Less a design choice and more a technical feat, but I’m hoping that we start to see the phase-out of loading screens and more of a push toward seamless gameplay. I was watching a video from the newest Spiderman and it was pretty damn cool. Practical for all games? Maybe not for a while. But I certaintly would like to see more investment in leveraging improvements in disk and memory capabilities going forward.
I would guess that loading screens will never fully go away. Especially on consoles, where everyone has a fixed set of hardware resources, and the developer knows what that is and is aiming at optimizing for that target, being able to fully remove one area from memory before loading the next gives you potentially twice as much memory to work with. That’s a big-enough gain that game developers are not going to want to give that up, since the alternative is being able to only have half (or less, if multiple areas are near each other) the complexity for their areas. If hardware gets more memory, at least some developers are going to want to increase the complexity of the environments they have rather than eliminating load screens. Otherwise, their scenes are going to look significantly-worse than their competitors who have loading screens.
There may be specific games that eliminate loading screens, at least other than the initial startup of the game. Loading screens might be shorter, or might just consist of a brief fade. But I don’t think that we’ll ever reach the point that all developers decide that that tradeoff to fully-eliminate loading screens is one that they want to make.
The shift from optical media and rotational drives to SSDs has reduced the relative cost of loading an area. But it hasn’t eliminated it.
I think that a necessary condition for loading screens going away is basically a shift to a memory architecture where only a single type of storage exists – that is, you don’t have fast-but-volatile primary storage and slow-but-nonvolatile secondary storage, but only a single form of non-volatile storage that is fast-enough to run from directly. We don’t have that technology today. Even then, it might not kill loading screens, since you might want to have different representations (more-efficient but less-compact for the area surrounding the character, and less-efficient but more-compact for inactive areas).
See, I figured consoles might actually be more likely to cross that finish line first. My logic is that the controlled platforms would give developers a) potential access to a more bare-metal style of storage medium maybe not practical on PC, and b) a consistent performance target (no needing to account for people using those pesky hard drives!)
I feel like we’re maybe already starting to see this with the PlayStation 5, but it probably also depends on how much work actually goes into optimization for these development teams.
I think the key here is integrating loading into the gameplay. The old Metroid trick of having the player traverse a basic hallway while the game loads the next area in the background is a good, if basic, example.
Most loading screens are just more of a nuisance than anything, but if they don’t remove them, maybe they could get creative in how they work/look?
The main series Danganronpa games did loading screens in a very creative way that made them feel special. The room and all the things inside would start popping up and build the room as it loaded in. More loading screens like that would be lovely if they aren’t able to remove them.
Love it too! One that has been my top listen count for years is The Witcher 3 OST. The use of some slav traditional instruments was nothing I’ve ever heard like before, and it resonated a lot with the story. Special mention to:
The Wolf and The Swallow for giving me the chills everytime I listen to it
Hail To Caranthir also has something special to it.
Although neither tracks are part of the published albums :/
The spin-off Strikers has the absolutely brain-infecting Love te Wonderland
However, I’ve recently finished Cassette Beasts, and it’s a really really strong contender. Imagine creating an OST piece as amazing as Same Old Story, then going back and adding lyrics for it for when you are fused. And then there’s the even more phenomenal Shot in the Dark (only linking the lyrics version here).
If I had to pick one... Katana ZERO. Nice mix of genres, really emotional soundtrack, lots of synthwave type electronic, all of the artists who contributed songs really put work and passion in there, they work excellently for the game, and are awesome to listen to in their own right outside of the game.
Ray tracing isn’t worth how horrible TAA can make some games look, imo. We’re getting close, but it’s been years of this and I’m so tired of choosing between ghosting and jaggies. Or worse, some games that just force the ghosting TAA onto you anyway (cyberpunk you fuck)
RT being a thing + deferred rendering for larger and more complex scenes pcaused rendering engines to change in ways that make AA work less good
Things like MSAA are now basically worthless due to these rendering changes, leading to TAA proliferation as it’s the best AA for it’s cost in modern engines
MSAA is pretty old at this point and the reason it doesn’t work well anymore is also because there’s now a lot of details in games that doesn’t require more geometry and that’s a good thing. That’s why we now have AA that doesn’t rely on the actual geometry. TAA isn’t the only one though, my favorite is SMAA and FXAA is honestly not bad either (even though it seems to depend a lot on the implementation). Both of these don’t have ghosting and they detect edges that aren’t actual geometry.
Yeah, I’m aware MSAA is old but I’m comparing current AA to that because it was an output that matches what I want from games now in looks, if that makes sense
Those games that allow SMAA or FXAA I will 100% use one of those options, even if the implementation is hot dogshit (I seriously hate ghosting), but so many games either force TAA (again, fucking cyberpunk) or only offer TAA or nothing (or TAA and upscaling, which works but isn’t a great solution, imo)
I wish I didn’t notice this shit, my wife thinks I’m insane for being bothered by them and I’m so jealous of her for it
Or at the very least, the option to choose subtitles right away at the very start of the game.
I fucking hate when games have intro scenes or full chapters where you can’t pause or bring up the menu and you cannot turn on subtitles and I just don’t play games without subtitles (when the game has dialogue).
I don’t like when games just throw you into the action without giving you the chance to tweak settings before (or even until completing the tutorial) in the first place. Like, why?
I mean, if a game publisher wants to try to offset the game price via adding advertisements or to try to market the game via your social network or whatever, fine. I’m not going to try to tell game publishers how to do their business.
However, as a game consumer, I’d like to be informed before I buy a game whether game publishers are doing this in a game before I purchase it, so that I have the opportunity to opt out of buying it. Personally, I’d rather that they at least offer a “premium” version without stuff like this; the mobile video game industry often does an “adware and a premium no-ads” model.
Steam defaults to notifying people on your friends list what games you are playing, though they let you turn it off. I doubt that any user wants that on, all else held equal, other than the specific case of multiplayer games where users play multiplayer games with their friends. It might help a game publisher market their game to other users, but I’d rather just pay whatever extra it takes to make up the difference. I’m not going to say that it’s worth it to every user to pay a little more to maintain game immersion, but it is to me.
I always appreciate when the game allows you to choose how far the camera is from your character, and when they let you pick if you want to play first of third person.
Wildlands is still a great game. It is set in 2019 Bolivia, you work to take down cartels one region at a time. It’s fun both singleplayer and co-op for up to 4 players.
Breakpoint is set on some semi-futuristic Elon Musk type fantasy technology island with drones driving and flying around. The map itself is large and varied, it seems like a South Pacific type environment. Breakpoint initially did a lot of things worse than Wildlands, such as not having AI squadmates and needing to level up your weapons. But since then the game has been updated with a lot of options to fix almost everything, and even add a lot more content. It’s a lot to get used to but ultimately still a lot of fun.
But first play Wildlands, it is fun right away, and more realistic overall.
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