Hey,

I've noticed that my game takes a while to even start-up after launching it.
When I first installed it a year ago it was an instant.
Now it takes 5-6 minutes to get into the game with the start-up and loading my saved game.
Also the game stutters while it's loading the scenery and textures.
(Textures and all the other stuff loaded instantly when the game was installed a year ago.)

System:
OS: Windows 10 ver. 1903
CPU: Ryzen 5 2600
GPU: GTX 1070 (Driver version: 436.30)
RAM: 16 GB
The game is on a SSD with 294 GBs of free space left.
The game was never modded.

What could cause such an increase in both start-up and loading time?
I don't mind waiting but I don't think it's supposed to be like this with this configuration.

Thanks in advance.

Sounds more like a problem with your ssd rather than with the game. SSD's are known to get slower over time there are a few ways to overcome that. Try your favorite www search engine for optimizing ssd's.