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A single button press skips loading screens in XCOM 2

UPDATE: But it could crash the game, developer explains.

UPDATE 12/02/2015 8.07pm: Apparently mashing the Caps Lock key can cause the game to crash, developer Firaxis has explained. Here's the developer's response to our query about if there's any reason players shouldn't use this trick:

"Hitting the key, through a rube-goldberg-esque series of events, forces all outstanding load requests to be filled immediately in a single frame. This causes a massive hitch, and potentially could crash the game. If you don't care about those adverse effects the synchronous load is faster."

ORIGINAL STORY 11/02/2015 10am: Well this is just daft. You know those post-mission loading screens in XCOM 2? The ones that give you a nice little summary of how the mission went, but tend to stick around for just a little too long? You can essentially skip them by pressing the Caps Lock key.

I've no idea what's going on here, but the game appears to be artificially extending its loading times, and at a guess, I'd say this Caps Lock shortcut is a remnant from the development build of the game. That's me pretending to understand how people make games, by the way.

You can watch us testing this out in the video below and it's remarkable to see what an immediate difference it makes. We shave off something like 30 seconds of loading! Think of all the things you could do in 30 seconds.

Cover image for YouTube videoA single button press skips loading screens in XCOM 2

We like XCOM 2 a lot, but it has its fair share of performance issues. According to PC Gamer, Firaxis is currently working on a number of patches to help address this. Maybe these loading times won't always require such an unusual workaround.