A SCUM SUPREME

Developers weigh-in on save scumming

- Ted Lichfield

We all save scummed in Baldur’s Gate III, right? A bad roll, fight’s not going well, time to mash quick load, baby. In stealth games this behavior may manifest as a compulsion to pull the ripcord every time you get spotted, while 4Xs see us setting up a temporal base camp right before declaring a risky war. But what if living with the consequences of your actions could be fun? Usually I’d say I do enough of that in real life, but a recent dalliance with Baldur’s Gate III’s permadeath Honor mode gave me pause.

With save scumming at the top of our minds, it was time to get to the bottom of things by asking a professional for their take. Five professionals, in fact: two RPG developers, and three who work on immersive sims, aka ‘the thinking man’s FPS’, aka those games where you crouch walk everywhere and knock guys unconscious.

First up is Nick Pechenin, lead systems designer on none other than Baldur’s Gate III itself. From the start, Pechenin bristles a little at the value judgment inherent in the term “save scumming,” arguing that it’s “making a sin out of routine player behavior”.