One of the biggest advances offered by new generation consoles, it is the concrete reduction in loading times. It must be said that since the integration of SSDs on PS5 and Xbox Series, players earn a crazy time, but for developers asks another problem, real too. In an interview with our confreres de Endgaget, Mathijs of Jonge and Michiel van der Leeuw, respectively Game Director and Technical Director on Horizon 2 Forbidden West, have returned to several technical aspects of the game, and in particular the constraint left by these loadings now nonexistent. Indeed, if the first horizon Zero Dawn required more than a minute to load its data on PS4, it takes less than 4 or 5 seconds for Horizon 2 Forbidden West on PS5, which can be a problem during the moments of “Fast Travel “Where developers take advantage of it to display a page of Tips and advice. Only, in 4 or 5 seconds, impossible for players to read the notes addressed to them, which pushed the developers of the game to extend the loading times so that reading is possible…
In Horizon Zero Dawn, we called this a fast journey, but the loading could take a minute. With PS5, it may be four or five seconds, it loads so quickly that players can not even read the clues. We had to add a very simple feature where the game hangs on the loading screen for long enough so that you can actually read at least one index while it loads. Of course, people who want to speed up things can simply press X or disable this break in the settings so that the game is charging as quickly as possible.
This is not the first time a studio extends loading times to allow the player to read the clues given on the screen. This was already the case with Ghost of Tsushima and in its PS4 version. Like what, with a technology that allows you to load the games instantaneously generate other worries for developers.