Long loading times at first

every time i start the game up and load areas for the first time in the session it takes about a minute to load, but once the area's loaded everything works fine.

also when i change to a different area, wait for it to load and move back to the first location it loads fast.
this has only started happening recently and the game's installed on an SSD, the load times weren't this long before.

there was also a case where animations weren't playing and windows weren't appearing when i pressed the key to open them. i'm suspecting it's my SSD but i have other games on it and they seem to work properly.