Summary
One of my fondest gaming memories from when I was a kid was sitting in front of the television, playingSkyrimon myXbox 360, and staring at the loading screens. There were a lot of them, because this was long before instantaneous load times were a thing – I’d sit on my musty beanbag, finger pushing the right joystick, watching the 3D models spin and reading lore snippets I’d already seen tens of times before.
In a console generation whereSpider-Man 2boastssuch quick loading timesthat fast travel is near instantaneous, there isn’t much reason to sit and stare at your television, swiveling models of items and characters and meditating on tips and lore the developers deign to feed us anymore. Nowadays, because PCs and consoles alike have gotten so powerful that load times are not such a significant issue anymore, we rarely see thoughtful, detailed load screens for more than a second at a time.
I’ve been playingThe Thaumaturgelately, partly becauseI got it on sale recentlyand didn’t want to see it languish, partly because I love publisher11 Bit Studio’sgames, and partly because my colleague Ben Sledgewrote about it so compellinglythat I felt moved by the holy gamer spirit (or Rasputin’s ghost, maybe) to boot it up as soon as possible. I should be finishingDragon Age: Originsas part of myjourneytoDragon Age: The Veilguard, but I have ADD, so here we are.
The Thaumaturge is great onSteam Deck, so that’s where I’ve been playing it. It has these gorgeous loading screens with game tips and information about its Warsaw setting, but even on the Steam Deck, the game loads quickly enough that I can never finish reading the text before it blinks away.
First world problems, I know. My game loads too fast, boo hoo. But these loading screens are obviously made with lots of thought and detail, and I want to give them the attention they deserve. The art is beautiful, rendering 1905 Russian-occupied Warsaw with a close eye. The text is often in protagonist Wiktor Szulski’s voice, and it’s an opportunity to see his home city of Warsaw through his critical eyes after over a decade away. His observations about its filth, its stench, and its people frame the game’s historical setting through genuine perceptions and pains of the time. I’d go so far as to say it’s part of the storytelling.
Or rather, that it should be part of the storytelling. Each loading screen zips by so quickly that I’m left without time to digest what it’s telling and showing me, so much so that I find myself actually wishing the game loaded more slowly, or at the very least that it prompted me to press a button to continue the game when it finishes, instead of whisking me away into the next thing.
Loading screens are often seen more as a hindrance than a feature nowadays –people complainedaboutStarfield’sloading screens because it stopped them from having an authentic space travel experience, and games are often marketed as being technically superior to others because of alackof loading screens, likeDead SpaceandSilent Hill 2.
I’m not going to say I wish games forced me to look at loading screens, but it feels that as technology trucks along and keeps getting more powerful, the subtle art of a great loading screen is being lost along the way. Yay for lightning quick SSDs, but sometimes I just want to look at some concept art and really feel like I’m learning about the world I’m inhabiting right then. That’s more immersive to me than instant fast travel.
The Thaumaturge
WHERE TO PLAY
The Thaumaturge is a story-driven RPG set in 1905 Warsaw, Poland. Players take on the role of Wiktor, who can see entities called Salutors that normal humans cannot. It features isometric gameplay, turn-based combat, morally ambiguous choices, unique character development features, investigation mechanics, and much, much more.
