Looks like the .dds format for textures is the main reason for that. :hmm: GWX caused nearly eternal load times on older PCs because of using so many hi-res textures (tga), and I bet if SH4 would use tgas it would take even longer that GWX to load. But I doubt that the graphics engine has been much improved otherwise in terms of load speeds. The game engine however has been clearly improved in that 4096 time compression is now possible to get in the same PC that was struggling before with 2048 in SH3.