Africa's Toto
Banned
Warzone(230gb+), Quantum break(178gb), FFXV(148gb) and other recent titles don't do enough to justify their huge install sizes; GTA V was the last title to offer you a huge amount of content along with a huge install size.
GTA V's release was a significant turning point for the amount of space games took (the original 2015 install was 65gb and was released on 7 discs). It set a precedent, I think. But for all that we got the (then) most lifelike depiction of an open world with:
- One of the largest maps in gaming history
- Multiple playable characters
- Literal hundreds of vehicles
- Underwater traversal
- Full freedom to explore this crazy dense map with zero loading screens
- A crapload of radio tracks
- Customization options for almost all clothing, weapons, and vehicles
- More minigames than we had any right to
I'll stop there because I don't want to sound any more like an ad (god knows they don't need more exposure). You know how feature-rich this game was at release.
Yes, the gunplay was borderline poor, the animations were passable, mission structure was basic, camera was floaty as hell, it didn't have the crowd density of some Hitman levels nor the set pieces of Uncharted, but it arguably made up for its weak points with the coherence of the overall experience.
There is a point to be made about fun factor compared to previous GTAs, but damn it, it was immersive, it was huge, and it directly justified its size with what was offered.
And yes, it did take 5 years, millions in funding, and probably a saddening amount of crunch. And yes, GTA online did later lead to the mass adoption of live service design, but this rant is focused on the size.
I guess the main argument for Warzone or Ark or FFXV goes something like modern titles have higher res textures, better detail on models, a lot of baked data, maybe? The scale of data use increases with time, i.e, everything's just bigger now? (This is probably the only one that could hold up)
And updates for gaas titles bring entirely new versions of formerly buggy assets? Retouched models? All of the above, I assume.
My opinion is that almost none of these huge titles have been worth the HDD space they take up. Is Quantum break(178gb) really worth 3x the hard drive space Control(~50gb) takes up?
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