How close are we to games with open worlds that have no loading screens? I just imagine how seamless and great it would feel if you could enter a shrine in TOTK with no loading.
There isn’t really a fixed level, because if you could spend memory and bandwidth on keeping assets for an interior loaded prior to entering, you could also spend them on making the interior and exterior more detailed. I can’t imagine there ever being a point where there isn’t at least a consideration of whether to make the tradeoff.
I mean…I could understand that question a handful of years ago, but now? There’s a long list of games that only have a loading screen when you open the game and never again.
Even as far back as minecraft for the most well known ones. TLOU iirc was like that as well, back in ps3. Now with nanite I bet it will be even more common. But I doubt we’ll ever get to a point that ALL games are like that. Sometimes it’s even done for artistic purposes. Or continuity reasons.
If I’m not mistaken even uncharted 1 did this back in 2007.
Jak and Daxter, 2001, also developed by Naughty Dog! Carefully placed “hallways” that connect larger level geometry allow them to load and deload areas while you seemlessly move your character through the hallway. And abusing this system is now a key component in Jak 1 speedruns.
Games still have loading screens?
Red Dead 2 is already almost there. The only real loading screen you get is when you launch the game, the others (fast-travelling from camp and skipping traversal during story missions) are fitting in-game cutscenes.
God of War (2016 and I assume Ragnarök too) is a single continuous camera shot from the moment you first launch the game to the very end. Barring death, the only kind-of loading screen you encounter is walking along the branches of Yggdrasil.
