Loading Screens Ruining the Story
Imagine you are reading the latest Stephen King, you’re near the end, the tension has been building the whole evening, the story has been leading to this moment since you turned the first page. You turn the page to find someone has inserted the critics reviews and book blurb in the middle of page 359! There are also tips on how to read a book effectively; “moisten your fingertips before you turn the page”. As though that wasn’t enough, someone’s stuck the next page together with chewing gum, so you spend a few minutes having to remove the gum before you can get on with the story. But you’ve lost the mood that the last few hours has been building, thus partially ruining your experience of the story.
The game chair points out that this is exactly what happens in video games, with alarming regularity.
Highlighted is the Prey demo, a great new game that builds up a thrilling story, but at crucial moments, a new level has to be loaded and your immersion in the story is shattered.
A much worse example I think is HL2 and in fact any game based on Valve’s Source engine. Source games use an “immersive world” where there are no normal levels, just one super huge one. But you still get load screens, and in fact you get them every few minutes, so it’s much worse. There you are cruising along in your sand-buggy elated at the speed and the fire fight you just won and suddenly the game pauses while it loads the next section.
In Valve’s defence they planned the load moments appropriately so as to minimse disruption, but it still sucks.
World of Warcraft only has a load screen very rarely, instead it loads all the content just before you get there. Unfortunately WoW doesn’t have an immersive story/scenario like Prey or HL2 do, so it doesn’t really benefit in that aspect.