With the new patches it seems to save if you re-read a letter too. But the problem is: The game wants to encourage you to explore freely ("not take you on the hand") and in your own pace - but in the other hand it forces you to go back to specific places to get your game saved - not because it's your free explorer's wish to go there, not because there is a point in the story to go there - just because you don't want to loose progress - that's not what I think to be a immersive, realistic game world. The game shouldn't bother you with saving procedures, you shouldn't even be able to notice them, if it wants to simulate a believable world. The only efficient and consequent saving system imo would consist of two aspects: 1.) a completely unintrusive autosave AND 2.) a savegame when you quit the game - so that you can return exactly to the point you left.

Well said. I think the same. Don´t have a manual save system itçs a really ruin.

) a savegame when you quit the game - so that you can return exactly to the point you left. I don't think that will ever happen. Don't you think they would have to redo the whole game.

If such a modification would require to redo the whole game - then permit me to ask: Why wasn't the save system thought out consequently before programming the game?

To me this kind of save game system for a game like this is not really smart. You cannot know when the player want to leave the game and the game experience is diluited by design. So you'll risk to wander a lot and not accomplish anything but still you don't won't to restart miles away. The best way would have been something that save exactly where you are. I don't think it's impossible to obtain.

However, for what I saw so far, I have little faith in it. The game, while huge in term of space and details (with mixed quality, but still good looking and appealing) has really little interaction point and state to keep track. Still it manage to have bugs regarding the thing you interacted with.
For example sometimes the last piece of letter you read come up when pressing space during a memory cutscene, for no reason.

That happened to me too, but I remember it always being the story about the witch. I looked at the patch notes on Steam and it mentioned fixing a bug where the witch's story kept coming up when it wasn't supposed to, so I think that problem will be fixed whenever the patch gets here too.

After seeing people's warnings here, I played the game when I had large chunks of time (on Friday I played through until solving the second murder, and then yesterday I finished it). I was able to complete the game, but I definitely would have enjoyed it more if I could save anywhere. I would have kept a lot of saves from different areas, and also I had Fraps running to take screenshots and I accidentally hit the video record button which made the game freeze for a few seconds -- I almost had a heart attack thinking it was about to crash and I hadn't saved in an hour or two XD

I really want to replay it now that I know the full story (I think going through it more quickly a second time, I will reread everything and notice details that I didn't pick up on the first time). However I'm definitely going to wait for the patches to arrive here before I do that. Even the extra addition of being able to trigger a save by picking up a piece of paper will be a big help (so that way it would save after each side quest since they all end with a piece of paper). And of course the bug fixes sound good too.

Game is done by using Unreal engine 3. I think that it already contains save game system.

I installed the patch and I don't see any difference. I played about I hour and quit the game and I had to start again not where I quit.

Autosave would be fine with me. But I don't even know when the Game does the autosave. I applied the Patch, started all over again, still no Idea when the Game saves, still stuck at the Place after the Astronaut scene ...

That save system is the same as before. They knew how to make a nice game, I'm sure they could make a decent save. I don't know what it takes to make a game, They are smart enough to know what gamers want.. I 'm a retired engineer from a power plant I'm sure they couldn't do my job just like I couldn't do theirs.

The game's autosave is at work when you see the tree dots in the lower right corner of the screen. A more obvious save symbol might have been a better idea.

As mentioned already, the game is based on the Unreal 3 engine, which means there is a save system. Perhaps they'll do what other developers have done already and enable it in the future. It would be nice, since it's always good to be able to save where you want in an adventure game.

and multiple save SLOTS or unlimited saves and no "slots"

This autosave is sucks, I play some time and some kind of error close my game. Now I must start 15 min ago. And this error happend again. I think some patch is needed and save when I want.

Agreed. Current autosave-feature sucks, it should autosave way more often. I don't think it would be that hard to implement...