Going Through the 5 Stages of Grief After Losing a Save File
Most Mondays for me start with waking up, enjoying a coffee in silence as the sun slowly breaks into my living room, before readying the kids for school, packing lunches with my wife, and doing the school drop off before typing away behind a keyboard all day. But this Monday was different, this Monday in particular had a clear schedule, and it had been set aside to enjoy a full day of Baldurs Gate 3 with my closest friend. We are separated by a great distance, and instead of catching up in a coffee shop for a weekly decompress, we meet up in Los Santos, Our Helldiver Frigates, or most recently, in Baldurs Gate. While we normally squeeze in a few hours a week after hours, the stars had aligned for the both of us with a project wrapping up early on my end, and an early flight on his end. My wife, ever supportive of me, had organised the kids and drop-offs and both my friend and I were messaging each other to confirm a 9 am kickoff. All this joy would soon be met with a gut punch of sorrow, as we were about to go through the 5 stages of grief after losing our save file.
Baldurs Grief
Our sessions had become a weekly ritual, and we had decided from the start to play as if it was a real-life D&D campaign, so our actions and choices were not motivated by us, the players, but rather what our characters would do. We forged in-game friendships and relationships. My Paladin, Vorjunn THe Destroyer, fought for good while my friend’s character, Bull Dien-Jjen, was more a sneaky rogue, pulling off minor heists without my character’s knowledge in fear of being kicked from our camp. It worked out well and provided some classic moments like my character being interrogated over missing products, while Bull skulked away in the background. These sessions quickly became our weekly reward, and often, we would message each other about what strategy we would do moving forward, and share interesting builds and skills we could use to make our party a more elite fighting unit. When Vorjunns diplomacy failed, Bull was ready in the shadows with an arrow to keep evil in check. Our characters couldn’t be more opposite, yet couldn’t be more compatible as an odd duo making waves along the Sword Coast.
We jumped on chat and readied ourselves for an epic adventure. We had just got up to a crucial part of Baldurs Gate 3’s story (don’t worry there will be no spoilers here) and we were excited to kick on. Upon starting the game, I was asked to adjust my settings, and content, before loading into the title screen with the only option being “Start New Game.”
Denial.
“This can’t be happening,” I said to my friend over chat, our save isn’t there. I’m going to restart my Xbox and try again. I reset the system and loaded it up. Nothing. I checked my saves. Nothing. This can’t be happening I kept thinking… There’s no way my save is gone. I wracked my brain as to how this could be. I haven’t booted up the system since we last played, and the dreaded save wipe error was patched out in December a few weeks after launch. How could this happen to us? On this day of all days! By now, we had spent an hour trying to troubleshoot the issue ourselves to no avail. I jumped on to Xbox support to see what could be done. While the Xbox representative was fantastic in offering sympathy and going through the required steps, we had no luck. Our next step was over to Larian, but as I made the rookie error of not having a Larian account, there was really nothing they could do.
Anger.
“Why can’t anyone do anything?” I frustratingly asked myself. How does this even happen? I pay a premium to have only saves and Gamepass Ultimate this is ridiculous. I was spiraling, frustrated at 60 hours of adventures seemingly down the drain. There was a pit in my stomach, and while it all sounded dramatic, for me this was our escape. The once-a-week tradition we had been playing since January this year, slowly progressing through the campaign while simultaneously taking the time to discover every nook and cranny the developers had crafted. We contemplated canceling Gamepass, trading in consoles, switching to PC for more reliable saves on Steam, and even going as far as to investigate refund options. I was so angry. I felt let down and as it was now 1 pm, we had already lost 4 hours to this problem. My wife, sensing my frustration decided to take me out for lunch, and it’s very rare for her to step away from work during the day. She knew how important my weekly sessions were but she also made a very good point, while the game itself is very fun, the most important thing about weekly sessions was catching up with my friend and talking about our problems, working together to solve both in-game, and real-life issues we may be experiencing.
Bargaining.
I text my friend, “We can start fresh, we always discussed rolling new characters and I might go a bard or Warlock?”
“Yeah, that might work” he responded. Things were looking up. We jumped online and spent some time creating new characters and played through the tutorial. In our first actual combat event outside of the tutorial, we were destroyed and so was my enthusiasm for the game. “I’m sorry mate,” I said to my friend “My heart just isn’t in it.” He understood and we discussed switching back to Helldivers for our next session. It would seem that our time in Baldurs Gate had come to an end, and we would never find out what Vorjunn and Bull would uncover.
Depression.
I was really bummed out by this time, and school pickup was rapidly approaching. I decided to have a quick nap to see if I could shake the big sad. My friend was already 10 pages deep on a new PC build… We all have different ways to deal with sadness. Mine is usually eating an offensive amount of Chicken McNuggets until I ask myself “Why are you like this?” But I didn’t have the time for McNuggets today, only sadness. If I had a stereo in my bedroom, you can be assured it would be blaring out some My Chemical Romance, alas, I was laying there in silence, alone with my thoughts. I was sad for my characters, I was sad for our time lost, and I was sad that the excitement of new characters didn’t have the same magic. How could we overcome this? I thought to myself.
Acceptance.
“Maybe we could reroll the same characters?” I told my friend.
“That could work” he replied. “We doing this on Xbox or waiting for PC?” he followed up. So began our acceptance. We knew the file was gone and there was nothing we could do to get it back, but the characters we loved weren’t gone. I mean, sure, my AC22 Adamantine armour and legendary weapons were, but the concept of Vorjunn and Bull were ours. We made them, so why couldn’t we make them again? I suggested let’s go full nerd and ret-con the save file missing to us failing our quest, and by some divine intervention, we were sent back to the start, knowing what we know now to do things differently. We started chatting back and forth like we used to, discussing our stories and strategies. What do we do differently this time?
Suddenly, that spark was back, and we spent the rest of the day intermittently messaging ideas for a story. Our characters would return in the same bodies, but forever changed. Vorjunn would no longer be a Paladin, but a Barbarian consumed by rage after feeling he was abandoned by his core belief system that he dedicated his life to. Bull, having made a deal with a devil to go back, loses the finest of her rogue-like hands, but gains warlock magic. While all of this may sound too nerdy for some tastes, it was the very spark we needed to be able to move on from losing 60 hours of gameplay, and starting somewhat anew.
Where do we go from here?
Tonight we begin our new save file and start again. We are messaging each other stories and lore that we can draw on to help out characters’ motivations. I no longer mourn the loss of the 60-hour save file, and I’m excited to see where our new attempt will take us. It’s almost become a case of our characters transcending the initial media they were created in, and much like someone who plays Dungeons and Dragons, we’ve both become so attached to our creations.
Regardless of corrupted saves or the platform we play on, it’s safe to say that the adventures of Vorjunn The Destroyer and Bull Dien-Jjen will live to fight another day because it’s those characters we become so attached to and I’m just glad, that their stories will continue to be told.
