I've not played much. I played a bit more last night, but my total is barely over 2 hours at this point.
I did do the first mission, which was a mine. Then an outpost. I then flew to a planet and landed, then explored a bit of the city. I took a tram to a location where I need to go, to progress the first quest. All of this, thus far, has been part of the introductory quest.
The loading screens I've experienced thus far are VERY short.
Boarding the ship - it's two levels. The lower level, which you access from the ground, is like a cargo area. You click on a ladder to go into the crew space, above. The loading maybe takes two seconds. Same for exiting. I would understand if loading takes longer, exiting from the crew space to the cargo area (which is technically open to the portion of the world you just accessed), but it never took more than a couple of seconds.
There is animation for taking off and landing. It doesn't take that long and it's fun to watch (so far, anyway).
There are some 'fetchit" quests. I already had a weird one. That tram I mentioned, when I exited the station, I went to talk to a random person. You can tell in the game if someone might have useful dialog to share, because they're named, and not some generic label (e.g., "Citizen" as opposed to "Jerimiah Lawton" or something like that). I talked to this person and she said how tired she was. Strangely, one of my options was to go and fetch her a cup of coffee. This coffee shop was in the last area, where I just was; I passed by it to get to the tram station. I thought, that's a little weird, making me fetch her a cup of coffee. I had to save and exit at about that point.
I'm not sure if loading screens can be skipped; I've not gotten to the point where I want to skip them. I will let you know if it is skippable, or not, once I get some more time in the game. This sounds like someone complaining about 3 second load times for screens. I'd also posit that a LOT of games like this have the fetchit quests, so you talk to A who needs B but it's in the possession of C and you can choose violence against C to get said McGuffin, or steal it, or do something for C to get it from them peacefully. I don't know yet, I just don't have enough time in it.
But my preliminary reaction to that is, someone is whinging.
