Anyone else have an issue with game saves not loading correctly? Even after a reboot I still can't get a quicksave or a reg. save to fully load. I get the loading bar like normal but the screen stays dark. Odd thing is I can still hear the music. (EAX is not on btw) I have to start task manger which reports Arx.exe is not responding.
It will let me start a new game and loads fine but I don't know why multiple saves are refusing to load. I'm going to do a reinstall and see if that clears it up.
Reinstall didn't help...suggestions welcome! Thanks.

Punctual, I'm seeing something a bit like that... when loading a save game, the screen stays dark for a while, but after some time (30 seconds, maybe more) it finishes loading. I'm not sure if that's normal behavior or not, as I've never played the game before.

Thats definitely not normal behavior! Right after the loading screen goes dark you should see your cursor gauntlet and it should load into game right away. Maybe 5 secs top. I wonder why its hanging at that spot to begin with?
I can't think of any other reason my save games aren't loading. They must be corrupted somehow. If thats the case how did they all become corrupted so fast. I've been saving to a new spot each time and was working from 6 saves+quicksave now all of them won't load. I just got the gem dealers license so I'm not far in at all.
I'm stumped as to a solution. Even though I'm not far into the game I still think its incredibly irritating to have to restart. Also makes me wonder how stable new games will be.
EDIT:
OK feel somewhat of an idiot now, my save games are acting same as Wolfox. He has more patience than I apparently! It takes about 30-45 seconds for the game to load, then its business as usual. I'm still not convinced its normal behavior though!

I have the exact same issue. When i tried to load my latest save game the screen stayed black for 10 minutes before i rebooted windows cause i could not get back to the desktop. But this always only after i have started the game.
Of course i didnt had to restart the game if it didnt crashed on an area transition.

I have the same "issue". So maybe it is normal behavior :P

I would call a (for me) gamebreaking bug "normal".

I have the same problem: Loading a game leaves the screen black and the background ambience playing.
Except that ALT-Tabbing or bringing up the task manager leaves me with just my windows cursor, which only appears over the area of screen which would be occupied by the now-invisible taskmanager, or the unseeable windows... bar... thing. Using keyboard controls blind to cancel the Arx program works, as does ALT-Tabbing, but it takes about two minutes for the computer to react.
This only seems to happen on my two quicksaves made at the tavern. I can load the others fine. Funny thing was, I was loading the exact two quicksaves I'm having trouble with fine until I quit out of Arx to look up a quest problem (trying to kill one of those annoying little... assassins).
I'll try waiting for it to load.
[EDIT]: Oh, yeah, if anyone's interested in comparison (maybe it's a hardware thing?):
Intel Core 2 Duo 6600
2 GB RAM
Built-in sound
Nvida GeForce 8600 GTS

Exact same problem. Saves worked fine yesterday, now it seems that all the saves are corrupt. :(
I'm running an AMD3800X2, 2GB RAM, ATI HD3800, Vista Ultimate 32 bit.
Any help would be appreciated.

Ok, a quick update.
It seems like everything still (mostly) works. The problem is that the first time you load a game after starting Arx, it will take quite a bit longer than what the loading screen says. You'll get a blank screen, but if you let it stay for a while, the game should load up. The next load will be faster.
I did once get a corrupt screen with all gray textures after loading, but that seems to have been a single case.

Patience really is a virtue! I find sometimes it can take two or three minutes for the black screen to go away. Sometimes it never does. And, "Yes", two minutes for the computer to respond to alt F4.
Interestingly alt tab (which also takes a while to work) and click on the game in the taskbar seems to kick the game back into life.
Fastest workaround I have found when this is happening is to start a new game and as soon as I am in the cell load the save from there.
Clive.

Could it have something to do with the location that the game was saved in? I've had games loading nearly instantly (even after a fresh restart) somewhere on (map) level 5, but loading a game on level 1 takes a minute or more, and a game saved in the tavern doesn't seem to load at all (waited more than 10 minutes). And this appeared to be quite repeatable for me.
I figured it had something to do with loading the AI for the NPCs, so the load time would depend on the number of NPCs and the complexity of their AI in the current level.
Of course, YMMV.

I also had the exact same problem, but still managed to finish the game after a lot of frustration.
I found out ways to go around the problem, that worked most of the time. To avoid the neverending (yes, it was often neverending for me) black screen when loading a saved game, I loaded an earlier save first, that I knew worked. (It seemed like the saves didn't get corrupted in some levels of the game, at least for me).
What I did next was loading the corrupted save, when the game was already running (and not from the titlescreen). Now it often worked, and I could continue playing.
Another thing that worked sometimes, was to alt-tab out of the game, and back again. Suddenly the black screen was gone, and the game was running. I don't think it was coincidences, because it worked many times (sometimes after 5 minutes of waiting, looking at the black screen).
Another thing I noticed, was that the saves got corrupted more often in the city of Arx, and in the human castle. And never in levels 5,6,7, or 8. But maybe it was just coincidences, I can't tell for sure. But I always teleported to level 6 to save, if I was close to a teleporter.
I really hope they can fix this, because many people seem to experience the same thing, and it ruins a lot of the fun. Too bad, because it's a very good game, it would have been the best I have downloaded from GOG so far, if it wasn't for the bugs.
(I also have the "crash when moving too close to a friendly npc-bug", and that prevents me from using pickpocket, and even makes me flee in terror from friendly towns-people, chickens, and pigs).

I'm having the same problem as well, including the apparent differences per area. Sometimes the gauntlet shows up, sometimes it doesn't, but that doesn't appear to be a sure way to predict if it will load after all or not.
Thankfully, it's not totally game-breaking if you save a lot, since most saves will work eventually.
Nevertheless, it would be great if this annoyance could be fixed.
Really enjoying the game, by the way, that's why this is worth the effort of fixing, naturally :-)

A quick tip get around this problem later in the game, once you learn the Activate Portal (Mega-Spacio) spell:
Save at the portals.
If you take a portal to a 'safe to save' level, i.e. L2, L4 or L5, and save there, there should be no problem with the loading times. After that, you're back to the level you want to be on through the portals in a flash.

Just bought the game the other day and ran into the save issue today - I was already cursing PC gaming into lowest depths of hell before I got the idea to check here. After waiting for five minutes the game did indeed start working again, and saving the game at other than the first level works as a decent workaround. Thanks!