I've noticed a few people having this problem including myself and it seems to be people with older AMD Processors.
Tested the game on my old FX-57 based machine with 2 gtx 8800's and it appears you are correct.
The game loads and cinematic runs fine, i create my character and after that it just sits forever on the loading screen. Have tried multiple times and like with make7ac all my drivers are up-to-date. Tested on both xp and win7 with the same result.
