If local saves are so fragile, surely cloud saves are the solution, right? Well, partially. Keeping off-site backups is always a good idea, and it will certainly reduce the risk from drive failure, but cloud saves aren’t perfect. Valve, Sony, and Microsoft have had cloud-based solutions for years now, and problems still crop up frequently.

Syncing has long been a problematic issue, and cloud saves are no exception. Inaccurate timestamps, accidental overwrites, and other technical issues still cause hiccups — even on modern systems. I’ve lost numerous saves through Steam, and my PS4 regularly refuses to automatically upload saves because of a bug in the firmware. Cloud saves are undoubtedly a useful tool, but they don’t solve every problem, and can even introduce new problems in some cases. With a system like the Keep, you can sidestep the issue of two-way sync completely. Generate a world state on a server, and download it to your console just once — no need for a complex syncing mechanism for this use case.