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Will Starfield have loading Screens?

  • Yes

    Votes: 1,238 93.2%
  • No

    Votes: 91 6.8%

  • Total voters
    1,329

plow

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,650
Bethesda games are some of my favourite games, so Starfield is my most hyped game of this year ( Pls come out this year ).

One thing that has been common on every Bethesda game are the loading screens as soon as you enter something. I played Skyrim first on my PS3, which meant that every house i entered needed nearly one minute loading. It was incredibly annoying. It got better with time and considering the hardware it had to run on, it was understandable. But then even Fallout 4 had the same "issue". While the loading times wheren't as long, it still had loading for every building they entered.

Now of course, some of it is surely due to the HDD being trash. But even then, there is games like Gothic 3 ( While perhaps not as big as Skyrim ) where able to create a loading free huge Open World, 10 years before Fallout 4. Some of it might also be due to not being able to do a stisfactory "door open" animation ( Gothic 3 had like 5 doors in total ).

So with all that, where do you think Starfield will land? Will it have loading Screens at all? Considering it might play in different planets, will the loading be limited to each time you enter a planet? Will you still need loading when entering buildings? Will there be no loading at all, meaning you can travel from one planet to another withouth loading?

Considering the game started development on Last Gen, i don't think the answer is as clear cut. Either way, i will enjoy every single second of it.
 

ghostcrew

The Shrouded Ghost
Administrator
Oct 27, 2017
30,375
I guess it'll be playable on PCs with HDDs so, yes, I'm gonna presume so.
 

Rygar 8Bit

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,899
Site-15
It has to run on PCs that have standard hdd so yeah it'll have loading screens. Highly doubt they'd have SSD as a requirement.
 

ArchLector

Member
Apr 10, 2020
7,588
Do hidden loading screens count? They will have those, I think but clearly should have upgraded their streaming tech to get rid of the obvious "loading screen".
 

Roytheone

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,163
Yes, but much less then in their games from previous gens. Also I expect there will very quickly be SSD only mods that will lower the number of loading screens.
 

Deleted member 68874

Account closed at user request
Banned
May 10, 2020
10,441
Yes. With how every thing is essentially an object in these games. I'm expecting loads for entering/exiting cities.

Really hope load screens for buildings are gone.
 
Last edited:

Fiery Phoenix

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,853
They will be there. To what extent is the question. I think for the first time we will actually see cities without walls, though.
 

Master_Funk

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,601
Probably fewer than before, but since its a space game, I'm expecting some of the mass-effect 'hidden loading screens' while exiting buildings or the ship.
 

Sambo

Member
Oct 28, 2017
324
UK
Skyrim on PC has mods to remove loading screens so you can go into cities seamlessly. If Starfield has load screens, chances are sooner or later they'll be mods to remove it.
 

HStallion

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
62,262
Bethesda games always feel a few generations behind. Star field 3 is gonna have loading screens on the Series Z. I'll just be glad if the game isn't another bug and glitch riddled mess.
 

HStallion

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
62,262
Let's hope the space stations don't still have skeletons and trash from a few hundred years ago filling every room.
 

Linus815

Member
Oct 29, 2017
19,823
Bethesda games always feel a few generations behind. Star field 3 is gonna have loading screens on the Series Z. I'll just be glad if the game isn't another bug and glitch riddled mess.

Not always. Morrowind and Oblivion were both cutting edge for their time. Skyrim was very good too. Sure, there were oddities and bugs carried all the way from Morrowind, but it certainly wasnt "generations behind", unless you played on a PS3, ofc.

Fallout 4 and 76 were really the big ones that felt outdated even on release.
 

Deleted member 93062

Account closed at user request
Banned
Mar 4, 2021
24,767
Bethesda games always feel a few generations behind. Star field 3 is gonna have loading screens on the Series Z. I'll just be glad if the game isn't another bug and glitch riddled mess.
Idk how true this is. For other games they don't have to worry about interactable objects, stuff outside of your current zone might as well not exist however Bethesda games have to remember the location of any object you interacted with and also what you've done to NPCs in any given location. I think people take very basic looks at Bethesda games and dismiss them as outdated but the fact is they're doing so much more than other open world games when it comes to interactbility.

In terms of the OP's question, apparently FO76 doesn't have loading screens for a lot of buildings. I could see with the game being current gen only and also on CE2, it maybe having one loading screen at the start and then not needing to loading buildings or something.
 

Javier23

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,904
They will be there. To what extent is the question. I think for the first time we will actually see cities without walls, though.
Could be totally misremembering, but I could swear Morrowind already had cities without walls that you could just walk in and out from any direction without loading screens.
Yes no, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim were way ahead of everything in the genre back then.

You could argue Fallout 4 and 76 were generation ahead sure.
Yeah, no, Gothic was doing stuff Morrowind wasn't back in the day. It had NPCs with actual schedules, for one, which TES didn't get until Oblivion, which was also then a step backwards from Morrowind in so many ways.
 

FellowTarnished

Alt account
Banned
Mar 8, 2022
3,240
I recently finished Fallout 76 and it ran terribly, was filled with bugs and had some of the most janky animations I've ever experienced in a big budget title. Oh and it had plenty of long loading screens even on an NVMe SSD. Needless to say I'm not expecting much from Starfield on a technical level.
 
Feb 21, 2022
2,030
Going back to FO4 and Skyrim after playing Elden Ring and BOTW was very, very rough. I would hope that they've made some very large improvements to their engine because by the time Starfield comes out it will be 7 years since FO4.
 

GrrImAFridge

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARYDOOS
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,681
Western Australia
Even assuming Bethesda intends to support HDD-based systems, there's no reason why it can't get around any potential read/seek speed issues by requiring a higher amount of RAM and tweaking the engine's data streaming capabilities accordingly. Even lowly DDR3-800 -- the bottom-of-the-barrel tier of a generation of RAM that was superseded almost a decade ago now -- offers more bandwidth than the peak read speed of the XSX's SSD.

It'd absolutely require some finesse, but the idea that HDD = loading screens isn't exactly black and white.

Edit: I misread the OP and thought the context was loading screens for on-world transitions (e.g. overworld -> city, a la Skyrim). It remains unclear the extent to which Starfield will mirror NMS in its seamless galactic scale, but my guess is that leaving/landing on a planet will trigger a loading screen of some sort (whether explicit or implied), regardless of platform. In any case, my above point still stands: there are ways to circumvent the limitations of mechanical hard drives.
 
Last edited:

HStallion

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
62,262
Not always. Morrowind and Oblivion were both cutting edge for their time. Skyrim was very good too. Sure, there were oddities and bugs carried all the way from Morrowind, but it certainly wasnt "generations behind", unless you played on a PS3, ofc.

Fallout 4 and 76 were really the big ones that felt outdated even on release.

I think there games are incredibly dated in several respects and have been for years like their incredibly stilted janky animations. Yeah there are a million objects lying around you can pick up but that's long since not been impressive to me.

Yes no, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim were way ahead of everything in the genre back then.

You could argue Fallout 4 and 76 were generation ahead sure.

Skyrim was an absolute mess on consoles at launch from my experience. It was a chore to play because of all the technical issues like many of their games in that period.


I think a lot of aspects of their games feel and look very dated and have for a while now.
 
Nov 14, 2017
4,928
Could be totally misremembering, but I could swear Morrowind already had cities without walls that you could just walk in and out from any direction without loading screens.
Yea, their tech absolutely supports it. It's always just been a memory consideration for consoles. There are even mods on PC that remove the loading walls for Oblivion, Skyrim, and I think all the Fallouts.

I absolutely think Starfield will have doors to walk up to where you have to push a button to enter and it will trigger a loading screen though.
 

arsene_P5

Prophet of Regret
Member
Apr 17, 2020
15,438
I think Starfield will have loading screen when loading the save and then for new planets as well as fast travels over a long distance. I suspect those to be very short, but still there. I hope I am wrong on the planet loading screen, because I'd love to be able to just fly to a planet like in Star Citizen.
 

Koukalaka

Member
Oct 28, 2017
9,325
Scotland
Yes, but I suspect they'll be insanely quick on XSX/XSS outside of the initial load. I haven't played it for a bit, but I found the current-gen Skyrim patch made load times pretty snappy.
 
Oct 27, 2017
3,669
I'd be shocked if not. The complexity and requirements of their open world games are far beyond anything their competitors attempt, and for good reason; the volume of objects, NPCs (on routines, who can be interacted with), and interactive elements spread throughout their worlds which are tracked and have their state stored is an incredible technical feat and there's a reason no other developer tries to replicate it on that type of scale - it's no surprise there's massive difficulty in shifting away from their engine with what it lets them accomplish. Particularly given what they'll likely support, I can't imagine there being no loading screens.
 

NightShift

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,039
Australia
Of course. There will be fast travel and Bethesda games have so much going on that I'm sure they'll still need to seperate interiors from the overworld.

I just hope it's more like Demon's Souls which didn't really have loading screens, more like a transitionary animation.
 

Ales34

Member
Apr 15, 2018
6,455
Fallout 76 already has a lot less loading screens than the older games and they're very short, so I think it will improve on it further. But I don't think they'll be gone completely considering that the game will be played on PC and HDDs.
 

jackie daytona

Alt Account
Banned
Feb 15, 2022
1,240
Is there any confirmation the world won't be seamless?

I was really hoping with the extra ram and SSD we might see no load times aside from initial launch.
 

Nesther

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,057
Switzerland
Games 100% running on a slightly modified Gamebyro/Creation engine that needs to work on HDD devices so of course it's gonna have load times.
 

spman2099

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,893
Yes. There is going to be very obvious loading.

Bethesda games always feel a few generations behind. Star field 3 is gonna have loading screens on the Series Z. I'll just be glad if the game isn't another bug and glitch riddled mess.
lol
I mean, you are on the money. But the BGS fans aren't going to take kindly to this type of brutal honesty.
 

Deleted member 93062

Account closed at user request
Banned
Mar 4, 2021
24,767
Yes. There is going to be very obvious loading.


lol
I mean, you are on the money. But the BGS fans aren't going to take kindly to this type of brutal honesty.
I mean, find me another game with the interactability of a Bethesda game and I'll consider it brutual honestly. Most open world games, and even linear ones, are like museums. They're made to walk around and not touch anything. There aren't many games that I can pickpocket guards and have whatever item I gave them or took away from them still there a long time later…. And that's for a 2011 game.

Unless of course when we talk about generations we literally just mean graphics and how pretty a game looks.
 

spman2099

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,893
I mean, find me another game with the interactability of a Bethesda game and I'll consider it brutual honestly. Most open world games, and even linear ones, are like museums. They're made to walk around and not touch anything. There aren't many games that I can pickpocket guards and have whatever item I gave them or took away from them still there a long time later…. And that's for a 2011 game.

Indeed. That is the thing those games do. You have to give up literally everything to have it, and the actual impact it has is minute, but for some people, that kind of thing rocks their world.
 

arsene_P5

Prophet of Regret
Member
Apr 17, 2020
15,438
Games 100% running on a slightly modified Gamebyro/Creation engine that needs to work on HDD devices so of course it's gonna have load times.
"From rendering to animation to pathing to procedural generation [...] I don't want to say 'everything,' but it's a significant overhaul," Howard told host James Batchelor of GamesIndustry.biz. "It's taken us longer than we would have liked, but it's going to power everything we're doing with Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6. When people see the results, they'll hopefully be as happy as we are with what's on the screen and also how we can go about making our games."
www.polygon.com

Starfield’s game engine will be a leap forward, Bethesda says

Still no word on when Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG might launch

One of the most interesting pieces of information was the sheer scale of the creation engine changes, with Howard stating that "the overhaul on our engine is probably the largest we've ever had, maybe even larger than Morrowind to Oblivion".
www.nme.com

Todd Howard on ‘Starfield’ game engine: “It’s a significant overhaul”

Todd Howard has revealed more information regarding two upcoming Bethesda games, ‘Starfield’ and ‘The Elder Scrolls VI’.
lol

I mean, you are on the money. But the BGS fans aren't going to take kindly to this type of brutal honesty.
Quote me when you find a RPG with the same world interaction of Elder Scrolls.