40 Days #21: Quit asking me where to save my game!

I love Mass Effect. Sure, it has a vast universe to explore, a great story, lesbian sex, witty dialog, but there is one thing it doesn't have: incessant prompts about where to save my game every time I start playing. Back in the old days, when I had only one Xbox 360, I really hated those games that would always ask me for the save location - even though I had only the hard drive to choose from. These were mostly Arcade games, frequently some Namco retro remake. Full games would usually ask only the first time I played.

Then I got the second console, which necessitated moving my gamer profile to a memory unit. As a result, every time I play now I have two or three choices of storage location. Unfortunately, now even the full games ask for the storage location every time I play. I almost got used to the mind-numbing prompts that slide out the small blade and completely disrupt any sense of immersion in the game. That was until I played Mass Effect.

You see, for some reason, Mass Effect does not query me all the time. Even on a system that has a hard drive and two memory units inserted, it only asked the very first time, and now it lets me resume the game without prompting me any further. How is it that BioWare is seemingly the only developer that has figured this out? Gamers don't want to be answering the same stupid question over and over again. We are not somehow leveling up our prompt response powers here.

I'm not really sure whose fault this is, but I am sure Microsoft could provide some standard API to figure out where a game's save is located. Just search all the connected storage devices for save files belonging to the signed in profile. If there is just one, then automatically load it, like Mass Effect seems to be doing. Only if the request finds two or more save files, bring up the list of saves, probably ordered chronologically, along with date/time stamps and storage locations.

Since BioWare has clearly demonstrated that this is possible, testing for this usability issue should be added to Microsoft's certification process, because the day when these obnoxious prompts go away for good can't come soon enough.