One thing I sorely miss in recent open world RPGs is the ability to place custom notes on the map. Ultima Underworld could do it, System Shock, Morrowind...
Why not Skyrim or The Witcher 3 (where it would be tremendously useful)?
Being "married with children" I heartily agree on "pause any time", especially in cutscenes. I don't know what's so difficult about it. Speaking of Witcher 3, it doesn't have a key to pause them, but at least they stop when the game loses focus (Alt-Tab).
That's another thing - the game should stop if focus is lost. Sometimes background stuff in Windows steals focus - totally frustrating hearing your character die while you are busy switching back to the game.
One thing Witcher 2 and 3 do right but many other games don't support is seamless controller switching. You can play the game with mouse+keys for the most part but grab the controller and simply play on if you're more comfortable with it during i.e. arm wrestling in Witcher 2 or horse races in 3. Works superb - should be like this more often.
Sabin_Stargem: #1: A tabbed inventory. Being able to select a specific category item is time saving and makes large inventories manageable.
Agreed, and additionally lots of sorting options:
- recently aquired
- power (i.e. damage, armour rating)
- type (ranged, melee)
- value/weight ratio (for selling loot)
SkyUI for Skyrim is pretty good in this regard.
timppu: I generally think the same, but then for some reason I was never expecting games like Wing Commander 1-5, Freespace 1-2, X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Need for Speed, Red Baron etc. to let me save during the missions. Somehow I was fine with the idea that if If fail at any point of a mission or race or level, I have to replay it all over. Not sure why I am ready to give such a pass for these games, but not for e.g. FPS or RTS games.
Although it would be nice to have a suspend save for simulations or racing games - a few of the missions or races can be rather long and when life gets in the way...
Operation Flashpoint handled it this way. Save on exit, and load and delete save on continue.