What could justify a save point before a boss fight in RPG?

Question

The protagonist in this RPG is a robot fighting the oppressive human government. In his quest to liberate his fellow robots, he founded a robotic rebel army and finally liberated a factory that now serves as their base.

Liberating the factory is indeed a big strategic win for them, because they can now rebuild themselves whenever they get destroyed in battle. They can upload their consciousness to the rebel network wherever they are and this snapshot can be injected to the new robotic body. For religious reasons(?), the same snapshot will not be used to create a mass robotic army.

To disrupt the rebel forces, the humans create a jamming device that prevents this uploading from all their buildings. Occasionally, there will be an area where he can do the upload safely before proceeding with the mission. We call this "Save Point".

However, he notices that these "Save Points" are always located somewhere near the entrance, middle of a long dungeon, and just before a boss fight. After this pattern has repeated several times, it's time for our protagonist to begin to wonder why this always happened.

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Obviously, the developer put the save point there to save the player from frustration from losing a boss fight after a lengthy dungeon walk. However, when viewed from inside the game, why is it always on a very convenient spot just before a boss fight?

Answers should be applicable to RPG with other theme. Please consider to provide at least one other theme where your answer can work.

Although I started this with a story, I expect the answer to be able to explain general RPG cliches on save points. I don't mind answer using example from my story, but please refrain from answering the question with a story.

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This question graduated from the Sandbox.

Answer 1

It's the other way around

Save Points indicate the area holds a strategic importance. That's why the boss creates a base where there is save point(s), and stays near one.

In your story, an area that allows "upload" means it is important to be able to have communication near there, despite the need for the jammer. A boss may be a general of an army, and it would not make sense if he's not somewhere where he send and receive communication. It is coincidental that you used that place as a Save Point.

In a magical world, the Save Point may be a crystal that regenerates vitality. The Boss monster is just a common monster that feeds on that energy and becomes stronger because of that.

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They can't see it

They do not realize it is important. Or they just don't know it exists.

In your story, that may be because of the bosses are always located on high places (towers?), and those places are out of range of the jammers. They simply don't know they build their HQ too high for the jammer, and allowing you to upload before engaging the boss.

In some RPG^{[Need citation]}, Save Point may be in form of a fairy waiting for you before a boss. The fairy may have scouted the place and after found the boss room, waited for you outside of it. The guards simply can't see this ethereal creature, but you, with the blessing of mother fairies, can.

Answer 2

The boss doesn't just want to beat you once - he wants to beat you over and over again, to make you suffer.

This is predicated on the assumption that the boss is genuinely evil. I think that's a fair assumption.

• The boss is (presumably) aware that these Save Points exist, and that if he kills you, you'll probably come back and try again. Might as well place a Save Point ten feet from his own doorstep so that he doesn't have to wait very long before he can start killing you again.
• Crushing your body isn't enough for him, since it's replaceable. He wants to crush your spirit by killing you over and over and over, and watch as your hope slowly dies.
• To that end, since Save Points are based on consciousness-uploading, your old body will logically still be lying there when you're beamed back in your new body. It's gotta be pretty demoralizing to be killed, revived, and immediately come face-to-face with your own battered corpse. (I doubt your game has persistent corpses, but this is what would happen IRL).
• The boss, like almost all villains, either lacks Medium Awareness, is overconfident, or both. He doesn't think you'll ever work out his attack patterns. He doesn't think you'll ever get that lucky critical hit, or remember to apply buffs. He almost certainly doesn't know of the existence of strategy guides. In his mind, he's just going to keep killing you repeatedly until you finally give up. And he's going to enjoy it.

Answer 3

If you're a robot who founded the robot's liberation army, that most likely means you've got robots of varied talents running around. Not everyone is a rough and tumble human fighter. Surely we have robot "shop keepers" (possibly more like robbers who can bring you important goods and maybe a little intelligence?) So, why not have deep infiltration robots? Non-combatant agents who dig deep behind enemy lines, and set up counter-jamming to provide our hero(es) a place to back up before things get out of hand.

Assuming every assault on an important human controlled asset is a well planned operation, you don't even necessarily have to answer for why the humans didn't shut down the counter-jamming: it only just happened when you got there, and by that time their resources are more focused on stopping you than killing your save point.

EDIT (Per question author's request): Outside of the "robot" theme

Theme agnostic, another reasonable idea that might fit all scenarios - especially if we leave the standard RPG fare of infinite amounts of random battles - is that the save point is right before the boss room because the hero(es) have defeated all of the enemy forces and now have a chance to rest before opening those massive doors or heading up that long flight of stairs. Here our protagonists can take the time to eat, write a journal log just in case this is the end of the line, or depending on the scale of the battle, set up shop in this area.

"Setting up shop" is basically how the Fire Emblem or Wars series handles saving - saves are only done after skirmishes when key assets have been captured, such as a fort or a castle, or after the enemy has been beaten back from what was already well fortified.

Answer 4

Save points naturally originate at points where major divergences happen in timelines

Time is hugely mind-bogglingly vast. Every single choice that's made causes a divergence in timelines. Some choices however, are more important than others. Most events have a tiny impact on time: whether you chose to put ham on your sandwich or salami doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things.

Other events have a huge impact on time. When a possible hero makes the decision wether or not to go forth and fight, this is a pivotal moment in time: if he chooses to fight, the world can potentially become a vastly different place than if he chooses not to. When such a hero confronts a powerful enemy, this is again a pivotal moment in time: winning means they continue the fight, the balance of power swings a little bit more in their favour and the world becomes a slightly better place. Losing means the balance of power swings in the direction of the villain but creates opportunities for other people to become heroes.

When a large number of timelines spring forth from the same choice, a phenomenon occurs that is known as a "Save point". Beings that have the potential to make choices that cause such a large number of timelines to spring forth, can use such 'save points' to explore these different timelines by experiencing them. When they die, their consciousness returns to the point, losing the exact memories of the events that took place, but giving them a subconscious apprehension to take the same action that caused their death. The closer they get to repeating the exact same sequence that caused their death, the greater this apprehension becomes. This leads them to organically make a different choice than before.

The fun part of this concept is that it works for both heroes and villains. Time itself doesn't have a concept of good and evil, it only knows your impact on the amount of timelines that originate from a point. When a hero defeats a villain, their consciousness gets to continue along that 'stream' of timelines, but the reverse is also true: when a villain defeats a hero, that's the 'stream' of timelines where they get to continue.

Answer 5

It's not a safe place.

The bosses are secretly studying a way to upload themselves into the machines, and while for religious matters the protagonist won't create an army of himselves, the bosses would.

Each boss is provided with a save point in order to study it, with the order to upload himself/herself/itself only if he/she/it has 100% chance to succeed. Bosses, though, are not overconfident, and that's why they put an entire dungeon to protect that point, and why they didn't try that yet.

Answer 6

Somebody has been there before

There is somebody who puts those save points for his fellow robots.

• He could be a vagrant who's hobby is just doing exactly this thing or
• He could be a cunning robot that is smarter than the protagonist but somehow lacks firepower to do the job himself
• He could also be a robot whose conscience's knocking at his own door. He doesn't want to get involved in these wars. He just want to live a secluded hermit life and this is the least he could do to his brethren.
• He's just an upload maniac. He believes that these save points are his "game". Seeking every upload point he could find. It's just pleasure to him and he just wants to prove he's the king in finding these upload spots
• He could be a human helping the robots

Anyway, there is someone else that's putting up these save points for a reason. You could add that as another plot element for an introduction of a new character.

Answer 7

Villains are arrogant and looking for a diversion from conquering the world

Villains don't build Dungeons so that nobody can get through to them. It might look like that and their minions might think that's the purpose of certain Dungeon designs, but in reality it's just a test.

Once someone has made it through the Dungeon, fighting through hordes of minions and disarming deadly traps, they are worthy of being called a Diversion for your big villain. It's boring to be the master of all evil with nothing to do after all. From time to time you want to show off and display your powers.

Making a Save Point at importants locations allows the wannabe Hero to not have to repeat the tedious little Dungeon they already passed. What use is it to have a tired Adventurer standing before you if you want to have an interesting fight?

It's far better to allow the Hero to regenerate in the case you defeat him. The next time he might be able to fight a little bit better, a little bit longer and make things a little bit more interesting.

Once the Hero has proven to be worthy he is allowed to test his luck and abilities to entertain your villain. It's an honour. And giving the Hero the chance to try again might make things more interesting in the long run.

After all you can just destroy the little Save Point you purposefully left in your realm. It's your realm after all. It's not like those were placed there by mistake.

Your minions might think they help you. Or that the Save Points might be a distraction for the enemy. Or something to make the enemy be less on guard as he thinks he just saved. But really, it's all about making the life of your villain more interesting.

Answer 8

Save points are multipurpose energy sources; useful but also potentially dangerous.

Your save points need not be simply that. They could be high energy zones (natural or artificial) which can serve additional functions - perhaps the boss or other machines can charge up at that point, or use the focused energies there to augment their abilities while they are there. Maybe the save points are ancient defensive weapons which were hacked, their abundant energy being diverted for the save function.

Bosses like to be near these places because of the additional functions they serve. But not too near - the energy zones are not always stable, and potentially dangerous. A long time spent in close proximity to these energies (perhaps spooky Z-point or Casimir effect energies?) can cause strange spacetime effects. Occasional energy surges can alter things nearby in bizarre ways.

from https://nele-diel.deviantart.com/art/Mountain-Obelisk-420037417

Answer 9

One logical idea could be, that since jamming is preventing the restore point, perhaps human "bosses" tend to want/need an unjammed area near themselves in order to have un-jammed communications. That might make sense if the bosses are also commanders or need to receive communications signals.

Another logical idea following the established jamming logic, could be that there are just certain areas that aren't jammed due to reception details ("can you hear me now?"), and clearing out the area around a boss is liable to give the robot forces time to locate one without being interrupted, whereas they usually couldn't do that before that point if there were still enemies around to disrupt them.

Another logical idea would be that taking over an enemy base allows destroying or modifying the enemy jamming equipment, and/or setting up one's own counter-jamming equipment or signal booster, which is otherwise vulnerable unless/until the enemies are cleared out.

As for another logic issue that comes to mind, about why the boss doesn't just run away after defeating one player, so the player gets to try over and over, perhaps these enemy bases are laid out such that the bosses tend to get cornered in a defensible strongpoint where only one robot at a time can approach, but also the boss can't leave without running into the rest of the robot army.

In any case, I think it would also be more interesting and logical if there were a limit to retries and/or consequences for failing many times, such as a limited number of spare robots, and/or the human forces eventually mounting a rescue attempt for the boss, or the boss finding a way to escape, or other negative events happening while the player fails to defeat the boss over and over. At the very least, I'd hope the game would could defeats, so that a very good player gets some acknowledgement compared to one who fails many times.

Answer 10

Other rebels make serious effort to keep save points up!

I can't take on this boss, I lack the ability. But what I certainly can do is keep a save-point alive here -- to make it a lot easier for those who can take the boss.

You've made this easy, because you already have an in-game rationale for save points, and that rationale makes in-game characters very aware of the value of save points.

Answer 11

The re-download process is being monitored. The 'dungeon' and 'boss' were constructed specifically to attract people who want to fight to prove their mettle. When at least some inevitably die, their transmitted experiences are logged and analyzed to gather useful information. This includes things like fighting techniques, sure, but also things like reactions to bad-ass boss aesthetics for market research on how to sell hats.

If your visceral reality feels suspiciously like a game, perhaps it's because you're not actually the one playing it.

Answer 12

Saving isn't as easy as just being in a certain zone

So you're integrating into the narrative something that is often just part of the background mechanics of a game, and you want it to be plausible.

So maybe it isn't just the case that you can't save from everywhere --maybe there are clear spots all over the place --but that you usually can't afford to take the time involved. Maybe it takes 10 seconds to upload, and if you move at all during that time, you have to start over. So you can only take the time to do that when you've cleared your area of lesser enemies, and are prepping yourself to take on a foe you believe to significantly stronger.

If you are strategic about where the green and red zones are for upload, you can make sure that the only areas that "happen" to be both green and clear for a long enough span of time are the ones you want.

Answer 13

I would suggest a different tack on this problem entirely.

Instead of attempting to justify building your fortresses such that they have a "Save Point", an area that allows the player to upload while still inside the building, instead offer the player a backdoor that they can open in the fortress to allow themselves to quickly and effortlessly escape, upload, and get right back into the building where they were. Now, instead of having to justify the boss leaving this upload security hole in a conspicuous, noticeable location, you can now tell a more convincing espionage story of a spy making future access easier for themselves and their future lives.

Out of universe, most of the old Zelda dungeons are designed this way. While a player can technically save at any time, if they are killed inside the dungeon or turn the game off, they start over at the entrance. Progress through the dungeon is assured, however, by Link being able to create two-way shortcuts from various places in the dungeon back to its entrance.

This also has the game design benefit of making it easier for the player to recover outside of the death scenario, since these backdoors now allow them to leave the fortress to resupply.

Answer 14

Simple. For the same reason the thing you are looking for is in the last place you look.
Because you stop searching for it after you found it.

Same thing here. YOU assume that save point in before boss fight. YOU decide who is a boss. Not your robot protagonist. For him the boss fight could be when he's facing last or largest human opposition. But he will only know that after many battles when he decide "Whew, that one I did 50 years ago was the worst. After that it was all piece of cake".

Example. Dark Souls. New Game +++. Did the save point before the final boss in the New Game (so 3 playthrough earlier) was really before final boss? He wasn't final as you did fought after that. You adventure didn't end.

Also such placing of SP is similar to placement of bus stops on the road. At the beginning, middle, and end. Because those are best pickup points from optimising of movement point of view.

Answer 15

Organic

The quantum-powered hero gets headaches when perilous situations are coming up because he died in some other possibility and it collapses back through time to a point of low peril. Some possibilities collapse clearly; others don't.

Naturally, boss fights are especially dangerous futures, so it's natural for collapses to happen right before such fights—it's a relatively—and for you to subsequently collapse back to this point.

Unknown

The small shrines to the ancient god of death aren't recognizable by most these days, and it might be the god has a shrine guardian preventing people from noticing. Regardless, you're in his employ, so you can pray at these shrines and the god of death will remember your prayer. Then you go assassinate someone as part of your beliefs. If you fail, well, the god of death isn't done with you; he'll reject your death and return you to the last shrine you prayed at.

Perhaps a shrine is constructed there for your convenience since the god of death gave you this dangerous assignment and suspected you'd need it. It could also, be a natural feature the enemy camp incorporated into their layout. Maybe it serves as a common household decoration, and the unwitting decorators for your next target have helped you out.

Immovable

Due to the nature of the Ancient's engineering, there's no practical way to move the their restoration chambers. If only someone had the right genes to make use of them...

If no one is known to be able to exploit these inconvenient chambers, then enemies will just build around them. If this spot is the best for the enemy boss, then the "unusable" restoration chamber outside the door doesn't make a difference—it's alien tech that they had to work around.

Note: This one doesn't work in the long-run. Anybody finding out that an enemy can just respawn indefinitely in their base will relocate somewhere safer.

Secret

Some of your robotic compatriots have discretely embedded some reconstruction points in the enemy base. It's doubtful the humans will figure out about the reconstruction points: all robots look the same, so how could they know it's the same robot attacking again and again. Even if they were looking, it'd be hard to find them without a special robotic vision mode/mod.

Your compatriots would naturally plant these points in optimal spots for you, and right before the Big Bad Boss is, I would think, very optimal.

Note: This one doesn't work well in the long-run unless the antagonists are really dumb and don't pick up on the pattern, but it would probably work longer than the immovable solution.

Answer 16

Geographic/Geometric Jamming can be overcome by directed transmissions (shaped beam radio frequency or laser) with direct line of sight (LOS) to orbiting satellite constellation. Levels appear to involve infiltrating a building, finding a bad guy, then fighting him. Saves are available when you are outside (beginning save point), and at any time that you can re-acquire direct LOS with one of the satellites (middle and pre boss save points). Not every piece of the sky will always have a peek at a satellite, so the lack of a save point near some windows, roofs, docking bays, etc should not be too jarring.

The same methodology can be used to explain the sparse save points on an outdoor level depending on the terrain, LOS to ground based repeater stations, and robustness of your satellite constellation.

Answer 17

Secured physical connection

In the scenario of wireless signals being unusable because of jamming, perhaps there are physical access points they can use. They're normally secured and could possibly even be dangerous to access under normal circumstances. However, there are a few that are left unsecured by a sympathizer on the inside of the human military.

Knowing where the dangerous foes are in a base, the sympathizer strategically disables security on these physical access points near these dangerous foes. These access points give the robots secure access to their networks for uploading a snapshot to the rebel network.

As a bonus, you get an extra character to make the story a little more interesting if you choose to involve the sympathizer in the story.

Answer 18

There's almost no games that even bother to do so, nor do I ever want all games to even attempt it as the narrative will always end up samey, silly, and contrived trying to shoe horn it in and instead leave it up to the player to acknowledge it as an acceptable break with in-game reality for sake of player quality of life.

let the rare game who can plan their story around it to be a unique gem, and let the rest not have their narratives twisted to try and explain things that require no in-universe explanation. And if you can't convincingly make it work without breaking immersion...DON'T. Just make sure that your game's difficulty and focus is properly balanced around it. IMO if the battle NEEDS a check point right outside of the fight and the game isn't for all audiences including small children, then the difficulty should justify such leniency.

They exist PURELY as a quality of life gameplay tool based on feed back from players who played games in the older generations of RPGs where save points either didn't exist at all (Dragon Quest style return and talk to the King/A Priest to save, which remains a staple in that series in the majority of games outside of some of the handheld ones being a little more forgiving due to the nature of the handhelds and the stop-go style of play) or only allowed you to save on the world map with save points tending to instead be found in VERY long dungeons at around the half-way point due to length rather than any specific challenge point.

You could work around it, but most games BARELY justify the save system at all, if they even bother. A lot of save systems aren't even attempted to give them a justification.

Answer 19

The robots makes a save point by uploading their memory to mission control. These pre-boss save points are the command centres of the militarized city/fortress/flying ship/headquarter. The boss' room is always close to the command centre because they need to be in the command centre to command their army.

In most part of the enemy base, there is a wireless jammer so wireless communication does not work except on a few designated points designed with wired connection to the outside world for use by defenders, but it is standard operating procedure by the defending army to disable these access points when an area is overwhelmed by attackers, and this can be done remotely by the command centre.

The command centre are always designed with unjammed communication with the outside world so that it can communicate with other bases even while the wireless jammer is active, so they have been designed with a physical wiring that aren't affected by the regular jamming system and cannot be intercepted by the heroes without crushing through layers of thick concretes. These command centres are built on the assumption that once the opponent reach this point, the base must have been lost, so once you reach the command centre there's little preventing you from hijacking the data link to upload your memory.

Knowing that the robot attacker have been using these data link to upload snapshots, newer bases have been designed with data link self destruction system, so if the defender senses that they are going to lose the command centre, they would trigger this self destruct mechanism before leaving the command centre, so now attackers have to figure out ways to stealthily gain control of the command centre without the defender having chance to trigger self-destruct.

When given intel about the building infrastructure, the attacker can pop up extra save points by using explosives, and heavy equipments, on vulnerable points, to get access points to these physical wires outside central command, but blueprints for enemy bases are highly classified information, so they're not readily available in most missions and blindly blasting things without such blueprint would just be a waste of your limited supply of these powerful explosives/equipments.

The switch to disable the jammer is also often located on the command centre. So once you conquered the command centre, you also gain control of the jammers and can therefore enable saving anywhere using wireless datalink.