Poll: Elevators or loading screens? Poll.

[EscapeGoat_v1legacy]

I don't mind either, as long as they're interesting. Hidden loading screens can be boring, like the elevators in Mass Effect, but some can be alright, like in the God of War games, where you're at least seeing some nicely-rendered scenery as you go.

On the other hand, loading screens are abrupt and can take ages to get past, which makes hidden loading more preferable, but some examples have pretty funky loading screens, like in Devil May Cry 3, where you could attack the loading screen.

 

[mjc0961]

Loading screens by far. They don't break immersion at all. It's when they try to hide them that immersion is broken. You want to use Mass Effect as an example? Those elevator loading sequences were bad because they frequently broke immersion rather than maintained it. After all, this is a universe where we have all kinds of fun new technology like space travel and guns that have seemingly infinite bullets. But we don't have any faster method of traveling between places in a structure than elevators slower than what you'd see in real life?! The fuck is up with that?

Now, loading screens on the other hand, they're nice and honest. Obviously you will still know it's loading because it tells you "Hi, I'm loading." And you know that no matter what, it has to load. But at least with a loading screen, they aren't making some aspect of the world become totally unnatural and unfitting with the rest of the game. No matter what, loading exists and it breaks immersion, but loading screens do it less than being in a high-tech future elevator for 2 minutes.

Proberly the best way to load a game i've played in was the Metroid Prime system

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Metroid Prime had a terrible method of loading the game. Shoot a door. Wait a minute for the door to finally open, during which you have nothing to do but remember that it's a GAME and a poorly written GAME at that if you have to sit here for a minute at every door while it loads. Bam, immersion broken.

Bottom line, if you're not going to be honest and use a loading screen, you had better make damn sure your load times are short. If you don't use loading screens but your load times aren't any shorter than a game that does use a loading screen, you're only breaking immersion by making the player stand there with their thumb up their ass during a gameplay segment as they wait for the world's unnaturally slow elevators or door opening mechanisms.

 

[Veloxe]

I would say loading screens if they have a progress bar.

This. I don't know why progress bars suddenly vanished from the face of the Earth but I liked them! At least they gave me a general idea of "You are about this close to playing again" instead of sitting their staring at a shiny loading screen wondering if I'm ever going to get to play again.

Otherwise just figure out a way to integrate the loading screen into gameplay (elevators or whatever).

 

[SalamanderJoe]

I prefer interesting loading screens, like DiRT2. Or Bayonetta. Bayonetta has very good loading screens mainly because you're still playing.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I choose elevators,especially the ones from Mass Effect 1.The time you were waiting to get to a level there would be dialogues between the party that you choose.

If that weren't included then I would probably go with loading screens instead,since they are faster.

 

[TimeLord]

I like the Ratchet and Clank loading screens. Basically it all it is is your ship flying towards the planet you are heading to. But it didn't feel like a loading screen at all.

 

[Woodsey]

I'd prefer the loading screens if they also weren't so long. I can't really tell why they're such an issue.

Dragon Age: Origins had the same problem (took me 5 minutes to load an area once - I timed it) but it was patched out eventually.

 

[funguy2121]

Well this is primarily about the Mass Effect series, other games have this problem aswell. As most people now in Mass Effect 1, Bioware attempted to hide loading screens by putting players in a lift/elevator playing some music/random news clip and taking the elevator ages to 'go up' whilst the game loaded. This recived some critisim as it took the elevator ages to go up. Therefore for Mass Effect 2, they got rid of them, and just went to loading screens with fancy graphics.

Personally I prefered Mass Effect 1. It kept you in the game, and some of the news clips were interesting. Proberly the best way to load a game i've played in was the Metroid Prime system, were you were put into reasonably reasonably small areas (although the size did vary and scale up when needed) with doors conencting, and you shot the door to open the next area, and the game loaded then. It kept you in the game and there were on long waiting time, the main disadvanatge of this was if you were entering a area that couldn't load in the time it took the door to open, you were left waiting, normally shooting the door. Not all games i've felt that try this do this well - Red Steel 2 for example did this, and the doors took forever to open, which rather defeated the point I felt. So what does the Escapist community prefer?

The problems you pointed out regarding the Prime games were very rare. And later games in the series used a lot more than just elevators to hide the loading times. I've never seen it done better. Other M, on the other hand, did the opposite. Since you didn't even have to shoot doors for them to open, Samus would walk through a door, take a couple of steps - and then everything would freeze. Just as soon as you got up to hit the reset button, thinking that a glitch had resulted from another line of shitty code, the game would tell you that it was loading. This would happen during a final fight.

So yeah, I'd rather Nintendo go back to Retro than re-team with Team Ninja for the new system's Metroid game.

Edit: Sorry, this happened during a firefight, not during the arcade/SNES classic Final Fight (Guy's a sissie!).

 

[Funky Flump]

Elevators but sometimes they glitched out and I had to restart my game

 

[Pickle72]

Games need an option (for PC only I would presume) to start loading the next level, DURING THE CURRENT LEVEL.
Considering how many people are moving to quad cores, ssd's and 4+ gigs of ram it shouldn't be too hard, at least in the near future anyway.
(Consoles would probably struggle a lot with this due to their tiiiny amount of ram, Maybe next gen consoles could do something like this)

Jak and Daxter (the first one) did pretty much this, and it was on the PS2.

 

[EllEzDee]

Mirror's Edge lifts were one of the reasons i fucking hated the game.

At least load screens display some kind of information, or hint. Though it does get old as fuck. I've memorised every single quote from the Total War games because of their load screens...

 

[uc.asc]

The transition experience in ME1 was superior to ME2 because of immersion. Walk onto the spaceship, fly somewhere, walk off of the spaceship. Walk on to an elevator, go somewhere, walk off of the elevator. It felt contiguous.

ME2 felt like maps separated by loading screens.

 

[Brandon237]

As comment number 3 mentioned (I missed the quote button and hit the reply by mistake), At least with an elevator you know when the game has crashed. Sometimes. Although the loading in Fallout NV makes perfect sense to me and is the most logical option so... I don't know.

 

[I Resurection I]

Elevators, I feel more immersed in the game when I don't have to put down my controller every time I leave an area.

 

[BoredDragon]

Loading screens break the flow of the game world that you are getting invested in. If you are sitting in an elevator, you feel as if you are still in the game world.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Elevators...or loading screens with tips.

Bayonetta beats them all, imo. Practice mode, ftw.

 

[Caligulove]

While I appreciated the loading screens in Mass Effect 2 being infographics of things going on or diagrams of shuttles taking off instead of a Loading Bar- I still liked the elevators in the first game a lot better. There were no screens to interrupt my immersion in the universe- even to how I would have to run back to the ship and disembark each time I docked or left a location.

Instead of getting rid of the elevators, I would have just gotten rid of the strange Triangle Formation of Awkward that you and your squad would be standing in the entire ride. If no one said anything it was like... "do you guys have to stand so close to me?" Could have had the squad pace around or some kind of special idle animation for elevators- even talking to each other in small quips- or hell! even an option to "press __ to skip" (which would give you the loading screen that ended up in the game)

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Have elevators but with way more different types of music, news items and conversations. They did get quite boring and repetitive like the Oblivion gossip but at least it was a step in the right direction immersion wise.

 

[Pakkie]

Jak and Daxter (the first one) did pretty much this, and it was on the PS2

Depends on the engine and the game/what it requires.
I.E. Try getting the xbox360/ps3 to preload a map for any Unreal Engine 3 game, it'll fail instantly.

Probably possible on a PC, depending on specs.