'Loading Screens in Bethesda games are necessary' says former SKyrim Lead

Draugoth

Gold Member
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Speaking to VideoGamer after the release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, a graphical overhaul that floored the game's original designer, Nesmith explained that the use of loading screens in Bethesda's RPGs have been "a necessary bane of the existing of Bethesda since time immemorial".


While Nesmith understands the wish to have a completely seamless world, the long-time Bethesda designer explained that it's just not feasible for the type of RPGs the studio makes. Segmented areas and loading screens, however short, allow the games to keep track of item placement and detailed physics that stay put after you leave, giving players a permanent mark on the world around them.


"Everybody who complains about them assumes that it's done because we're lazy or we don't want to follow the modern thinking on stuff," the designer calmly explained. "


The reality is the Bethesda games are so detailed and so graphics intensive… you just cant have both present at the same time."

Source
 
I mean... I don't see a lot of games doing what they do with TES. Graphics intensive is probably not what I would use (even tho Skyrim was a looker at his time), it probably has more to do with the physics of every object and how you can actually lift them etc... Also drop an arrow on your first hour, it will still be there 150 hours later.

Again, I don't know a lot of game able to do this.
 
Wasn't it the case that the original Xbox version of Morrowind would stealthily reboot the system in the middle of load screens to free up resources?
 
Wasn't it the case that the original Xbox version of Morrowind would stealthily reboot the system in the middle of load screens to free up resources?
Yeah. You could basically reboot the system without flushing the framebuffer and also carrying over a small chunk of data. Morrowind wasn't the only game on the OG Xbox that did this, to be fair. But Morrowind is the only game I know that did this to "reset" a memory leak, basically.
 
Yeah. You could basically reboot the system without flushing the framebuffer and also carrying over a small chunk of data. Morrowind wasn't the only game on the OG Xbox that did this, to be fair. But Morrowind is the only game I know that did this to "reset" a memory leak, basically.


ha! That's fascinating. I played MANY hours on the og xbox in Morrowind, I don't remember crazy long loading screens, but that was like 25yrs ago so..............
 
so how come I can enter every single building in ac shadows and there are people doing stuff inside ?
 
Well, within the context of the engine they use I'd say he's correct.

Could they do the same with a new(er) engine they built and skip the loading (at least blatant) screens?

Maybe. I haven't really looked very hard but I haven't read anything about BGS not being able to do CreationEngone stuff on a newer engine. Or if they even tried
 
Yeah. You could basically reboot the system without flushing the framebuffer and also carrying over a small chunk of data. Morrowind wasn't the only game on the OG Xbox that did this, to be fair. But Morrowind is the only game I know that did this to "reset" a memory leak, basically.

games could also temporarily install data on the hard drive. if you boot up Chaos Theory for the first time, the initial load into the menu will take a long time, because the game is installing to the harddrive in the background.
the data will remain there until another game overwrites it. if it was overwritten you'll have the long load screen again.
 
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so how come I can enter every single building in ac shadows and there are people doing stuff inside ?
Have you ever played a Bethesda game? Everything is tracked in those games. Like if you pick up a book and throw it and leave and come back it will still be there 30 hours later. AC does nothing on this level, I don't even know if they are doing NPC schedules yet (I doubt it, but I don't know).

Not saying this is justification for continuing to use shitty Gamebryo but this is what they do with their games.
 
Have you ever played a Bethesda game? Everything is tracked in those games. Like if you pick up a book and throw it and leave and come back it will still be there 30 hours later. AC does nothing on this level, I don't even know if they are doing NPC schedules yet (I doubt it, but I don't know).

Not saying this is justification for continuing to use shitty Gamebryo but this is what they do with their games.
I finished morrowind, oblivion and skyrim... I was obsessed with first two. So watch who you are talking to.
There is NO REASON all of this couldn't be tracked in fully seamless open world like ac shadows.
Just load the chunks at a time in thhe background.
It's been over 20 years since morrowind and these games still all work the same way.
If I can enter the city, drop a cheese wheel on the floor and game remembers where it is... why not open a room and extend that there too
 
It has been known for the last 15 years that Bethesda games have loading screens to track objects which admittedly a lot of games just don't do. The question has always been is it worth it.
 
I finished morrowind, oblivion and skyrim... I was obsessed with first two. So watch who you are talking to.
There is NO REASON all of this couldn't be tracked in fully seamless open world like ac shadows.
Just load the chunks at a time in thhe background.
It's been over 20 years since morrowind and these games still all work the same way.
If I can enter the city, drop a cheese wheel on the floor and game remembers where it is... why not open a room and extend that there too
"a game that doesnt do this can easily do this because i say so"

ok so why doesnt it lmao
 
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He isn't wrong though. Bethesda games still are some of the most complex and dynamic RPGs out there in terms of world reactivity despite their maligned reputation.

Take for instance the Open City mods for Oblivion and Skyrim. They make it so there's no separation between the overworld and the cities. It's great for immersion, but this introduces a lot of unintended interactions such as NPCs normally being confined to a specific area being able to venture beyond it it. Those mods have tons of bugs and require a colossal effort from their developers and can typically not interact with a lot of other mods because they conflict.
so how come I can enter every single building in ac shadows and there are people doing stuff inside ?
NPCs in AC Shadows are nowhere near as dynamic and fleshed out as in Bethesda games. NPCs in Bethesda games are basically player characters that aren't playable and they got almost everything the player character has. They have a class, a name, a schedule, an inventory, sometimes a friend, family, they have a job they must go to, they own houses and stores they open and close at specific hours. It's farcical to compare the brain-dead NPCs in AC games to the ones in Bethesda games.
 
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He isn't wrong though. Bethesda games still are some of the most complex and dynamic RPGs out there in terms of world reactivity despite their maligned reputation.

Take for instance the Open City mods for Oblivion and Skyrim. They make it so there's no separation between the overworld and the cities. It's great for immersion, but this introduces a lot of unintended interactions such as NPCs normally being confined to a specific area being able to venture beyond it it. Those mods have tons of bugs and require a colossal effort from their developers and can typically not interact with a lot of other mods because they conflict.

NPCs in AC Shadows are nowhere near as dynamic and fleshed out as in Bethesda games. NPCs in Bethesda games are basically player characters that aren't playable and they got almost everything the player character has. They have a class, a name, a schedule, an inventory, sometimes a friend, family, they have a job they must go to, they own houses and stores they open and close at specific hours. It's farcical to compare the brain-dead NPCs in AC games to the ones in Bethesda games.
nobody asks them to load a whole world around the player. Just load some few meters around you at a time.
Surely it can be done and there must be other examples of game doing so
 
This level of audacity is unbelievable.
It's no secret to developers, but they mock them behind closed doors. The modding community has been the one actually finishing their games—for years now.
 
nobody asks them to load a whole world around the player. Just load some few meters around you at a time.
Surely it can be done and there must be other examples of game doing so
And how do you account for boundaries? Starfield went too far with the loading screens, that's true, but having a mostly seamless world would be a task of such titanic proportions that I can't even fathom how long it would take and how much QA would need to be done.
Sounds like bs. Current SSDs are an order of magnitude faster than old HDDs. It must be possible to load and unload that data on the fly.
This is irrelevant to what he said.
 
I think it's less the objects (especially with oblivion tracking objects on 512mb of system ram) and more so they load in presumably all the AI of characters in a zone and they "live" their lives. They could obviously partition things off and remove them from doing things until you are within some kind of radius. They would have to rework a lot since they have to start making assumptions about characters since if you never go to an area, they will have never done anything ever. You can't find dickhead the great in his bed at 12am if he doesn't go from his store to bed every day. I think a lot of the loading process is looking at time of day and different aspects and deciding where characters are and what they are about to do etc.
 
Nah, the only true benefit of loading screens in those games is that its easier to make and combine map mods, but theyll never admit that.
 
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"a game that doesnt do this can easily do this because i say so"

ok so why doesnt it lmao
So you are saying that a game with open world like oblivion, where WHOLE WORLD OUTSIDE the cities and building is permanent and you can drop an item ANYWEHERE in the green but adding the red spots (cities/buildings) is too much? Will it overload a memory or what?
What is the interior vs exterior area of this game 60 to 40?
So I can place an item seamless anywhere in the 60% and that's ok and it will stay there but add interiors to this and it's too much?
Sounds like a streaming problem from pcs 25 years ago that had 512mb of ram
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I don't know all the details about their engine, but to be honest, it's not about graphics or details here, but more about the interactivity of all the 3D objects, the possibility to stack a hundred of apples in a single room, leave it here, go to the opposite corner of the map and go back there to find all those apples were you placed them.

Imagine the load on the CPU, it's resource intensive. Which is why it's segmented that way.

It's a unique feature of a Bethesda game, and one of the things that most of the fans want to see return their game, just like we wanted confirmation of this feature for Starfield before its release (which didn't prevent the game from being bad... but that's another topic).

I know there's an Open cities mod for that (does it work for houses interior too ?), and I wonder how they are made, do they retain object placement from the player for every location ? Or do they simplify it ?

Playing Oblivion right now, it's still really good (with all its flaws obviously), and it shows that Starfield just made all the worse game design choices, and it's not because of the loading system. It lacked a cohesive world, planets being random disjointed pieces with procedurally generated maps not linked to each other (immersion breaking), no real ship exploration, no fuel (what a joke), no ship exploration on planet surface... and I could go on as I'm not touching most of the usual Bethesda RPGs issues like level scaling etc...

I'm not too worried about TES VI. It won't suffer from Starfield issues because it will be on a single planet, much easier to do.
But I'll expect them to really work on their AI, level design, dungeon variety, none of the level scaling enemies and loot bullshit (I want zones with high levels enemies, that should be mandatory, and tell the player he should not be there unless he knows what he's doing or wants the challenge), MUCH better combat and animation, no hand-holding markers and quests.

Also the map shouldn't be afraid to have some empty spaces, having a camp, cave or dungeon so close to each other feels unrealistic and made for ADHD people, I want larger maps, with visible and recognisable POI to guide me, rather than relying on a fake compass, or maybe even use constellations/stars. Oblivion make the horse useless as you'll always find 36 POI on your journey to your destination. Not even mentionning that you an teleport to any cities from the beginning of the game (I modded that because it feels so idiotic). You need to feel like you're on a journey to your destination, and good enemy placement and challenge is crucial to that. Of course I'm not talking about Daggerfall giant empty maps here, this shit was dumb af.

Overworld map should also prevents you from going anywhere, I mean having high plateau, cliffs etc... and climbing making a return from Daggerfall and upgradable, as well as levitating.

I love this series, but each subsequent game has been downgraded and casualised and I hope tehy realized that, but I won't get my hopes up too much.

Anyway, Crimson Desert might be destroying every western RPG in terms of exploration and combat if it keeps its promises. But there's a lot of unknown things in every other areas at the moment so we'll see. Too bad it leans more on the action/adventure rather than on the RPG side unfortunately. But it might be the open world Zelda a lot of us wanted since BotW/TokT disappointement.

TLDR : Starfield is shit but there's still hope for TES VI as it's not the same game design. Object placement and interactivity is using lot of resources on the CPU which explains the loadings. Also don't sleep on Crimson Desert.
 
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So you are saying that a game with open world like oblivion, where WHOLE WORLD OUTSIDE the cities and building is permanent and you can drop an item ANYWEHERE in the green but adding the red spots (cities/buildings) is too much? Will it overload a memory or what?
What is the interior vs exterior area of this game 60 to 40?
So I can place an item seamless anywhere in the 60% and that's ok and it will stay there but add interiors to this and it's too much?
Sounds like a streaming problem from pcs 25 years ago that had 512mb of ram
cYDaYxz.png
No, I didn't say that. I actually didn't say anything about the technical feasibility of Oblivion without loading or whatever.

I was pointing out that these games are doing something fundamentally different from what AC Shadows is doing and you can't use Ubislop as a point in comparison when it just loads up some random NPCs and then purges them where they functionally cease to exist as soon as you lave the area.

If I had to guess I suspect it is an issue with the sheer volume of objects inside the houses and the fact that they are close together in the games' regions. If you are in a city then you are talking about loading many different houses worth of objects and NPCs in addition to the open world, because it's all realtively close together.
 
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Bethesda is garbage. I don't know why anybody keeps getting hyped about anything they do. Starfield is a massive failure so maybe people are realizing that finally.
 
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I don't really see an issue with very short loadings between areas honestly. Feel like this is overblown.

There is a game I love, it is Code Vein. Game uses that awful Unreal Engine. Between areas, there is no loading. But you basically go through empty corridors while the game stutters (because it is loading the next area). This sucks. Just put a loading screen honestly. I'd rather wait than having to suffer through pointless walking with shit performance.
 
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They could of spent all this time creating a new engine that doesn't need to have so many loading screens, but Bethesda was too busy creating online mmo's with stores and creations to charge for sub standard games and microtransactions, they don't even make their best games anymore, Oblivion RM proved that, but their loading screens are getting much more common, so they must be improving in that regard lol.
 
For all the complaining about their engine, I can't think of any other games that does persistence in the same way. It's a core part of what makes Bethesda games what they are, and there aren't any other truly "TES-like" games in the industry.

Maybe something like DayZ is comparable but it's not doing anything close in terms of the numbers of interiors and NPCs. I know there was a Red Dead Redemption 2 mod for persistence but even that was a ring around the player and so anything that went outside of it would despawn. The only other game with potential is Star Citizen and that's taken 12 years and $800 million to make... and it's still in alpha.

People's problem with Bethesda games lie with the graphics rendering (see all the memes about the NPC faces) and not the underlying game logic. The Oblivion remaster proves that if you slap a nicer coat of paint on TES6, making it look about as good, then all of the complaining about the engine underneath would vanish overnight.
 
I'd like Bethesda to hire a genius to solve this for their engine just to show this fool… graphics intensive my ass. If anything, it's other issues like object persistence, which they are known for
 
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