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[MasterCornholio]

The slums chapter is fucking atrocious with the slow 'we're hiding a load time here' stuff.

As someone said above, FFVII R is the one big notable game in recent years that made this trope very obvious.

I appreciated TLoU 2's approach where load times were hidden behind cut-scenes so you never experience a lul in your first run through. But if you are replaying the game and skip cut-scenes, you realize just how damn long the game needs to load from black. Some times it's as long as the cut-scenes that are used to mask it.

I have a feeling they don't need to do that with the PS5 version since the loading is insanely fast in it. Of course since it was originally developed for HDDs (ex PS4) we have to deal with it.

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Fanboys on twitter are trying to make a new Craig meme on Ragnraok lol.

I feel fsirry for them then, lmao

Edit: people is gaming forums are wrong about stuff? I’m shocked…shocked!

 

[RoadHazard]

It's the price to pay for a "Seamless" experience without fade to black load screens.

I'm talking about games made for the new consoles. They don't need that.

 

[Fbh]

Its weird how SSD's as standard on consoles have gone from a paradigm changing step forward in gaming to "using HDD is not affect our game design" after more and more devs have continued releasing cross gen games.

Remember how it was impossible to have flying mounts in horizon without a SSD, lol?

 

[Northeastmonk]

GoW3 on PS3 was when I first noticed it. His shoulder armor made it enjoyable. All I think about is GoW3 whenever a game does it.

Its weird how SSD's as standard on consoles have gone from a paradigm changing step forward in gaming to "using HDD is not affect our game design" after more and more devs have continued releasing cross gen games.

Remember how it was impossible to have flying mounts in horizon without a SSD, lol?

Having under a minute of time for a big AAA game to completely load is crazy even if I’ve used SSD’s for many years now. I don’t see how it hasn’t except game devs are running their tools and engines for days, weeks on end. How many reboots do they do? Lol

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Its weird how SSD's as standard on consoles have gone from a paradigm changing step forward in gaming to "using HDD is not affect our game design" after more and more devs have continued releasing cross gen games.

Remember how it was impossible to have flying mounts in horizon without a SSD, lol?

Devs never even once said this was impossible without an SSD. That’s just forum fud.

 

[qthaumaturge]

Various "sealing the entrance" mechanics, no matter how exactly implemented, are absolutely needed for any stealth game.
Otherwise either your enemies need to be made much stupidier or you can cheese areas by running through (see MGS1/2/3).
It's not about loading, it's about AI and path finding.
Keeping all the enemeys loaded and engaged on 100% of the map is unrealistic. And dropping them after some radius leads to easy cheese.

 

[DeepEnigma]

They should make it like this.

I've never suffered from anxiety in any shape or form, but this video made me feel uncomfortable.

I never understood these people. This is a whole other batshit insane level of “thrill seeking.”

 

[A Most Virtuous Cat]

You have to do something. Platter drives are that slow. The cracks are definitely better than loading screens.

As for FF7R, it's only really obnoxious in the first chapter. They hide it better in the later chapters.

I agree, they are needed for last gen consoles, but devs should put some effort in the current gen port. Maybe make some small level design tweaks here and there.

 

[TGO]

From what I've played of Plague it's the doors you lock that are the load screens not so much the cracks.
Pop into Photo mode and you'll see.

 

[Swift_Star]

Not him but I honestly prefer zones separated by loading screens. I hate when devs assume I'm too stupid to notice their overused tricks to maintain cinematic immersion. No surprise the biggest culprits are those making the immersive on-rails games. I'm not sure if this is also due to loading but every climbing scene that is me literally just holding forward while writers drop exposition annoys me too. We didn't have this problem before 7th gen.

Those games are usually high rated and sell a lot so I guess they’re right and you’re not.

 

[remember_spinal]

the funniest thing about this criticism is you know it will never be used for any future games again. I can’t wait for people to play Resident Evil 4 remake, Callisto Protocol, and Dead Space Remake and never mention them

 

[K2D]

These explanations reads like devs jerking themselves off.. whatever - there used to be a time where these transitions lasted upwards of 15 seconds. As long as they are short and or skipable I don't care.

 

[adamsapple]

the funniest thing about this criticism is you know it will never be used for any future games again. I can’t wait for people to play Resident Evil 4 remake, Callisto Protocol, and Dead Space Remake and never mention them

If they do, you can tell them that it's not masking load times, it's there for a multitude of design purposes.

 

[jroc74]

Who knows, maybe some people are really sick of this? And the fact that this discussion is happening as GoW is about to release is because very high-profile releases should be held to a higher standard and maybe find alternative solutions to old problems?
Why should we go by the assumption that “dev I like very much says this is very handy, so if they use this it’s the best there is and who am I to complain?”

But no, of course the defence force are all about “muh immersion” and “so what award-winning game did you develop again, mate?”

The best thing is that the thread is clearly about damage control, as of course this is right on cue with GoW releasing. But somehow this is being turned around to make some others sound like ignorant crybabies with no first-party games to play that have nothing better to do than find flaws in the upcoming PS GOTY contender…

I’ll wait for you all in the inevitable “there’s no squeezing through cracks in Tears of the Kingdom” thread.
I’ll have my popcorn ready

Spoiler

I swear Nintendo, if there’s a single loading crack in TOTK…

Metroid Dread had some elevators between major levels tho...I was shocked because I wasnt expecting it.

I dont know how its done in BotW, but if they try to do anything different than BotW...it may happen.

Might be Link climbing is the loading. Who knows.

the funniest thing about this criticism is you know it will never be used for any future games again. I can’t wait for people to play Resident Evil 4 remake, Callisto Protocol, and Dead Space Remake and never mention them

Dont have to wait until then..see how its barely a complaint for A Plague's Tale Requiem...

 

[SafeOrAlone]

More processing power would certainly negate the need for these annoying speedbumps on game design.

Then, if developers still want to use them, it's their own funeral.

I mean, maybe one or two times, for cinematic purposes, but when it's a gateway between sections of a level, it becomes obnoxious.

 

[ReBurn]

They try and kill the hype of every Playstation exclusive since 2020. Add that to shill reviewers and its pretty obvious

Ragnarok is going to be tricky for the warrior tribes because people want it to be GOTY but it is also crossgen so it must also be holding back true next gen gaming. Memeing on the cross gen haters who simp for Ragnarok is going to be Twitter sport for some time to come.

 

[Physiognomonics]

Ok this reminds me the:

"We prefer 30fps because it's more cinematic" and suddenly almost all games have a 60fps (or 120fps) mode when console CPU is allowing it.

 

[Isa]

I don't like them. It was a neat novelty since the PS3 but I'm tired of it. Going through any game, A Plague Tale or anything else for that matter, if I end up in one I immediately sigh. The whole funneling players to and fro I get, probably helps keep game design more organized and work out bugs and aid in moving the story along, but I'd rather have cutscenes over walkie-talkie sections, and all of it reminds me of fairly archaic game design. Its not so different than say the OG Resident Evil, sectioned areas throughout the mansion with various encounters. If anything it makes me think the old ways were perhaps a bit better in conveying to the player what the game designer wanted, whereas now so many games have a "hit R3 or whatever button to look at the important element/scripted thing". Lately I've found myself not looking at the things the game wants me to since I'm accustomed to taking my time exploring and looking at all the stuff in the world.

Perhaps because I'm getting old, but I kind of prefer the older game design schools of thought and practice compared to the current era. I'm looking forward to the next evolution in storytelling and game design. It's like the current version of a beat 'em up where you have to clear the area of foes and the timer is counting down and the "Go!" warning pops up even if you're trying to pickup an item or food for health. I dunno man, I think most games are just pretty 3D versions of older methods of crafting. Not that that is bad per se, I just think that everyone is going to have their preferred types. Mine are RE games, Immersive sims, Rpgs(Jrpgs mainly) and visual novels since I get to the meat without all the filler with often better more unique stories.

That's my rant, if I never have to see another crevice I have to shimmy through I'll live happy. I don't care the game, it sucks. I'll add to my list of annoyances games that forcefully slow down the player to a slow walk to dump exposition. I'd rather a cutscene than take away my freedom of movement. A least I can skip a cutscene, its one of the main reasons I rarely replay modern games. My time is exceptionally limited and my backlog huge, so I often weigh out the things I liked about a game before booting it up again and things that bother me are a huge detractor.

 

[Umbasaborne]

Elden ring is one beautiful seamless world full of expansive views and land scapes that doesnt make you squeeze through a single crack in the wall

 

[remember_spinal]

Elden ring is one beautiful seamless world full of expansive views and land scapes that doesnt make you squeeze through a single crack in the wall

Neither does horizon, because they are open world games

 

[Knightime_X]

They should have 2 options:
1. Stare at black screen waiting it to load.
2. Play the game
I mean c'mon.

 

[qthaumaturge]

Elden ring is one beautiful seamless world full of expansive views and land scapes that doesnt make you squeeze through a single crack in the wall

Yeah, and the monster AI is so smart there!

 

[adamsapple]

They should have 2 options:
1. Stare at black screen waiting it to load.
2. Play the game
I mean c'mon.

To be honest, in some cases a quicker black screen is preferable.

EG, the PS1 Resident Evil games and Silent Hill 1.

The RE games have the iconic door load animations, yes they're great but you really want to be able to skip them if you're replaying. Silent Hill games often have a quicker black-out than the door animations.

 

[balls of snow]

?

Silly comment.

It’s only ND and SM overusing this.

Respawn and Coalition would like to have a word.

 

[SLB1904]

Elden ring is one beautiful seamless world full of expansive views and land scapes that doesnt make you squeeze through a single crack in the wall

Yeah it only funnels through corridors and elevator rides.

Elden ring is cool but that ain't it chief

 

[It's all in the wrist]

Long elevator rides vs cracks. What's worse?

 

[remember_spinal]

Long elevator rides vs cracks. What's worse?

 

[DeepEnigma]

the funniest thing about this criticism is you know it will never be used for any future games again. I can’t wait for people to play Resident Evil 4 remake, Callisto Protocol, and Dead Space Remake and never mention them

Just like single player cinematic adventures will be all the rage too.

Walking sims, babysitter simulators, etc etc.

Feels good that people can finally find love for them.

 

[Knightime_X]

To be honest, in some cases a quicker black screen is preferable.

EG, the PS1 Resident Evil games and Silent Hill 1.

The RE games have the iconic door load animations, yes they're great but you really want to be able to skip them if you're replaying. Silent Hill games often have a quicker black-out than the door animations.

Old re games loaded few very low res, low quality pictures, low poly characters and a few set pieces if any.
Newer games today need to load more data than the entirety of those games even had, total.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

whatever.

only thing that annoys me is when i lose control of the camera and it's not a cutscene.

 

[RoadHazard]

Its weird how SSD's as standard on consoles have gone from a paradigm changing step forward in gaming to "using HDD is not affect our game design" after more and more devs have continued releasing cross gen games.

Remember how it was impossible to have flying mounts in horizon without a SSD, lol?

Fast flying mounts would have been possible if the game didn't have to work on HDDs. The ones in the game are slow as fuck.

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Elden ring is one beautiful seamless world full of expansive views and land scapes that doesnt make you squeeze through a single crack in the wall

ah yeah...what an amazingly optimized game that is. So much so that some websites advised PS5 users to download the PS4 version if they wanted stable framerates, lmao.

 

[SmokedMeat]

I’ve never had a problem with it. People get upset over the most minor things.

 

[Gudji]

ah yeah...what an amazingly optimized game that is. So much so that some websites advised PS5 users to download the PS4 version if they wanted stable framerates, lmao.

It blows my mind that from still hasn't got any proper shit from that.

 

[kirby007]

WELL ACKCHUALLY its just TECHNICALLY

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

Yeah those excuses are just bad design decisions.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Devs should keep doing what they've been doing and not breaking us away from the immersion of a game. The future does not need to be RE1 style doors. I get the aesthetic and whatever HW limitations presented that design choice but this is 2022/23 now.

 

[Griffon]

Why does this shit even matter? Why does it bother some people to go between a crack for 4 sec. Like seriously, at this point we are just looking for little things to complaign.

Nobody would have noticed if it just happened in a game or two. But it happens so often in games that it feels really odd.

Having to squeeze through a standing gap is the sort of thing that feels like it should be a pretty rare occurrence in stories, having it happen in literally everything is noticeably weird.

 

[LRKD]

Where were the articles about this "overused" mechanic until now?

Video game journalists don't actually play video games, so it took 'em a whole decade to catch up on the problem. Lots of people have been complaining about it.

 

[Trazyn the Infinite]

Howling with laughter here.

Always makes me laugh when randomers on the internet think they know better than the developers with shelves full of GOTY, technical achievement awards, game design awards and level design awards.

Ah yes, because as we all know - Reviewers are 100% trustworthy and their rewards mean something!

Truly howling with laughter myself.

I'm replying Uncharted 4 on PC and it must be the most scripted and restrictive "game" ever made. Or close to it. Just in the opening "boat" section:

1. You can steer your boat away from the island, it doesn't matter, once it's hit with big explosion you will teleport close to it;
2. You can't move your camera left or right when game decides to spawn out of thin air the big boat that rams you;
3. When you close to the island you can't hit any rocks, boat will steer by itself away from them;
4. Enemy boats explode in scripted fashion, 0 physics involved. It doesn't matter how fast are you going or where the collision is;
5. When Drake ends up in the water and is about to be run over by a boat, there's a button prompt to dive in the water. You don't have to press it, game does it for you;
6. Once you emerge from the water, your boat is teleported next to the island and all enemy boats are despawned, there are only light sources on the horizon. You can just float on the water and chill, nobody is going to attack you;
7. If you decide to swim away from your boat, it explodes and it's game over (it looks ridiculous).

And there's more. And that's only 5 minute long opening section. It's all smoke and mirrors. The whole game is like that. It's not interactive entertainment. It's barely interactive entertainment and I'm sick of it.

Exactly.

But games use all of those and more. Squeeze spaces is just an encompassing term for a transition into a new area.

GOW probably only had literal squeezing through a cave wall a handful of times
Other times its opening a big gate or a bridge collapsing.

Some use diverse methods - GoW for example as you pointed out. Then we have games like MidGenRefresh mention who completely fail to utilize them and instead take control away from the player. Or Final Fantasy 7 Remake that was mentioned by a few others (despite loving that game myself, it was infuriating with how common and often that gimmick was used).

 

[Umbasaborne]

ah yeah...what an amazingly optimized game that is. So much so that some websites advised PS5 users to download the PS4 version if they wanted stable framerates, lmao.

Feels fine on series x with vrr

 

[AJUMP23]

The op “well actually“.

but it is fun info.

 

[JayK47]

I've always hated this mechanic as well as others like it. It is one of the main reasons I prefer open world games that do not have this. I think all of my favorite games do not have this mechanic. So I must really dislike it, or games with poor design use it.

 

[SteelCurtain 59]

Seems like BS, maybe they just really grew to like that mechanic but there are countless ways to accomplish everything that "squeezing through a crack" is able to do without having to have those in the game. Like it doesn't matter because we're all used to them at this point, but if devs wanted to put like 2 seconds into thinking about an alternative we could have them removed from every future game with no loss of function or quality.

 

[Hendrick's]

They aren’t JUST about loading levels, they have a multitude of design purposes that aren’t going to simply go away because of SSD’s on current gen systems. Also, right now im playing Plague Tale Requiem, a current gen only game, and what do you know there are tons of ‘squeeze through cracks’ being used the same way Kurt is talking about here. Which is why they are so common in more linear, arena based action games.

Its why even though something like Horizon Forbidden West looks more graphically intensive it doesn’t use it while something like God of War does.

 

[asdasdasdbb]

Tangently related, since people mentioned HFW... there was a bug in the PS4 version where if you went to The Base, you could drop into the void because the base wouldn't load in time.

Seems like BS, maybe they just really grew to like that mechanic but there are countless ways to accomplish everything that "squeezing through a crack" is able to do without having to have those in the game. Like it doesn't matter because we're all used to them at this point, but if devs wanted to put like 2 seconds into thinking about an alternative we could have them removed from every future game with no loss of function or quality.

The SSDs will help on this.

 

[CamHostage]

I've always hated this mechanic as well as others like it. It is one of the main reasons I prefer open world games that do not have this. I think all of my favorite games do not have this mechanic. So I must really dislike it, or games with poor design use it.

Eh, open world games have a lot of other mechanics and tricks developers use which people dislike just the same.

People gripe about the Ubisoft fetch-quest style of game design, or how GTA missions all feel segmented, like the world is just a big hub to collect all the checkpoints, and it basically is. That's how these games are designed; they aren't bespoke worlds where every step of your journey has been tuned to build and build the excitement towards a big finale. Enemies patrol in their own little circle, townsfolk never leave town (or rarely even do anything but the one chore they're assigned to do in the game, so a woman washing clothes in a river will probably be there morning, noon & night every day of the game unless they give her a secondary NPC activity,) interesting towns are connected by big barren stretches of nothing (with maybe some loot in the wasteland to keep it interesting,) and there's always a strange barrier which keeps you from going too far into the distance (often the world is a big island surrounded by an endless ocean.) Open world games tend to have more bugs since there many unique subsystems going on which are difficult to debug when they're not used the same way every time, plus there's little evolution to the game world as you progress through, because that's incredibly difficult to keep straight any dynamic or self-altering elements in a game when the gamer is in control instead of the game designer.

https://gamerant.com/big-problems-open-world-video-games/

 

[Clear]

Developers stuck on using forced walking and "squeeze through" methods need to reevaluate their game design. That shit is annoying to the player and should be discarded. Full stop.

Its legit. Kind tired of these arguments;

THERE IS NOTHING INHERENTLY WRONG WITH LINEARITY.

Sure, it might not be to your liking, but that does not rebut the above statement.

Bottom line is you can't please everyone, because different folks like/dislike different elements. Trying to appease everyone is likely to please nobody as it devolves into endless subtraction.
As developers, they may as well stick to their vision

 

[Alexios]

Just because one game used them for loading doesn't mean any game that doesn't need to do that will never ever put the player character in a similar environment or situation. Duh? Eliminating the technical need for loading sequences is still a good thing that opens game design possibilities. It's just a basic action that a player may encounter at any time if the game designer sees fit. Like what if a game used door opening/unlocking for loading, would that mean that when we no longer need loading then every next game has to have all doors already open? That's some captain obvious bs.