Having just tested, I'll grant that uses more than expected - it does peak at around 8 GB, but this is not increased for the number of mods (likely because the number of threads isn't increased). It also takes a long time into "Loading Sprites" to even break 4 GB - if I let it hard lock, it's ...

I have paging enabled, and 18 GB of RAM. (And given the hard lock, I was running from a fresh start to test, so pretty much the full amount was available)

That would be a convenient explanation but I highly doubt it was able to hit more than double what the median of high-end gaming PCs have. It ...

There's not a single other problem with 99% of programs - it's a very particular condition here by cropping bitmaps when there's already a working cropped cache.

I've seen it before in one other place - Witcher 3 can have a similar hardlock during cutscenes, where it's semi-widely reported, so not ...

Computer becomes totally unresponsive and requires full restart when starting the game under "normal" conditions, stopping at 39-40% "Cropping Bitmaps". No alternative to restart is possible; all processing halts, including ctrl+alt+del and things as basic as audio passthrough.

Tried forcing openGL ...