I'm interested, but it'll have to wait. Tomorrow's release of Control takes priority. ;)

HDD? SATA SSD? Ultra-high speed NVMe Express PCI-E generation 5 SSD?

I guess now that next gen consoles will have SSDs by default, it will become pretty much a requirement for PC games as well that they are run from SSDs. Maybe they still work also from HDDs, but causing issues like this. The seventh law of physics says that the bigger the game is, the more data there is to load, hence the longer the loading times will be. There is no way around that.

Whatever, I've already decided that with my next gaming PC (with 85% probability a thick gaming laptop, with 15% probability a desktop), I will not settle for anything less than a 1TB SSD (not SATA of course) as its primary drive. HDDs I'll keep using for storage and archives, usually through USB.

Same, it's on sale at the other store for both the regular ($16+tax) and ($22+tax) for the Fate edition, but fuck that; I'm buying here no matter the $54/$50 (No tax) price tag, thanks again GoG for bringing it over here!

Well... wishlisting it at least as it gouges too deeply into my upcoming RTX 3090 budget!

I think a good defrag of the game folder would do it just fine .

I'm running from a pcie m.2 drive without any spectacular problems, still i would be surprised if loading times would increase noticeable if i would have installed it on the 5400 rpm hdd i'm using too

i mean, most other grand games i'm installing work quite fine, nier automata for example, and currently downloading gears 4 to that disc to see how that goes, i belief it is a safe bet with older multiplatform releases since they are optimized for a console, the next gen would have you go for pcie 4 and m.2 pcie fast speeds though with how hardware is developing sata m.2's would prob work fine too, i belief there is little to no price difference between the 2

I hope you mean 'skip the cutscenes'...

I honestly forgot all about GoG connect, seeing as I never had a steam game connect here, so I pretty much gave up, yeah looks like it's the GoG discount only for me, which is worth it to have a fully DRM-Free copy!

Game is running very well in Linux through Proton.

Also nice to see that all the bonus equipment DLC is there, even the Mass Effect 3 items so plenty of choice for early bonus gear.

would you? those are usually the first things i disable if i come across it and the items are not tugged away behind a level cap

The nice thing about it though is that it's early level gear so it doesn't make you over powered through the whole game, just gives an early boost, plus it's in a chest in the first city so you can just ignore the chest completely if you don't want to use the items.

ah yea the gift chest, i haven't progressed that far yet/forgot about the whole deal. Mass Effect 3 items you say? and you need to have ME 3 installed for this to happen?

The only item i was ever ' happy ' with was the dragon age armor in ME 3 for owning dragon age 2 i belief

the gear is leveled - it is locked into the level you are when you first open it. so if you want some end level gear, don't open / look into the chest until you are close to the end.

But yes, it is a nice early boost, and by the end you tend to have some really good gear anyway

Well, then your hope does not bear out; I was actually asking for an option to skip the load times (and if that's not possible, re-architect the game to make it possible).

Yes, I am probably asking the impossible here.

Also from the FAQ:
Will old save games work?
They might, however only doable via a third-party converter tool (USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!), but not in an official capacity on our end, as there are too many risks at play.