I seem to have entered into a stage of life at which I find myself wrestling with regret more often than I might like. This doesn’t make me special in any way: generations of us humans, upon reaching a certain age, have said wistfully, “If I’d known then what I know now . . .” or “if I could go back . . .” or “if I had it all to do over again . . .” and the like.
In a more current idiom, I sometimes wish I could reload an old save.
Recent generations of video games across several genres include the option to save progress at will, allowing the player to go back to any point in the game to select a different option, to replay a mission, to make another attempt at a tough boss fight, or the like.
This is especially useful in long, complex, immersive role-playing games (RPGs) in which the player is frequently confronted with choices that have consequences for how the player-character develops and for how the plot unfolds. Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian, 2023) is among the best recent examples of an RPG with deep and well-crafted choice-and-consequence mechanics which, in normal gameplay modes, seem to call out for reloading and exploring options.
This gives rise to a practice which, in the parlance of video games, is called “save-scumming”: taking full advantage of the basic game mechanic of saving progress to replay sections of the game, sometimes many times, to achieve the most favorable outcome.
‘Save-scumming’ is sometimes written or spoken with implied disapproval, but the practice is often just accepted as a legitimate way to enjoy a game.
That said, some games include a mechanic or optional mode designed to thwart save-scumming, mainly by limiting opportunities to save and/or making the consequences of some choices or events irrevocable: a “permadeath” mechanic or mode (e.g., This War of Mine (11 Bit, 2014)), honor mode (e.g., Baldur’s Gate 3), hardcore mode (e.g., Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (Warhorse, 2025)).
I have to admit, though, that I have often indulged in save-scumming when playing certain games.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that when I find myself wrestling with regret I sometimes muse: If I could reload an old save of my life and replay it anew from that point, but somehow still knowing how it turned out this time, would I? And to what point would I return?
I have identified a number of candidates: a moment in the summer of 1992, or one in the late spring of 2010, or the early spring of 2011, or . . .
For that matter, there are some choices I have made in the last few years, even in the last few months, I wouldn’t mind playing over again, choosing different options in search of a better outcome.
It’s all nonsense, of course.
For one thing, replaying a section of a game is never the same as playing it for the first time: the surprise is gone, the immersion is broken; I approach the story less as a participant and more as an outside observer with a section of the story arrayed before me, manipulating things toward a desired goal.
What would it be like, then, to replay my own life? If I could reload a save from 1992, knowing all that I know, how would I be faring on, say, September 10, 2001?
In fact, there is at least one game which illustrates just how bizarre and futile it would be to save-scum my own life, a game to which I devoted an early post on this blog: Life is Strange (Dontnod, 2015). Save-scumming is included in the game as a basic mechanic, and the increasingly frantic attempts of the main character to save-scum her way to a better outcome reveal the futility of save-scumming in an open-ended and complex world.
But this is only to say that, if I were genuinely to wish I could save-scum my own life, I had best be careful what I wish for.
Not long ago, a colleague introduced me to a marvelous, twisted little book called Disappointing Affirmations, a compendium of marvelous, twisted little satires on motivational posters everywhere. One of them seems especially apt here:
If I knew back then what I know now I would’ve just [fouled] up my life differently.
Beyond the cautionary tale, though, is a more basic reality of life in the world as it is: if life is a game, we are all playing in permadeath mode.
There is no save point.
References
The title of the post comes from the name of a song by Run The Jewels (Killer Mike and El-P) – performing under the pseudonym Yankee and the Brave – which features in the video game Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red, 2020).
Dave Taranowsky, Disappointing Affirmations (Chronicle Books, 2024).
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