Making Space · 10:14am Aug 25th, 2016
Well, after 15 months, hard drive space on my Vanquish III finally became an issue. Solving this problem opened my eyes on how insane game file sizes have become. Clearly, it has to be either video or audio.
Witcher 3, right now the best looking game I have ever played, comes in at a respectable 9.7 GB at the base version. With all pieces of DLC, it still is impressive at 38.8 GB.
What boggles my mind is Titanfall. It is the largest game on my hard drive at 62.8 GB. The difference being, Titanfall is a multiplayer-only game without dozens upon dozens of hours of dialogue and cinematics and an incredibly expansive overworld. Doom, likewise is a very close second at 62.3 GB.
Can anyone more tech-savvy than I perhaps shed some light? Is it lack of good compression on the developer's part? What takes up more space? Audio or video? I can only assume video. I always assumed the better a game looks, the more space it takes up, but then why does Witcher 3's base version dwarf Titanfall? This also concerns me for Titanfall 2's tech test last weekend, which was two maps, two modes, and yet came in at 17.3 GB.
I'd imagine textures and polygon-counts may have something to do with it.
More complicated/bigger models and animations, more varieties of items, weapons, characters, all takes up more space.
Also the matter that the more complex the game, the more scenarios you have to code for where two aspects might interact.
If you add a gun that disembowels your enemies, obviously you have to code reactions for what they do when they (or someone else) is disembowelled, as well as AI to avoid being disembowelled or to know how to use the weapon themself if that's going to happen.
Then if you add an eating mechanic then you'd probably want it to have some effect on what happens when a player who's been eating get disembowelled.
tl;dr
There is a lot of factors that can contribute to a game's size.
tl;tl;dr
It is quite ridiculous how big some games get. I don't think I'd even have enough internet cap to download TitanFall 2.
There are DOZENS of factors at work here. Yes typically it is video that is more of a space hog than audio, partly because video can HAVE audio in as part of the same file. High quality video tends to take up more space, but one factor your missing is COMPRESSION. While I can't be 100% on this as I don't own the game and thus can't check, I'm willing to wager good money that most of Witcher 3's audiovisual files have some level of compression involved. Sure they're high quality, but they're compressed so they take up less space. However compressed files tend to take longer use, because they have to be unpacked to be ran. The greater the compression, the more time/effort it takes to unpack. Thus you get things like Load Times between levels/zones. Games have to repack one level/zone, and then unpack the new one. A great example of this is Doom 3, the original PC version. The normal game size, with the files compressed, is 1.6gb. Unpack all the files to reduce load times, and it becomes 14.9gb. That's nearly 10x the size of the normally compressed game.
With an game like Titanfall, where you want load times to be as close to non-existent as possible, as having to unpack something during a live match would likely cause lag, and any of that and you have gamers bitching at everything and everyone. Thus you have to have all the files, and all variations of said files, available at a moment's notice, so it's not possible to compress many files, if any at all. Thus they tend to be much larger.
Edit: As I said at first, there are literally dozens of possible factors. This is just the most obvious my sleep deprived brain came up with.
4170772 Thanks. I asked on the /gaming subreddit, where I was told that all of Titanfall's audio is uncompressed. Luckily, it shows. Titanfall's audio stands out, to me, more than other features.
4170778 Yep, uncompressed files will take up LOTS of space. Same reason a simple picture can be several different sizes just depending on its file type. Different forms of compression used/not used.
4171206 I'm talking strictly PC. I do have Halo 5 over on my Xbox.
4171206 There is never enough Ryoko in anyone's life.