XCOM 2 post-mission loading can be skipped, but not without risk

You may have heard recently that hitting the caps lock key during the XCOM 2 post-mission screens can cause the game to load much more quickly than it normally does.

post-mission screens can cause the game to load much more quickly than it normally does. And it's true! I can't confirm this personally because I don't have XCOM 2, but developer Firaxis recently told Eurogamerthat it is in fact a real thing: Hitting caps lock at the proper time will cause the game to advance almost immediately. But every yin has a yang, as they say, and in this case those dramatically improved loading times could lead to crashes.

"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,” the studio explained. “If you don't care about those adverse effects the synchronous load is faster."

It's a risk that some players are willing to take, because despite the fact that XCOM 2 is an extremely good game, it does suffer from a number of rather significant technical and performance issues. Publisher 2K told us last weekthat it is “looking into” the complaints, and committed (albeit with no specifics) to improving the game in future patches. For now, you have the option to roll the dice if you just can't stand all the waiting, and you may want to give the “ Stop Wasting My Time” moda look as well. It speeds up the in-game action by removing most of the brief-but-cumulatively-annoying pauses that occur after firing weapons, killing enemies, or going into cover.