The Automata save system
This is actually my favorite little thing that Route C does.
The game initially introduce you to a robust but still limited save system, where you have to activate YoRHa distribution machines (disguised as vending machines) across the map in order to save. In practice this means that the man 'hub' of the man is generally filled with save spots such that you don't have to travel particularly far to save, although in most situations you do still have to manually save. You can absolutely forget to do so, wander off the in the wrong direction, and lose a lot of progress, although the game also kindly allows you to retrieve your body, which will give you the experience and chips you lost by being a dumbass. Hopefully you don't die on the retrieval run!
I know that some people complain about this, but in practice it kind of becomes second nature when you're in the area, and the penalty for death is usually fairly minor, unless you really got lost or decided to spend a lot of time out of save range. You get used to it. You might sigh and roll your eyes about the trek from the last save point, you might grumble about auto-saving and forgetting to do so manually for the last hour, but in practice? Not a big deal.
Then Route C happens.
And suddenly that tiny little note that 9S made about desynching himself and 2B from the network is the hinge on which the entire capacity for either of them to function rests. As far as the story goes, the implications are clear-- the logic virus that consumes the station cannot consume them because 9S hasn't bothered re-synching them to the server. They are inadvertently quarantined.
And then you land back in Tokyo.
The game doesn't make a single mention of the implications, but as 2B drags her failing body out of the firefight you realize-- there is no second chance anymore. When 2B dies (cutscene-dies), she is dead. There is no backup consciousness, there is no server sync. She is gone.
When you take over as 9S or A2, maybe you haven't realized what this means, but the first time you die you are not met with the 'Leave a Message/Continue' screen. It's game over. No body retrieval run, no casual slap on the wrist. Everything you have accomplished since your last manual save is gone.
Like 2B.
And suddenly, saving your game isn't just a thing you do because you're playing an RPG and you're probably not finishing it in one go so you set it aside for later. This is your lifeline. This is your living memory. This is necessary in a way that never was before. It's a tiny seed of paranoia now. You were, hours early, casually ready to throw lives away because you would just respawn and have to make the trek to get back what you lost. Now your chosen android is continuous, and finite. You do not get second chances.
Remember the opening mission? 2B's fury that she has 'lost' the 9S who accompanied her on the factory run? That even half an hour of stolen memory means he is no longer the person she loved by the end of that mission?
And how you, as a player, have never needed to feel that loss, because YOU, as the player, have contiguous memory? YOU, as a human being, have memory of that half hour, and of every half-hour when you accidentally wandered into the desert and go blown up by a suicide bot and had to try again, or every hour you lost when you ran down to Emil's house and grossly underestimated the enemies in there? How death was just a sigh and a grumble and maybe an expletive and a button press back into the game?
You'll never feel 2B's anguish in that moment. You can't.
But only now, in Route C, are you reminded that death means something, and throwing 9S or A2 away is no longer the casual option it once was.
