With technology always on the rise, some problems just become bigger. With cell phones, it's battery life. But with video games, it's load times. Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is a shining example of these problems.
Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 takes about FIVE whole minutes to load. Honestly, that's insane. Eurogamer actually made a tongue-in-cheek video about what you can do while waiting for this game to load. Check it out below:
The real problem is, this doesn't just happen from the main menu-to-gameplay loading like one might expect to be the longest loading time. It also happens when traveling between the four different territories. Luckily, it does not happen nearly as bad after death or fast-traveling within an area.
The long load times may blame the open-world aspect Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 went with on this iteration. But that's still a very long load time. A new patch is planned, but load times are nowhere to be found in the patch notes.
CI Games has acknowledged these long load times, but told Gamespot that t his approach allowed it to "shorten any loading times during missions, respawns and fast-travel to a minimum." In addition to that, CI Games believes that “this inconvenience is rewarded with a comfortable experience once the game is loaded."
In other words, it doesn't sound like a fix is planned.
Load times for fast-travel take about 4-15 seconds, while loading checkpoints take 15-30 seconds. If the choice is between a long initial load time to keep other load times shorter, this is better than the alternative, but it's still a ridiculously long time.
Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 launches on PS4, PC and Xbox One on April 25. The load times on the other two consoles is currently unknown.
