Horizon Forbidden West has "virtually no loading screens"

Little to no loading screens? Sounds good. Put that quantum SSD to work.

But seriously, having no loading screens is going to be awesome. No more waiting unless you hit pause. ;)

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ps5s-horizon-forbidden-west-has-virtually-no-loadi/1100-6478665/

From the article:

Sony's Horizon Zero Dawn sequel, Forbidden West, will make use of the PlayStation 5's SSD to help improve load times dramatically. According to game director Mathijs de Jonge, there will be "virtually no loading screens" in Forbidden West.

"With the PS5's SSD, there will be virtually no loading screens," he said in a new video from PlayStation. "In an open-world game like Horizon Forbidden West, if you open up the map and fast travel from one end to the other, restarting from a check-point will be super fast. And when you boot up the game, you're right there--in the action."

I cant recall Zero Dawn having loading screens.

Um, it did, dude.

I would love minimal loading screens, but i'll definitely wait for the hype to die down. TBH, I don't really remember the original's, but it's been a few years.

The first game had almost none. Moving freely in the world had no loading. The asset streaming in the game was top notch and didn't waste time reloading already loaded assets, so depending on your proximity, fast travel can be instant. So, this news should be expected.

Open world games with no loading screen is actually something I look forward to next gen. now the only thing left to complete it is From Soft announces Bloodborne 2 with bigger world, more trick weapons, more monsters to hunt, more boss to kill, more secrets to uncover, more path to take, more shortcut to find, more ways to die, more npc dialogue etc etc etc.

@subspecies: I'm talking transitioning through areas, not loading saves. That I don't care about that at all, as long as its not ridiculously long.

@Pedro: I mean, it was quick, but it still had screens. Horizon is just the start. We're going to be seeing this with more and more next gen games. No loading, or else next to no loading, is gonna be awesome.

That's cool. Were there loading screens in the first one? I'm sure there were, but can't remember any

Hard to believe games like HZD:FW and RE8 will have no loading times considering the graphics upgrade. Next gen sounds lit.

Whut? Had tons of loading screens on fast-travel lol.

Yeah I was scratching my head, too, lol.

The bold is your friend.

@Pedro: In other words, little to no loading across the board is a big difference.

@Pedro: You said the first game had almost none. It had plenty.

Sounds overblown. Played many games with virtually no loading screens.

@freedomfreak: Many open-world games? Doubt it.

Will it be 60fps, tho? They better not come in here telling me that no loading screens are more important than 60fps. I don't care waiting 5-10sec loadings, that's not a big deal, but 30fps is a problem, a big one.

@Juub1990: Aside from the initial load and perhaps fast travel, sure. I'll count that as virtually none.

Good, because the ones the first one had were loooooooong.

@freedomfreak: Except you fast travel several hundred times in the game so how the heck can that count a none?

@Juub1990: I don't fast travel.

Such a silly talking point, seriously. There's like 10 things I want than to improve on this sequel before loading times .Can't even tell if the loading times were bad or good in the original game. Plus I don't use fast travel.

@freedomfreak: With that giant-ass map?

@Juub1990: I don't remember much of Horizon because I didn't like it.

Shouldn’t this be expected?

On the Witcher 3 for PC if you have a average SSD you can fast travel and it takes only a couple seconds to load. That’s from a game not designed around SSD’s. So I’m not exactly sure how this is big news? This should be expected. We have been told with SSD’s in these consoles we will have little to no loading once in game.

Then you wont have to wait for ~10 seconds of loading sometimes. Rejoice.

"It's gonna be awesome!". LOL.

Of all things you can hype, this has to be one of the silliest.

840 SSD and little loading times

There are better SSD's out there now never mind at end of year.

For the amount of times you fast travel in an open world 1-2 seconds less is not a game changer.

Of all the things Sony could have spent money on, making an SSD that does fast travel 1-2 seconds faster than an already existing SSD was the last thing it needed.

Should have invested it in a design team instead of asking Homer Simpson to design a console.

But since we just love licking Sony's balls, let's act like it is a total game changer.

The SSD will save us....

lol :P

Virtually none = some = Sony’s claim of zero loading is false

You live by the SSD you die by the SSD

HaH

@Litchie: True, but can that SSD draw triangles directly on the screen?

I barely use fast-travel and yeah, I was on Pedro's side until you brought it up when using fast-travel.

But in another way, I ain't complaining :)

It will be a bit less annoying to die, which is a good thing. But the more important use of the SSD is if you will be able to move faster through the world. This could be awesome with flying mounts and what not!

Pretty much this.

If people can see behind the marketing words by now then they are willfully ignorant... Its the same as the "up to" before the 4K/120Hz.

@davillain-: How can you guys not use it when often times you have objectives halfway across that enormous map lol?

Like I said, I love open-world games and I try not to use fast-travel as much as I can and I have bad habits of exploring stuff in larger open-worlds such as RDR2, Witcher 3, Spider-Man PS4, you name it.

I hate bull rushing open-world games, I like exploring ;)

Good one them, at least they used 'virtually' this time.

I don't think I fast traveled once the whole game. Guess I missed that dubious pleasure. World was so fun to traverse (woulda been better with botw physics, but)

I don't remember many, if any loading screens in the original HZD so this is not surprising. Also not surprised this will be a 2021 release as much as I would like for it to be a launch title.

You know you've reached the point of diminishing returns when this is what developers get excited about.

Honestly, loading screens don't bug me. Never really have, be it now (on a sweet SSD) or then (on an HDD) or way back then (with floppies).

No, that's a lie, in fact ... unless it's something very noticeable, it won't change the experience that much ... the first Horizon had very few Loading Screens ... so please, don't hype useless features like this one specially on a game that by nature looks interesting enough.

So, what are you going to say when other games have little to no loading screens?

No need to answer.

People have bad memories. Fast traveling in this game took a long time. Sometimes a min.

Seriously. People are freakin' crazy sometimes, lol.

Nothing ... i'm not going to say something because it's mostly a useless feature ... i couldn't care any less if a game takes 40 seconds or 5 to load ... i want the game to be good and fun to play.

Yes, heavy loading can disrupt a game ... but only when the game is poorly optimized like we saw on Anthem, but that's on the devs, not on the console.

Honestly, i would feel ashamed of myself if i ever got a console because "it has virtually no loading" instead of being a good console with great games.

No need to answer.

(-1 point for lack of originality)

During fast travel and I think when you died.