Seems kind of like the game is just suffering from reactionaries, but I definitely don’t put that much stock in critic reviews these days either.
Seems kind of like the game is just suffering from reactionaries, but I definitely don’t put that much stock in critic reviews these days either.
It’s not that loading screens are slow (I run on SSD), it’s that it’s loading screens everywhere. Want to enter a building? There’s a loading screen for that. Enter your ship? Loading screen. Launch to orbit? Loading. Travel to another planet’s orbit? Loading. Land on a planet? Oh loading, again.
At least in Skyrim and Fallout 4, you can have a seamless overworld experience. In Starfield, it’s all loading screens.
But those last like one second or less for me, so I don’t even notice them. The only one that annoys me is the take-off and landing ones because those are cutscenes.
Plus, you can do all of those actions you just mentioned with only one loading screen. You just go to your map and click where you want to go on any planet in any system, and as long as you aren’t in a cave or anything, you will fast travel from wherever you are to the location on the new planet with only one loading screen.
I also hate the ship launch and landing loading screens. The exiting and entering loading for ships are justifiable as ship interiors are customizable and are unloaded for performance. The problem is, loading screens still adds up. For example:
spoiler
The rescue Barrett quest is a recent quest I did that illustrates this. From the lodge, you can probably fast travel to the mining outpost directly? (Haven’t tested fast travel in interiors), so that’s +1 loading screen. Then you exit your ship (+1 loading screen). Talk to Lin, and enter one of the buildings to check the comms relay thingy (+1 loading screen). Find three power cells, one inside the comms relay building, one outside (+1), and the last one in another building (+1). You exit that other building, (+1), enter the comms relay building (+1), fix the relay, exit the comms relay building (+1), talk to Lin. At this point we’ve had 8 loading screens, and this is like 1/3rd into the quest.
All in all, it feels like a series of interiors and set pieces connected by loading screens, not a series of interiors and set pieces connected by a seamless world. Again, previous titles also had a lot of loading screens, but at least they had a seamless overworld that you can explore without experiencing one loading screen.
Yes, from the lodge, you can fast travel to the mining outpost directly. About a 1 second load time for me, and I’m there. I wouldn’t even notice the load time.