I played Mother 3 recently, and one lesson that I learned from it is this: if I am going to use save points in NeoFirst, then I will need a lot of save points. And in order to have lots of save points, I will need to make the save points small and easily insertable into various different locations. So, I began a search for a standard save point design - one that would fit in cramped tunnels, gloomy forests, elegant dungeons and pristine wilderness.
In Mother 3, the save points are frogs. Thus, they are small, innoculous, and are quickly recognisable without being visually dominating. I wanted something less arbitrary than frogs, though. Instead of an animal or device, I wanted some sort of abstract symbol that would come to represent 'saving' to the player.
Then, I thought of Super Mario World. As you know, the level goals of this game resemble football goalposts, and this motif is carried over to the Chargin' Chuck enemy. The use of a sports analogy makes a lot of sense for a save point, as both are purely mechanical elements of their respective games. This led me to deciding NeoFirst's save point:
In Cricket, the wicket is functionally similar to Baseball's bases. It is, however, much more visually distinct. While I'm not all that familiar with the laws of Cricket, my appropriation of the wicket into NeoFirst represents a place where Link is 'safe'. When Link is near a wicket, he's safe, but when he's running between wickets, he's in danger of losing his progress. The game of NeoFirst can thus be thought of as a long chain of wickets, with the space between each forming an 'atom' of gameplay.
But you're arching your brow and thinking, "This doesn't seem very fantasylike! Where's the sparkly ring of unexplained magical energies that 'normal' games use for save spots? Shouldn't there be some half-baked explanation about 'recording your memories' or something? And how does it make sense that these wickets are installed all over Hyrule?"
My rationale is that these wicket savepoints do not alter the mood of a screen or area in the same way that a ring of sparkles would when placed in a dusty, faded cavern or somesuch. Furthermore, a wicket is only an anachronism when we interpret it as a Cricket element - it is, after all, just 3 two-foot wood poles, with two sticks resting on them. For all we know, there could be an entirely different significance to wickets in NeoFirst's Hyrule - but, so as not to draw attention to them, no explicit explanation shall be given.
As you can see, the wicket can easily adapt to match its surroundings.
