Just putting this out there, but recently ME 3 was released, and its install size is a WHOPPING 16 gigs, each disc is COMPLETELY full up to the maximum, and it has 5 FULL days of gameplay if you play on hardcoe. Considering there is only fast travel in that game, it puts skyrim to absolute shame. The amount of content in it is mind blowing, and skyrim could have had that amount of content, but people are so content with the TINY amount of data in skyrim, it is actually pathetic. And before ANYONE says "oh well skyrim uses compression tech, blah blah blah", so does ME3. Just thought id put that out there.

Holy cow, you're right. Sixteen is MORE than three.


Amazing.

With all due respect. I don't think you can measure a game based off the size of the install.

Fast travel everywhere in skyrim and see if you get five fulldays of content, you wont even get near that amount.

5 full days of gameplay, wow thats 40 hours
puts Skyrim's several hundred hours to shame
whatever they used all that disc space for it wasn't content

Yes, you can, because the bigger the install size, the more content that will be on disc, if skyrim was 8 gigs, instead of the 3.8, the guild quest lines could have been better, the NPC depth could have been greater, the main quest could have been longer and more in depth, there could have been more weapons / spells, there could have been so much more, but instead, the game is the size of an arcade game.

Five full days of content?

Skyrim has weeks even months of content on it depending on how you play. I'm still playing Skyrim after 200 hours of gameplay, it really has nothing to be ashamed of.
Why does the install size matter anyway?

Yeah, of wandering around aimlessly and not really doing anything, and i have a character at 180 hours, and one at 20, the one at 20 did all side quests and main quest, with fast travel, and then some exploring, the one with 180 was all walking everywhere, the only way you can get that amount of gameplay is not fast traveling, and ME3 is ALL FT.

Cool story bro.

Not really, MGS4 fills the whole Blu-ray but more than half of that space was taken up by cutscenes and not content.

Only without fast travel can you get that much gameplay. And its not really gameplay, its walking. Like I said, more content, more quests, more main quest, more NPC depth, more weapons, more guild depth, with a larger install size, the game could have been so much more, but instead, we got a shell of what the game could have been.

So hows that gonna work? You place different discs into your console when you want to play?

Skyrim cannot do that since it is one consistent world. Grow up and actually learn what you are talking about before you start making claims.

You'd be suprised how much space cut scenes take up, Skyrim has none. Mass Effect is an animated CG movie where Skyrim has pure gameplay

"Wandering around aimlessly and not really doing anything" to one is "roleplaying" to another.

I love both games and I don't really care how well compressed they are. Both have their own strong points. ME is a wonderful cinematic experience and that requires a lot of disk.

Actually, exploration is a big part of Skyrim's gameplay. So you basically just chose to ignore content.
No it's not. You're trying to compare an apple to a banana. The concept of fast travel does not exist in ME3. That is, I thought travelling from planet to planet was handled similar to ME2. If it's similar to ME1's system of simply selecting a planet and appearing then, then it does actually exist.

Now, you're focussing on the wrong thing. By your particular breed of logic displayed in this tread if Bethesda had shipped an extra two DVD's filled with nothing a "01" repeated over and over again we'd have weeks worth of gameplay time extra.
You want content, not just more space on your hard drive. Or to put or more simple: it's not the size that matters, it's what you do with it.

How many hours have you played ME3? I'm willing to bet it's dwarfed by how many hours you'll find from many of the people on this forum.

I measure the quality of the game by the number of hours of entertainment I get out of it, not by the number of gigabytes the install is.

Dwarf fortress takes up even less space (9.1MB) yet offer way more gameplay than the entire ME series.

This thread is wrong. Apples and oranges. Different kind of games, different engines, different programmers. I enjoy playing Skyrim as it is, the amount of content is amazing and I'm well aware it could be much more and take 15 gb on my hdd, but I'd rather have TES V in 2011 not in 2017.

Content as far as story and developed NPC's go doesn't take up much amount of diskspace, it is graphics, animation and sound that take up space. And again you are lying about your numbers, the install size on the PC version is 6 gb.

This!

I love Skyrim, I love Mass Effect. They're not even comparable since they're from entirely different genres. :/

Skyrim: 500 hours / 3.8 = 131.5 hours per gig
ME3: 120 hours / 16 = 7.5 hours per gig
Insert disc 3 to enter Markarth. Seriously?

Seriously though, the OP is clearly right. Skyrim has 3.8 Gig, where as Mass Effect has 16 gig... therefor logic dictates that Mass Effect has 12.2 gigs worth of gameplay content more than Skyrim.

Such is the way facts work.

Awww spoiler ruined my entire forum lurk.

I'm pretty sure the amount of content in Skyrim has everything to do with them running out of time and nothing to do with disc space. Should it ideally have 3 or 4 more types of creatures, longer/more written quest lines, and the missing features from the other games like rolling, fighting underwater, 1st person horses and werewolf form? Yeah, but wtf good is plenty of disc space when your superiors have you by the nuts trying to get you to make the deadline? I think its the deadline that ruins these games. Ruins is too strong because they are still awesome but every one of them feels incomplete in some way, and is pretty much expected to.