“If done right, loading should only be necessary at the beginning, or when you die or teleport unexpectedly. “More sophisticated load systems like Naughty Dog’s load data continuously in the background, anticipating what the game will need,” he tells GamesRadar+. Right, but how did American Wasteland - which was very much a big budget title for its time - achieve a loading screen free experience all the way back in 2005? Flores elaborates on the tricks Neversoft pulled off to reach this ambitious goal post, explaining that “American Wasteland was the first Tony Hawk game that had streamed levels." "Load times get longer because art assets are bigger, more sophisticated, and require more memory" Alan Flores I think for smaller scale games, a loading screen-free experience is likely in the future, but for big sprawling epic game experiences that players are expecting I think loading will always play a part.”
Flores elaborates: “Even if we had some magical system with tons of memory that could load assets super quickly, the designers will still push that system to the limit so that loads will still be necessary.
Anthem’s long loading times aren’t in spite of its grand ambitions and giant budget, they’re precisely because of it. In essence, the processing capacity of hard drives can’t keep up with the rate at which games are growing in terms of size and scale.