Saving games - different directories?

I play strictly in offline mode - no physical/wireless attachment to the internet.
Automatically saving in a safe house is fine, and when I travel to a safe house
and then exit the game I am always there when I start the game - all fine.
However, I have read that when I am wandering round if I pickup an item the
game automatically saves. I notice that when I pick up an item the save icon
in the top right corner does come on. BUT if I exit the game afterwards and
start up again I am back in the safe house.
I have checked the directory (MyDocuments tree) and find that it DOES save
the game when I pick up an item (by the timestamp) but that is overwritten from
somewhere else when I click on Continue after exiting and restarting (timestamp
is a couple of minutes later).
It looks like the game is picking up the saved game from a different directory???
Can anyone help on this? I have tried pasting the savegame file back before the
Continue button is pressed but to no avail.
I repeat this is OFFLINE gaming only.
Thank you.

When you quit your game (regardless if offline or online), game puts you into the closest unlocked safehouse of your last position, rather than exactly into the spot you were standing, outside of the safehouse area.

This is implemented because else-ways, you could spawn into pack of machines and you will be killed off before you could even react.

Thank you - reading here:


It does confirm that the game is saved on an on-going basis (as confirmed
with my timestamps) - is it possible at a future date to delete machines in a
certain radius before loading, so that players can take up where they left off?

Possible? Yes.
Will it break the game? Yes.

Thing is, there are mission specific machines in the game and if there would be “safe zone” around you, where-ever you left off and then spawn in, these mission specific machines won’t be spawning in, thus breaking the mission.

Also, it wouldn’t make much sense for the “safe area” to be around you where-ever you left off.

And when thinking about it, i don’t recall any game at the moment, where you can Continue from the very spot you left off. Almost all games have checkpoints from where you start when you Continue your game.