Hoping to play noted orc dating/shaming simulator Shadow of War on PC when it launches early tomorrow? You’ll probably want to start pre-loading it asap.
By default, the Steam download of Shadow of War weighs in at a whopping 97.7 GB, making it one of the largest game downloads on the platform in recent memory. To put that in perspective, Shadow of War’s download on PS4 is 36.43 GB, according to Kotaku editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo. Larger games on Steam, meanwhile, tend to land in the 30-50 GB range, while smaller games can be anything from a few hundred MB to a handful of GB.
Interestingly, it seems that the Steam version includes 4K video content by default, which explains some of the bulk. You can opt out of it, but only after you’ve started the download. That brings the PC version down to around 65 GB. Even if you download 4K video on PS4, however, that download is only 63.93 GB, according to IGN’s Dan Stapleton.
It’s not entirely clear why the PC version of Shadow of War is so large. Some have speculated that it includes higher-resolution textures on top of everything else, while others think it might just be a compression thing. Regardless, it’s a big one. Your hard drive, much like your life, will soon be occupied by a mess of orcs.
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