15 Gigabytes would make me a sad panda. I mean if that meant having almost triple the content, I wouldn't mind, but that's not the case. Besides, Oblivion was like 4 gigabytes and you won't argue that it had quite a bit of content.

What I find interesting is that Modern Warfare 2 needs about 16 gigs of memory and yet it doesn't even have 1/100 the content of Skyrim.

So you can fit more stuff on your SSD drive.

Mass Effect 1 and 2 (and probably GTA 4, don't know, never played it) have vast amounts of dialogue files for all the voiced-character cutscenes. Yes, there's voiced dialogue in the Beth games, but not nearly on the same level.

You have to realize that different types of files take up radically different amounts of storage space.

Things like the actual game code and mechanics and scripting and all that stuff that really matters to a game? Yeah, that's the most densely compressed data you can find.

The stuff that takes up the most storage space? Movie sequences, followed up by other visual media, like textures, then audio media, like background music and voice acting.

For an extreme example, look at Dwarf Fortress - basically no visual media at all, and only one song that takes up basically half the file size of the whole game. The actual file you need to download to play the game is less than 10 megs... and then a single save file can take up a hundred megs, thanks to all the procedurally-generated data.

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EDIT:

If the difference is honestly 15 gigs of voice acting, then BioWare must be allergic to compressed audio files.

Oh no, they optimized the game, how horrible!

I wished they had used textures so damn hi Rez that nobody could run the game. Then I would love to see the moaning and groaning on these forums.

It's called compression.

I thought the thread from the guy complaining about snow being too white was "out there", but this?

Actual size really only relates to video, sounds, and images. You could make a huge open world the size of Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind combined on less than a dozen megabytes easily. It would look like a game from 1989, have no (or barely any) sound, and not even an intro movie, but it could still be huge.

I bet none of you have ever heard of .kkrieger, the smallest real-time FPS ever (< 100 KB).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger

*cough* Minecraft *cough*


Serously though, game is like 21 mb, game when running in memory is 1.2-2.1 GB

Uh isn't it 3.8 gigs to download?

Textures have nothing (or little) to do with it. They are using new sound compression technology this time around. That's why every NPC can be fully voiced without larger filesize; seriously, if they were using the same sound compression as Oblivion, the game would probably be about 20GB even with no graphics engine at all.

indeed

I'm just wondering what loading times would be if they did use hi-res textures... it seems to take forever even the way it is. Every time I visit my Arch Mages quarters at the college takes THREE FRICKIN LOADS. Once for the college, once for the hall, and final one for the quarters themselves. That's bloody annoying as hell. Why they would design it like that is beyond me.

So I for one am glad they did cut down on size. Then again I'm playing it on the 360 and that hardware is getting on a bit. They say that one year in computers is like ten in other fields. That means the Xbox 360 is 60 years old and rapidly approaching retirement age. I'm betting that once the new consoles come out that it will mean that it will have a knock on effect with PC's too and instead of reducing quality to match consoles will reset... but eventually PC's will pull ahead again. It happened with the Xbox original too.

So yeah... Small is currently GOOD at this point in the life of the console. Shame it's holding back the PC games though.

5.6GB total game files.
1.3 or so in it is dialogue file.

So basically its the same as Obv. This game is a console port, designed with console in mind. Its up to Bes and modders to make a high res texture pack, at least we PC players have that option -.-"

I like how you are acting like an ass.

Says 3.8 gigs on my hard drive...

why did a 1.4 litre TSI engine win an award while there was a plethora of v12 6.0 beasts?

size does not matter, not right now anyway.

No nasty D.R.M.

Except that all data needs to have multiple copies on a Blu-Ray in order for a PS3 to process the data as fast as a 360 processes a DVD.

It does. Normally a game taking up larger space on your HDD means it has more unique & high res texture, means more immersion. I used to think "size doesnt matter", until Battlefield 3. The beautiful, realistic graphics does a great job immersing you into game world. TES uses first person view too, so better graphic must help it immensely.

It was the 360 1 disc decision by Beth, and a very poor decision at that. Star Ocean came on 3 discs for the 360, but only 1 Blu-Ray for the PS3. Other games have also had multi-disc releases. Frankly, Beth's games deserve a multi-disc release, especially compared to some other games that have had them, so it's all the more blatant that it was a shortcut and poor decision.

Even for the consoles, they could offer a hi-rez pack for download because even the consoles have had newer versions releases with larger HDD storage, etc. Of course, they still might do this, but I won't hold my breath.

You have to mod in those other 10 Gigabytes.

I love what they manage to do with their awesome use of storage space. They prove that you don't need multiple disks to make awesome, content-rich games.

There isn't very much "realistic" or "immersive" about Battlefield 3 at all. You carry infinite health packs the size of your torso in your back pocket, survive several bullets without even having your aim thrown off more than a tiny fraction of an inch, and you can gleefully charge headlong to your death because you know that dying 10 times a match is just average.

If anything, it detracts from the experience to have all those graphics because the damn lighting effects make everything so hard to see, and many of the characters are so visually indistinct.

Really, the graphics of Team Fortress 2 are far superior - you can instantly tell everything you need to know, and it's no more a goofy cartoon than Battlefield 3 is.