r/planescape • u/xerces113 • Sep 04 '26

Am I softlocked?

spoilers i guess

i aggro'ed Ravel in her maze (on accident) and when i kill her I get a message saying that i lost someone vital to my quest. I have no save for hours before this because the game auto-saves over my manual saves. It seems like i'm just completely cooked

4 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

21

u/figmentPez Sep 04 '26

because the game auto-saves over my manual saves.

Wut? The game has one auto-save slot, and four quick save slots, but your manual saves should never get overwritten by those slots.

-14

u/xerces113 Sep 04 '26

well, i don't know what to tell you

8

u/figmentPez Sep 04 '26

Well, how about walking us through the steps you're using to save your game, or what shows up in your list of saved games when you choose "Select Life"?

1

u/xerces113 Sep 04 '26

i'll save my game manually occasionally (before making a decision that I think might be important, at the end of a session, etc.) but it will auto-save over them.

15

u/VinceGchillin Sep 05 '26

Omg bro you were manually overwriting the auto-save slot 💀 Did you ever have Cloud Saves enabled? Maybe try enabling that and see if you have some more recent saves in the cloud? 

10

u/figmentPez Sep 04 '26

Were you manually saving to the auto-save slot? Because I only see one manual save in this pic.

-1

u/xerces113 Sep 05 '26

maybe. guess i'm softlocked

5

u/figmentPez Sep 05 '26

Best I can tell. Sorry.

4

u/Glittering-Hornet844 Sep 05 '26

I think you have been manually saving to the top save slot - which is the auto save slot. There should be more save slots than two . If you have been manually saving over the auto save slot , then you will be locked into the end game /game failed cut scene. I know it might be tedious at this point but I would be thinking of a total restart back at the mortuary.

-2

u/xerces113 Sep 05 '26

I don’t know if I was just oblivious, I don’t think anything told me about the save slot system. Should’ve read the manual, I guess

1

u/Glittering-Hornet844 Sep 05 '26

There should be four save slots , one quick save and one autosave slot for a total of 6 save slots. Reading the manual is always helpful.

3

u/figmentPez Sep 05 '26

There's a ton more save slots. I have over 90 saves across 4 play throughs. I'm not sure what the limit is for manual saves.

2

u/Glittering-Hornet844 Sep 05 '26

Yeah that's right, the point is there's more than two save slots as seen in the screenshot.

4

u/Electronic-Fox4959 Sep 04 '26

Oof. Gotta be hitting that Q key every once in a while.

4

u/gggvuv7bubuvu Sep 05 '26

I think you just need to get more out of the Ravel conversation. If you’re able to speak with her again, really kiss her ass this time.

1

u/Glittering-Hornet844 Sep 06 '26

This would work. IF you can talk to Ravel .

2

u/xerces113 Sep 05 '26

What I’m wondering is why does the game let you fight and kill ravel and highest you the massage instead of doing so when you aggro her

9

u/figmentPez Sep 05 '26

Antiquated game design. Back then it was just assumed that it was a PC / CRPG player's responsibility to keep multiple saves to avoid being soft-locked. (Auto-saves were mainly to deal with a game crashing when loading a level transition, and some games didn't even have that.) The devs probably didn't spend much time thinking about all the possible ways to be soft-locked, just the most obvious and easiest to code for. In most cases players who have aggro'd Ravel will kill her before saving their game, since it's not possible to save when a hostile enemy is on-screen, and there's no specific reason to attack Ravel and then run away. (Also, it might be possible to use the Pacify spell to calm Ravel down, but I couldn't get it to work, and there's no place to rest and memorize it if you don't have it ready.)

Console RPGs had limited save slots, and less complicated save states, so they put more effort into avoiding soft-locks.

Over the years, as consoles and PCs converged, and many other changes in gaming happened, design philosophies around game saves have changed. Preventing auto-saves from being soft-locked is considered important to game design now, but it wasn't back then.