Sacrificing the Date

In most dating sims, the endgame is to find love with the object of your affection. In fact, Save the Date relies on that premise in order to motivate the player. Why does Felicia keep dying? Why can’t you save her? What else can you do as the player to prolong her life (and thus the date) as long as possible? But the most interesting part of Save the Date is how it subverts its narrative in the true ending and thus contesting the entire genre of dating sim. While you as the player are trying to find the ending where Felicia doesn’t die, the only ending where Felicia doesn’t die is the one where you choose not to go on the date at all. Of course, the game depends on you going through the entire game before learning this lesson. Indeed, when you choose the not going on a date path before getting to Moore’s Point and Felicia pontificating about the nature of games and novels, all you get is a game over and having a disastrous date without even going on a date. It is only after all the work that choosing not to go on the date has any significance.

So why force the player to make the same decision they would have made anyway, the same decision they had made before, but now they get a different result? The difference is the rationale behind the player making the decision. The player is at first trying all the decisions in a scattershot way, trying to force a solution without any rhyme or reason. If the player stumbles across the answer without the ending in mind, then there is no reward. The reason I chose to write about Save the Date was this reward moment, a moment where I thought, “OH!” and got to the ending. Something just clicked. It occurred to me that the only way to save Felicia was not to go on the date at all. Sometimes the best way to save someone is to completely stop subjecting them to a constant stream of trial and error. When Felicia says that the reason she keeps dying is because I keep playing, that made it clear the culpability I have in this situation. And it was only then that I knew the purpose behind not going on the date. It wasn’t a choice out of frustration, but a choice out of compassion and understanding that my choosing to go forward was going to continually lead to one bad ending.

Save the Date is not like any other dating sim, or movies like Groundhog Day or Happy Death Day where the main character is trying all the different paths to find one where they find love or are redeemed. It’s a statement on how, sometimes, the only way to save the person you care about is to deny the ending you want. Further, it argues that you have to have this intent, and it is only by getting to know Felicia and getting to know “her opinion” on everything that you realize that she, the object of the game, has a kind of “existence” outside of the narrative, one where the player is not relevant. Alternatively, if you continually try to force endings where you go on the date, you have chosen to sacrifice the date instead of "save the date" (as the title demands) in favor of an artificially constructed set of ideals where the player goes down the path they imagine is correct. Save the Date is a response to the player being the protagonist in dating sims and thus objectifying love. Its argument is this: maybe you're not the solution to the problem; maybe you're the problem itself.

A brief note on the hacker ending as opposed to the true ending: the hacker ending plays with a different aspect of the game, the malleability of games as a formal aspect of the game. I just think the addition of the ending actually detracts from the theme of Save the Date since, in the end, it feels cheap and shallow. Maybe, though, that’s the point. Maybe Save the Date is using the hacker ending to demonstrate how forcing the game (like forcing life or people) to do what you want leads to a shallow and ultimately hollow experience… Certainly a question to ponder.