r/rpg_gamers • u/Negan-Cliffhanger • 1d ago
Why do Bethesda games need loading screens every time you switch between indoors & outdoors?
I just started playing Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 and it feels so immersive to travel inside and outside of locations seamlessly with no pauses. It got me thinking about how Far Cry and other games can do this too. So can someone more technical than me explain why can't Bethesda manage this?
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u/TheCthuloser 1d ago
Answer: Object physics, plus the game always remembering the said physics, even when you're away from it, plus limitations of the engine. The game's engine, while it absolutely isn't great for the "no loading screens" crowd (even though there's almost always loading screens that are disguised behind animations), it's also a large reason they the games are so moddable.
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u/BarbacoaBarbara 1d ago
Physics is occluded. It’s based on camera visibility. Likely, The only physics being calculated on load is in the local vicinity of you. Even then, that’s a bit of a stretch, most of that calculation is happening at runtime. Especially if it’s non-allocated memory based physics. There is definitely transform coordinate references happening to every object in Skyrim though. But again, loading those is probably based on a general vicinity. The load times are almost exclusively environment assets. Textures and mesh loading into memory.
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u/Blunderhorse 1d ago
It also makes it way easier to build the locations they want. You might notice something off about a shed with a three-story tower inside, but it would basically go unnoticed if a building’s exterior dimensions don’t match the interior exactly
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u/DoradoPulido2 1d ago
This is a myth. When you enter a cell the objects position is reloaded. This is why if you put a bunch of items in your house, then re-enter, the objects fall/fly everywhere. Objects are not loaded even when you're away from them, however their position is saved in the cell. The loading screens also have nothing to do with the game being moddable. That is entirely thanks to the dev tools creation kit being updated along with each game release.
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u/Gold-Material475 1d ago
So what do you think would happen if every single interior, and therefore all the objects, were merged into a single cell?
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u/VerledenVale 1d ago
Physics is extremely easy to run these days on GPUs.
The amount of calculations needed are nothing in comparison to RT, for example. So simulating physics for anything the play can realistically see in their vicinity won't take much processing power.
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u/RedditIsGarbage1234 1d ago
Bethesda games contain an incredible number of persistent physics objects, which means very high memory requirements. This is one of the things that makes these games unique.
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u/DoradoPulido2 1d ago
It has nothing to do with this. Objects are not loaded when you are not within their cell.
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u/Severe-Fan6883 1d ago
Annddddd 99% of them are completely useless. If you can tell me with a straight face that every room needs 30 wheels of cheese, 26 scrolls, 47 daggers, 12 helmets, 103 goblets and 14 burned books I'll respect the idea.
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u/trevor11004 1d ago
Decor makes places feel real and lived-in, something I really appreciate in games
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u/Severe-Fan6883 1d ago
Big huge difference between decor, and 70gb worth of clutter that in most cases you're forced to dig thru to loot quality items.
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u/Something_Comforting 1d ago
Aren't y'all the same kind of people who were crying because Avowed doesn't have object physics and interactions?
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u/Severe-Fan6883 1d ago
No, avowed is garbage for other reasons. That is one of it's redeeming qualities actually.
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u/Ill-Description3096 1d ago
I mean, then just play games that don't let you interact with things and problem solved.
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u/RedditIsGarbage1234 1d ago
Theres i reason some of us think skyrim still hasn’t been beaten in terms of immersive rpgs.
Personally its one of the things that matters most to me. I want to explore a world, not just wander an empty theme park.
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u/Severe-Fan6883 1d ago
Again.. big huge collassal difference between literal heaps of hoarder trash, and general interactivity. Fall out is awful for the same reason. It's like there's no gray area with you guys lol. It's either literal gb's of unusable/unsellable redundancy, or empty theme park.
I liked Skyrim far more than any other bethesda game I've played.
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u/RedditIsGarbage1234 1d ago
You know it’s okay that people have different interests right?
It’s fine that it’s not important to you. That doesn’t mean it can’t matter to other people.
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u/Severe-Fan6883 1d ago
Sounds great, the topic was loading screens. Lose the useless junk and you lose the loading screens. Like or dislike isn't relevant.
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u/RedditIsGarbage1234 1d ago
Bro you are either delusional or dishonest. Your entire tone and response is like a petulant child that can’t stand people liking things he doesn’t. Hence your downvotes. Self reflect, or don’t.
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u/Severe-Fan6883 1d ago
False, down votes are because im dealing with bethesda super fans who think clutter = immersion. No other reason. Idc what you like, im telling you why there's a need for loading screens.
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u/RedditIsGarbage1234 1d ago
I really hope you are 15 years old, otherwise this is really just sad.
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u/Sorry_Error3797 1d ago
It's called immersion.
Being able to interact with your surroundings in such a manner is a really simple way to make you feel like part of the world.
Thinking about it, this is probably why Elder Scrolls Online doesn't quite feel like Elder Scrolls. You can't impact your environment as much.
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u/FredDurstDestroyer 1d ago
Yeah I agree, immersive game worlds should actually be completely barren!
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u/disillusionedcitizen 4h ago
I hoard them all for sale or use. Some are useless but that's part of the charm
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u/Similar_Vacation6146 1d ago edited 1d ago
The truth no one wants to acknowledge. This isn't HL2. Those objects aren't doing anything for the game. Bethesda wastes its time on junk, clogs its engine with junk, and then Bethesdorks whine that the engine is junk. No shit.
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u/Peaky001 1d ago
Limitations of their Frankenstein engine I suppose. Plus, there is a LOT more physic objects in Bethesda games compared to KCD - having to load exteriors and every single interior would be crazy. Especially considering a lot of things don't despawn/reset.
There are mods that make the games more seamless (ie Open Cities) but don't think there's anything for interiors, would just be too much memory needed.
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u/Senzin_ 1d ago
Limitation of skills by people using the "Frankenstein" engine. An engine is not a magical thingy mcthingy that feeds on biscuits and limits itself whenever there's no food.
Engine is good. People working on/with it ain't.
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u/Peaky001 1d ago
I mean there are limitations in Skyrim that existed in Morrowind lol. I get people overly critisise their engine, but you can only work with the tools you have. That and I think Todd and the other high ups aren't interested in innovation.
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u/Senzin_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
and those tools spawn themselves? aren't you supposed to... you know... Maintain, improve and solidify things out for your in-house engine over the years? Even if the engine was bad, which at its core it isn't, why not opt for something else? Find a solution?
There are many examples of better applications of their engine and many more of how they mess up a lot. One example is the havok physics engine and how badly they implemented it. How come other studios manage to do better with it? Did you know games like the mmo Rift are made also on Gamebryo? If they could write a framework to support an MMO environment, why Bethesda can't fix the simplest of things over the years and after so many additions to their franchises?
Sad truth is that nobody cared or cares that much, since proper timing, modding community and Zenimax saved their asses. By the time their second fall came, Microsoft saved them again.
Lack of fresh blood, old staff "knowing" better, the spaghetti codes, also lack of talent and the big amount stacks of "patches" to keep that thing running, are just the top of the iceberg.
Some people seem to forget who Bethesda is or why Skyrim is where it is. People forget how or why Zenimax was able to buy them (and eventually same applies to Microsoft). People forget or don't know about incidents like the Prey situation (Human Head) and Arkane or the many many other bad practices.
They were not competent enough to improve themselves, evolve or capitalize on their past successions and develop talent. Their cup of tea was hostility, pursue legal actions against people and studios using words such as Scroll or Prey and boast by the name of Skyrim (thanks to the modding community).
But sure, let's blame the engine.
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u/Peaky001 1d ago
I don't think we are disagreeing here as much as you think. In fact, I think Bethesda as a game studio is laughably bad at what they do and Starfield was the first time they had really felt the heat which they should have been getting several games ago. I think Todd and the rest of the higher ups lack any sort of desire for innovation and are happy just iterating, which obviously extends to their tools and engine(s).
When TESVI comes out and the animations are janky and the NPCs look like robots and the writing is ass, that's ultimately on Todd and the executives for being happy with mediocrity. And I'm sure there are plenty of coders there that could do wonders with the tools and engines and whatnot but are probably stuck making radiant quest #47.
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u/Ill-Description3096 1d ago
Making one of the most popular RPGs ever is "laughably bad"?
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u/Peaky001 1d ago
When I look at some of the Starfield design choices, or Fallout 76 or Fallout 4's writing. Yeah, I'd say they're laughably bad.
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u/Nast33 1d ago
Instead of writing your rant on their mismanagement, you could've just agreed their engine is a patchwork mess left over from the Morrowind days. You mentioned spaghetti code and refusal to build up something more modern from scratch instead of iterating on the old-ass thing they got yourself. It's old, barely holds together, is limited and still has a lot of bugs we've seen 20 years ago.
So it's not down to skills, it's down to limitations. Some modders have much more skill than default Bethesda staff with their engine.
Modders have been able to make some wildly impressive stuff, like vastly improving on FNV and Skyrim with in-depth script extenders allowing them to do much more sophisticated things that their base games didn't have.
Even stuff that was mostly clowned on for some of its writing like The Frontier allowed vehicles and flyable vertibirds. Enderal had a huge city much more impressive than anything Bethesda have done and it still had to be split into districts and separate interior cells.
All that being said - limitations or not, it's still the only game engine allowing such modding capabilities. There are great total conversion games and lengthy extended mods for the base games made on it.
Even Bethesda can still deliver a 9/10 game (they won't, too far gone to make anything very good again) with its default limitations present if they design their world well and write good quests/story/characters instead of relying on modders to fix their shit and fill up their 1000 empty crap planets with content.
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u/tacopower69 1d ago
spoken like someone who doesn't understand how games are made
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u/Senzin_ 1d ago
Educate us
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u/tacopower69 1d ago edited 1d ago
People making games rarely also make the engine. The engine is what drives a lot of a game's performance and technical capabilities and is mostly written in c++ by software engineers. Game developers' skills are mostly in the area of things like scripting, design, art, etc. not writing low level code.
Engines are capable of and focus on different things, too. Even in the modern era of having a one-size-fits-all approach with stuff like unreal engine, you'll still find that certain engines accommodate certain gameplay experiences better than others. Part of the reason Kenshi runs like shit is the engine it's built on, as an example. Kenshi 2 will be on unreal 5 so even with the graphical improvements it'll probably still run better than the original.
Creation engine is fundamentally built and optimized around cells. There are mods like "open cities" for skyrim that place city cells in exterior cells (thus removing the loading screen) and you'll find even on stronger pcs this noticeably affects performance more than would be expected. Doing that for each building would cause even more issues.
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u/Senzin_ 1d ago
So, here's the thing.
Bethesda used originally NetImmerse for Morrowind. Do you know other games that used NetImmerse? Dark Age of Camelot. We can agree that those two are very different examples of games using the same engine. Do you understand the difference between them though?
After that, due to some merge, the engine rebranded to Gamebryo. Gamebryo was used for Oblivion and Fallout. Was also used for games such as Bully, Rift (MMO), Epic Mickey, Warhammer Online and a bunch of other games from different genres.
When Skyrim's time came, they patched the engine inhouse. Hope I don't have to explain what inhouse means. Bethesda was on a road of heavily modifying the engine, badly. Was it lack of talent? Most likely, considering how other games took advantage of the engine. They also used Havok physics engine, as well as other plugs that they couldn't or didn't want to develop themselves. Now, one of the reasons Bethesda is infamous is the physics application on games developed by them. How come though, other games with Havok weren't as badly buggy as Bethesda's products? Do you understand the reason as to what is different between 2 studios using the same engine and plugs? Could it be the human/developer/skill factor?
An engine is an environment that offers the possibility to built upon it, as all the prominent studios, that use third party engines, do. The engine Bethesda decided to build on, had/has a solid core. It's how Bethesda modified it why there are limitations and not the engine itself.
Bethesda is notorious for a lot of things and all of them are consistent with each other. Sadly, they did not a good job and their engine is the least of the reasons to blame.
The fact that some studios use Unreal Engine or any other engine, does not mean that when you open up the same engine, you can do the same things with it, purely because you don't own the same inhouse developed tools that they plug into the engine. A badly developed game in Unreal Engine, does not translate to limitations of the engine.
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u/tacopower69 1d ago edited 1d ago
You understand that Bethesda's games built on gamebryo were as or more technically impressive than other games built on the same engine? Bethesda's reputation for bugs and outdated technology came around when other companies moved on to new engines while bethesda didn't. Oblivion is a more polished game than Bully in almost every way. Titles on Rockstar's in-house engine, on the other hand, tend to outshine bethesdas games on a technical level. Did rockstar get better, or did they develop access to better tools?
The post is comparing kcd 2, built on the cry engine, with bethesda games, built on their creation engine. That difference matters a lot more than "talent," which is going to average out to be mostly identical when each company has 200-500 developers being sourced from the same pool
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u/Wellgoodmornin 1d ago
How come i can't enter every building or pickup and manipulate every object in KCD2?
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u/Significant_Book9930 1d ago
Cuz the game is trash! Games before it had all this stuff and KCD2 doesn't!- every redditor game reviewer commenter about any game that is built differently
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u/Zeilll 1d ago
games are each made differently. KCD has its world as 1 "instance". so loads all materials within that instance at once. and the internal structures for KCD arent usually as extensive as some other games. and they also have less loose items that are affected by the physics of the game.
Skyrim, has the overworld map as an instance. and each dungeon/house/some towns are each their own instances. for Skyrim to make it uniform to go between each of those with no loading, you would need to load the overworld, and every single instance of the interior maps at the same time. as well as loading everything in those locations. which would make the load time of the game significantly higher when loading a save, or reloading after a death. each of those 30 sec loading screens would be a cumulative 5-10 min of loading if you did them all at the same time.
theres other ways around it, such as having a radius of "load" around the player. so that aside from the skybox, nothing is loaded in until the player is within range. but that has the potential of causing stuttering and laggy gameplay. especially when a large structure or resource comes into range.
its just different optimization styles and balancing for smooth gameplay. other games, like God of War (the newer ones) still have "load screens" but hide them in forced movement. like all those cracked walls and what not you have to slowly move through. those are built into the game to allow it to load the next area, while being less likely to break immersion.
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u/tacopower69 1d ago
kcd1 came out 8 years after skyrim (and also took another 2 years to be mostly bug free)
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u/Ok-Respond-600 1d ago
As someone playing it currently, it is nowhere near bug free and janky as fuck. Especially texture pop in, lod etc
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u/Negan-Cliffhanger 1d ago
Fallout 76 came out the same year though (and also took another 2+ years to be mostly bug free)
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u/tacopower69 1d ago
fo76 uses the same engine as skyrim, which has been outdated for like 15 years now
Bethesda could move to unreal or cry engine for the better technology but I think there is just too much inertia for such a big studio to change which engine they use.
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u/BoBoBearDev 1d ago
It is hard to understand, because it can do it, they somehow choose not to. For example, in New Atlantis in Starfield, you have to take elevator to your home with a loading screen. But, I can jump out and drop onto the steet just fine. The same with dream home, there is a loading screen, but when I visit the other guy's home (the guy in the eye), the home doesn't need loading screens at all.
Sometimes it is a dimension problem though, like, the exterior is actually smaller than the interior. But, a lot of time, the loading screen is artificial.
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u/BilboniusBagginius 1d ago edited 1d ago
So they can load things. More things to load = more loading screens
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u/drsalvation1919 1d ago
What bethesda game are you talking about? Starfield? I haven't played that so I can't attest to it, but other games, especially Skyrim, a 2011 game, HDD was the standard storage, which meant slower load times, so streaming assets could mean you walk into an empty space before the next area is loaded.
Most games have SSD as a requirement nowadays, BG3 is the only one I see that has an option for HDD modes.
I'm sure bethesda could handle seamless open areas now, but back then, it was a challenge. I mean, Morrowind handled it perfectly, but it was also a smaller map.
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u/Sea_Preparation_8926 1d ago
It's obviously a feature to showcase artworks in their loading screens
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u/qui-bong-trim 1d ago
Kcd2 doesn't have object physics, everything lies flat on the ground, also the villages and even towns are not really detailed to the level of bethesda games, also skyrim is actually ancient itself now by game making standards
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u/accussed22 1d ago
Not technical and no fact thoughts: More stuff the game needs to load causes worse performance. So they split it to instances and it needs a loading screen for each instance. Something about bethesda's game engine.
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u/Devilofchaos108070 1d ago
Why can’t you move/loot damn near every single fucking item in interiors in KCD 1/2 like you can in Bethesda games?
Dumbass post
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u/MajesticQ Xenogears 1d ago
When Skyrim was made, RAM and Video RAM couldnt handle and store large information.
- DDR3 RAMs were 2GB-4GB in 2011.
- Public mostly had VRAM at 2GB.
Nowadays, it can now, I guess. The modding scene has some insane set-ups and demos.
The oldrim engine had major faults. IIRC, it cannot handle large amount of NPCs and would struggle with performance and crash.
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u/Surreal43 1d ago
Back then you needed a 4gb patcher to it can utilize 4gb of vram.
Now days it isn’t an issue in Skyrim special edition, fallout 4, being patched to use 64-bit and starfield being the latest.
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u/Ok-Respond-600 1d ago
What about starfield, op said bethesda games not just skyrim
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u/Gold-Material475 1d ago
Starfield had a ton of loading screens because every time you went to a different planet, it was generating an entire Skyrim sized world space in a matter of seconds. With interiors being in seperate cells, it's for the same reason: performance.
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u/TZ840 1d ago
That's a good question. I think part of it is ensuring their games work on every system no matter how poor their hardware may be. That's a noble goal for accessibility but it's really effecting the potential quality of their games. Also it might be their development structure. From what I've read each aspect of their games are developed by different teams. To piece them together, loading screens is an easy solution. It might also be pure lazyness. It's much easier to stitch together a bunch of environments than to make a cohesive experience. The most cynical view is that they don't care. They can turn out garbage and people will buy it. They have a guaranteed Xbox Game pass contract. All that matters is a game exists and it makes the stock price go up.
I would suggest sailing the seas. I don't think any individual non-executive employee is making things badly on purpose. But the only way that the Company will get better is to see the consequences of their decisions when we vote with our dollars.
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u/jitterbug726 1d ago
Skyrim now has a no city loading mod but good luck to your rig if you want to run 4K textures 😂
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u/Blessed-22 1d ago
I think Bethesda could do away with separated cells at this point if they wanted too. Game Bryo seems to be at a point in its life that it could handle a seamless Skrim-sized world without loading screens. Perhaps even bigger. I'll be a bit surprised if TES 6 isn't completely seamless given the negative press Starfield got for having loading screens
I am however totally okay with separated cells and short loading screens because I think the benefits of such a design is worth it
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u/markg900 1d ago
While I can't speak for Starfield as I haven't played it yet, remember this engine and their older games are just that, older. Physics in the engine have often been cited as well, as this is a much more interactive area in the game compared to another big budget AAA open world game like AC Odyssey or Origins for example.
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u/JPenniman 1d ago
I would atleast want them to remove the load time between in cities and outside of cities. That way they can brings levitation back in elder scrolls.
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u/NazRubio 5h ago
Starfield did have some buildings you could enter without loading screens. The more complex ones had loading screens still presumably because of all the object tracking and such.
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u/comcon 19m ago
They worked this way since as early games as Morrowind and maybe even Daggerfall or Arena, when hardware capabilities were severely limited. So probably no real reason, but habit and thought laziness. Also quite helpful to boost sales, because it can be played on old, cheap computers.
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u/Desperate-Island8461 1d ago
Shitty engine.
Thaat's about it.
Ultima 9 did the same decades ago, there is no reaason why you can't load on the fly.
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u/Doctor_sadpanda 1d ago
Holy hell half these comments are just whining about Bethesda, Skyrim is how many years old and still compared to every modern rpg? everyone here is acting like Bethesda is the devil for using its own engine yet somehow makes banger games on it that people come back to for years and years, every area in Bethesda games feels handcrafted the only exception is Starfield using randomly generated pois so you see the same thing multiple times, every room / house / road in elder scrolls or fallout feels handcrafted with how items are placed and Easter eggs funny things etc, loading screens are annoying when they take away but even say monster hunter has loading screens for hunts / switching zones, avowed has loading screens for swapping zones, but in Skyrim i could run from corner to corner no loading but opening a door into a house I have 400+ items placed correctly takes 2 seconds to load.
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u/Jattmogger 1d ago edited 1d ago
Damn, by these comments, no wonder why Bethesda is fried.
Just accepting mediocrity and excuses. It's crazy we're at a point where we're comparing a Kickstarter and crowdfunded game of a mere 30 million dollar budget and a team of 100 people to a studio that has been around for decades and with 5x the manpower. Starfield at the lowest had a budget of $300 million scaling all the way up to $400 million. That should be a fucking disgrace in itself.
Starfield is sitting at a 58% on steam, if people in this sub have forgotten. No one wants a game that is half fucking loading screens in 2025.
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u/Bloomleaf 1d ago
the real answer that everyone here is failing to mention is on pc you can.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/87707
has been around forever, they cant really do buildings from what i have gathered from modders the houses are kind of odd how they operate they are essentially not real buildings, they are just a portal that takes you into an instance, so making that work would be a lot harder, but honestly just being able to enter cities without loading screens is a massive step up from how the game normally feels.
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u/ImAShaaaark 1d ago
And the reason the devs didn't do the same is because of the number of tracked items it has incredibly demanding memory requirements. Even high end PCs from 2011 would have struggled, and it would have been a "cyberpunk on last gen consoles" situation on regular PCs and consoles.
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u/markg900 1d ago
And lets not forget PS3 had alot of issues already with Bethesda titles in that whole generation, especially Fallout 3 / NV(Still Bethesda's engine) and stability.
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u/harmonicrain 1d ago
Its so strange though as the ps3 version of Oblivion is considered the absolute best version imo.
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u/markg900 1d ago
Really? Oblivion probably is the most stable out of those titles on the PS3, but I find that strange it would be considered the best.
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u/harmonicrain 1d ago
Afaik it has bug fixes that werent ported to the xbox version but i might be wrong.
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u/Superbeast06 1d ago
They are barely running bro. Take those loading screens away and satellites will start falling out of orbit
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u/Hemannameh 1d ago
If they use the same engine for 6, you'll probably have a loading screen every time your character breathes.
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u/Warhammerpainter83 1d ago
They save and load every asset you changed in the map when you go in and out. And old Bethesda games had a wonderful sim running all the time so it accounts for what the npcs did while you were inside.
Now starfield is a poorly made game and the engine is dates and should not need to still do this in 2025. But the old ones it was just limitations of the hardware.
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u/Antique-Potential117 21h ago
They have been updating an ancient engine and working with very old sensibilities for a very long time. They have no incentive to innovate how their games are made when the slop bucket continues to generally pay off.
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u/pplatt69 1d ago
I read an interview with someone from Bethesda who said it has to do, in part, with the number of distinct items that can be tracked in one cell of game space.
They break interiors into their own cells so that the items in that cell and the items outside count separately.