Why is this game over 100GB?

[Gujin]

Nothing about the game looks more graphically impressive or on a larger scale than Borderlands 2, and that game isn't even 20GB.

Why is this game so needlessly large? Gearbox seemed to know how to actually optimize games last gen, and yet from the looks of things here it seems like they just left over 50GB of uncompressed crap.

[Shinigami]

It's true that BL3 is large, and with the HD texture pack, BL2 is about 26GB in size.
Now what makes the game larger might be based on what the developers have said in the past.

For example, due to older consoles and PC's having more limited memory, they could only have a few hundred different gun sounds in BL2. This was upped to several thousand in BL3 as it was released on more recent systems.

As computing power grows and additional space is awarded, we can resort to larger textures, better fidelity on sound effects and music (i.e. they're less compressed), and a larger number of vertices on game objects such as the weapons, enemies, items, and of course the worlds. This all adds up.

Now you also need to remember that BL3, even if you don't necessarily have all the DLCs etc, will download content so that you can play successfully with those that have everything, while you do not (which of course could have also potentially been the UT route where you download assets you don't have when entering a match, but that means a longer wait time, something not everyone has).

I don't know if BL2 has a lot of extra 'languages' as I never tried it, but those too take a certain amount of space in BL3 (the fidelity of the audio files may be better than those back in BL2 days).

It's a massive aggregation of small individual things, that once clumped together, causes this 'bloat' if you will. Personally, I was very impressed with how much was crammed into BL2 (something that the 32bit limiter occasionally caused issues in the Hyperion City map resulting in a game crash when you ran out of memory...).

May not fully answer your question, I'm sure others will chime in. Games are simply getting larger when new doors open up :\

[Aachen]

Which areas do you compare to say the scale of Two and Three or so similar?

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

lazy ass devs nowadays just dont give a ♥♥♥♥ about file size anymore since high capacity SSDS are getting more affordable. honestly I think this game can be compressed down to 60-70 GBs like other open world games with higher visual fidelity no problemo. :shrug:

[Shinigami]

Yes, it's always possible to compress things down. There are pros and cons to all:
- Compressing sounds will reduce fidelity, some with sensitive ears may find this annoying
- Using higher texture compression may result in visual artifacts
- Removing language files makes it harder for some to get the 'version' they seek (ease of use)
- Updating is a complex process, sometimes requiring older files to remain for backward compatibility and cannot simply be replaced
- This in turn may make it harder to ensure cross-compatibility and cross-play.
- Reducing cut scene video content reduces game size but result in a pixelated mess
- Reducing animation data will result in jerky animations
- Reducing number of assets results in gamers complaining of how everything looks the same
- etc... etc...

If you know how to help companies reduce game file and download sizes down, speak to the developers as I'm sure they'd be happy to employ you. Sometimes being "lazy" comes into play, last September alone there were articles regarding games like Warframe and Destiny 2 where the devs found ways to dramatically reduce game size. It can happen, may be easier with some game engines versus others.

[Quackzilla]

A lot of times the massive games will be optimized for mechanical drives. This means that assets are duplicated many times across file trees for different maps to take advantage of high sequential read speeds while mitigating slow random read speeds of HDDs. I think that's the case for all 100+ GB games.

Sucks for SSD owners.

[Zach]

The fact that people complain about drive space in an era where you can buy 1 or 2tb HDD's for like $50 is baffling to me. Even 1tb sata SSD's are becoming cheaper.

[IamLoco]

Yep, what the heck...
It says on the steam shop page that BL3 needs 75 GB of discspace. That´s already huge.
But the download size alone is 93 GB (WHAT?!). With my crappy 50 MBit connection (thanks, Germany...) which usually only provides around 30 MBit at max, the download will take around 12 hours.
I should have just ordered a hardcopy, it would probably arrive earlier.

[Agarillobob]

Originally posted by Quackzilla:

A lot of times the massive games will be optimized for mechanical drives. This means that assets are duplicated many times across file trees for different maps to take advantage of high sequential read speeds while mitigating slow random read speeds of HDDs. I think that's the case for all 100+ GB games.

Sucks for SSD owners.

nice necro

[Draxuss]

Originally posted by Quackzilla:

A lot of times the massive games will be optimized for mechanical drives. This means that assets are duplicated many times across file trees for different maps to take advantage of high sequential read speeds while mitigating slow random read speeds of HDDs. I think that's the case for all 100+ GB games.

Sucks for SSD owners.

So your saying my 980 Pro which has a 5000 mbs write and 7000 mbs read will be slower then an HDD with this game. Um no your wrong.

[Casurin]

It would be really nice if we could just select to not have other languages installed. If you want to switch to a different language nobody hinders you, but having to store the data for several other languages you will never use? Why?

BL3 has overall higher resolution textures and sound which just takes up more space, so even removing languages will not make the game that much smaller.

Originally posted by Quackzilla:

A lot of times the massive games will be optimized for mechanical drives.

No. They are either taking precaution for optical drives, or they don't care at all.
Doing anything specially for mechanical drives would be just wasting time on being ignorant.

Originally posted by guardian2439?:

The fact that people complain about drive space in an era where you can buy 1 or 2tb HDD's for like $50 is baffling to me. Even 1tb sata SSD's are becoming cheaper.

Yeah - "How dare you complain that the game needs twice the diskspace as it claims to need. And don't be a peasant - just waste hundreds of $ each year to buy new drives".

[Zach]

Originally posted by Casurin:

It would be really nice if we could just select to not have other languages installed. If you want to switch to a different language nobody hinders you, but having to store the data for several other languages you will never use? Why?

BL3 has overall higher resolution textures and sound which just takes up more space, so even removing languages will not make the game that much smaller.

Originally posted by Quackzilla:

A lot of times the massive games will be optimized for mechanical drives.

No. They are either taking precaution for optical drives, or they don't care at all.
Doing anything specially for mechanical drives would be just wasting time on being ignorant.

Originally posted by guardian2439?:

The fact that people complain about drive space in an era where you can buy 1 or 2tb HDD's for like $50 is baffling to me. Even 1tb sata SSD's are becoming cheaper.

Yeah - "How dare you complain that the game needs twice the diskspace as it claims to need. And don't be a peasant - just waste hundreds of $ each year to buy new drives".

games are always going to get bigger that's just how modern rendering works. this is a UE4 title and stacking it to BL2 is pretty dumb considering UE3 and UE4 are night and day. also the maps in BL3 are bigger and the game has a lot more weapons and enemies with high poly counts between everything. plus as you said the higher quality assets.

Also who is wasting hundreds of dollars a year for a drive? sounds like you might need a reality check because a 2tb drive will last you obviously 10+ years given you don't max it out.

[FriedTeto]

with the all dlc's it is over 133 very gud.

[jpsmailplace]

The total steam file size is 138 GB. it's like having three games in one. the game was also made for large 65" to 75" TV's. I play my games on a 70" screen. even BL1 and BL2 look cool on a large 4k TV. those games offer 4k rendering plus higher graphics detail too.

[Kubark, In Memory of Laika]

140 gigabyte is too much, i will play border 2

[Draxuss]

Old thread? And thanks for letting us know?