Former Skyrim lead defends Bethesda’s loading screens – “[they’re] a necessary bane of the existence of Bethesda since time immemorial”

Bethesda Game Studios’ heavy use of loading screens and segmented map design has been largely criticised by modern gamers online. With fast SSDs now commonplace, a lot of games have moved to seamless loading, but ex-Bethesda designer Bruce Nesmith explains that this isn’t really possible for Bethesda’s style of RPG.

Nesmith, who left the company shortly before the release of Starfield, explained that the segmented design and heavy use of load zones in Bethesda games are actually extremely important for the game’s design. While Starfield’s iterations did leave more loading screens than initially intended—mostly for the city of Neon, their inclusion is integral to how Bethesda games are made.

Why Bethesda games will always have loading screens

Speaking to VideoGamer after the release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, a graphical overhaul that floored the game’s original designer, Nesmith explained that the use of loading screens in Bethesda’s RPGs have been “a necessary bane of the existing of Bethesda since time immemorial”.

While Nesmith understands the wish to have a completely seamless world, the long-time Bethesda designer explained that it’s just not feasible for the type of RPGs the studio makes. Segmented areas and loading screens, however short, allow the games to keep track of item placement and detailed physics that stay put after you leave, giving players a permanent mark on the world around them.

“Everybody who complains about them assumes that it’s done because we’re lazy or we don’t want to follow the modern thinking on stuff,” the designer calmly explained. “The reality is the Bethesda games are so detailed and so graphics intensive… you just cant have both present at the same time.”

“It’s not that anybody at Bethesda ever wanted to do it. We just didn’t have a choice, really.”

Nesmith explained that the studio has tried methods to hide loading or to make streaming more seamless, but that it leads to massive issues with performance hitching being a major issue that just makes the games worse to play.

“I can’t have the interiors of all these places loaded at the same time as the exteriors. That’s just not an option,” he explained. “And all the fancy tricks for streaming and loading and all that, you end up with hitching. So you’re actually better off stopping the game briefly, doing a loading screen and then continuing on.”

“If you make a game that has less going on, it’s a tighter experience and not a [true] open-world experience. So it’s just one of those necessary evils, as it were, it’s not that anybody at Bethesda ever wanted to do it. We just didn’t have a choice, really, if the game was going to have the experience we wanted it to have.”

Since leaving Bethesda, Nesmith has worked as a consultant on other, smaller games as well as returning to the world of writing. The game designer—who spent over a decade making Dungeons and Dragons games before joining Bethesda—has released a series of LitRPG books titled Glory Seeker, as well as a novel series titled Mischief Maker.

For more Bethesda coverage, read about the one improvement Fallout 3’s designer wants to see from the alleged remaster that we won’t see for a while. Additionally, read about why The Elder Scrolls 6 will likely focus more on player choice instead of extra RPG stats, or listen to our interview with series creator Ted Peterson.