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Vamrem, the trouble with asking experts is that sometimes they give a deeper, more complicated answer than wanted. As the "expert" who was asked, that is a fault that surely I've committed in the past.

As we advance through the game world, the game must remember what has happened to every object, defined in the permanent files, that can act or be interacted with, that we've encountered and left behind. If we bust open a loot barrel, it must remember that the barrel has gone. If we leave a loot barrel untouched, it must remember that the barrel is still there. Either way, the number of things the game has to remember increases, the further through the world we go.

Save files preserve what the game is remembering. (In single-player DS1 that is.) Just watch how the save files get bigger as we go through the game. From e.g. about 500 KB at Stonebridge to 3,500 KB in Castle Ehb.