Seamless Transitions

Mortal Kombat's story is bullshit, I know this because I've been playing Mortal Kombat 11, and good lord, already knowing what to expect from the franchise, I'm still somehow surprised how within one hour, I'm gawking at the level of time-travel universe bending nonsense on display, and… yet it's so, so compelling.

Part of that are the phenomenal cutscenes, the graphical presentation, the charismatic characters, and the variety in locations, but honestly, I think the main thing that makes Mortal Combat campaigns so addicting to playthrough are, of all things, the transitions.

Ever since playing Halo 2 at a young age, it's something I'm little bit obsessed over. Despite running on an original Xbox and having about five hours of development, Bungie managed to keep all of Halo 2's loading screens hidden after the initial screen. That first screen did take its sweet time, but once you were in Master Chief's or Arbiter's shoes, you wouldn't see that screen again until the conclusion, making the game that much easier to binge through because you always carried some momentum of play, whether you were in a firefight or watching a cutscene.

Now, the transition to cutscenes were just a fade to white which isn't exactly a herculean task of creativity, but hey, this was 2004.

They certainly fared better than Bioware in Mass Effect 1…

The loading screen to me is one of the most outdated, tedious, and flow breaking procedures we've become accustomed to in video-games. That only the most recent consoles have overcome the long standing tradition of waiting 30-50 seconds between every stage is kind of insane actually.

I mean, what other art form is this a thing?

Intermissions existed in movie theatres sure, but, that was a long time ago, and for films longer than 2 hours which, people were certainly grateful for.

Could you imagine in the middle of a book, the pages couldn't be turned for one minute after reading five of them? Or an album that goes dead silent for thirty seconds between every song?

It's a technical limitation that's detrimental to getting lost in the experience.

Every single time I'm starring at the loading screen, those are seconds where I’m not engaging in the experience these potentially hundreds of people and millions of dollars have invested in. We get annoyed waiting in elevators or sitting at the stop lights, yet for video-games, we're supposed to believe this waiting doesn't hurt the experience?

What loading screens have always given me, is the option of leaving. 

After a certain death, or checkpoint is reached, that loading screen is my indication to go "I think I'm done for the night," and log off to be responsible.

Not having that in Mortal Kombat 11, is something I actually really like, as inconvenient it might be having my will tested, it's rather refreshing to have an experience just go, and go, and go, and go, without it feeling like it's dragging along.

Now, there are caveats to this.

Number #1, there are games which probably should have breaks for the player, if not specifically loading screens. Playing an RPG for 20+ hours is probably not good for your health.

More than that, however important your cutscenes might be in covering up loading screens in a big campaign, in the case of games like Max Payne 3, where you're not able to skip half of them, and appear every other area, become absolutely infuriating upon revisiting the game.

I know people revisiting campaign's isn't the biggest demographic, but I really don't want to see games pursue this potentially awesome and addictive quality, if it means you can't control the experience at your own pace when it's preferred.

Once I've seen those awesome transitions between cutscenes and gameplay on the first playthrough, being forced to watch them again will not have the same impact.

Still though, beyond my desire to have more games have this quality, I do also wonder if we can be more purposeful in loading screens that do need to exist.

I've read plenty of comics where they deliberately put shocking panels behind the other page, so physically turn it legit generates that shocking reaction from the reader.

Probably the closest I've experienced to this were the Elder Scrolls games, specifically Oblivion with the Dark Brotherhood, where the usual routine of going to sleep and watching the meter go down while the world loads, leads to a terrifying and surprising wake up by the Guild's recruiter.

If we're going to have these loading screens effectively gate off content to players until it's finished, why not use that as a tool rather than an expectation?