Is This a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?
With SSDs being implemented in next-gen consoles, PlayStation5 and Xbox Series X, the load times will be cut to a fraction of what we experience today. While we can all agree that this is a great thing, something that people might not have thought about is how useful those load screens can be for some games in delivering small information.
Many games, especially large RPG titles such as The Witcher 3 and Skyrim heavily utilize load screens to deliver information. I personally find myself learning a lot about the lore during the downtime, little tidbits about the races, factions, and gods that exist within the realm. Of course, many games use load screens to give gameplay tips that players might not be aware of, or are simply in need of reminding.
Ryan Shah, a developer from the indie studio Kitatus and Friends brings up some good points regarding this small issue, saying, “(short load times) also does come with caveats. Where in things like in Fallout 4 and even the Soulsborne games a lot of important hints towards the story and stuff that’s hold during the loading screens, and tips on how to play because they’re very much in the design of ‘Here’s the game, just go and play’. However, if you start any loading, here’s some background, here’s some lore or here’s a tip for how to not suck. Whereas now they won’t have that blanket. They’re gonna have to think of another way of presenting that information in, which is interesting and not something people are really thinking about at the moment.”
I personally think this will be overall good for the games industry as devs are going to need to get a bit more creative in their ways of delivering boring information. The load screen tips felt like a bandaid anyways. Perhaps a more robust and interesting tutorial? Perhaps better delivered exposition through story? The only thing that I’d be concerned with is reminding the players of mechanics they have forgotten with tips. Well, I’m sure they’ll figure it out.
Source: WCCF Tech