For nearly as long as there have been games, there have been long load times. As games have gotten bigger and more complex, load times have increased, resulting in quite a bit of downtime while polygons are put in their place. Long load times have affected everything fromGrand Theft AutotoBloodborne,and Bioware’s new gameAnthemis no exception, leading one player to make fun of the long wait.
Twitch streamer Brozime decided to play the closing credits to popular ’90s sitcomSeinfeld(something he typically does for comedic effect) over one of the game’s loading screens. By the time the credits were through, which took about 45 seconds, the game still hadn’t loaded all the way. During the clip, Brozime can be heard criticizing the load times, stating, “Is this going to be able to finish? There’s no way. This is the entire Seinfeld Credits! This is the whole thing.”
While it’s understandable that a game ofAnthem’ssize and graphical fidelity would have some downtime while loading in, it is kind of embarrassing that the game wasn’t able to finish until well after the credits finished rolling. So far, the load times have been one of the biggest criticisms of the game’s full release, though it is something that Bioware could patch, just asBungie has attempted to do withDestiny 2in the past.
However, it doesn’t help that the game typically features multiple loading screens in a single mission, as players navigate from wide-open spaces before loading into smaller cave systems and ruins. The frequency of these load screens make the problem all the more noticeable, so Bioware will likely try and address them rather quickly.
However, the game’s servers have been performing better than many fans anticipated, afterearly demo builds faced multiple connection issues, some of which resulted in all of EA’s servers being brought down temporarily. Hopefully, Bioware will be able to fix the load times as well as they did the networking issues.
