Red Dead Redemption 2 Is A Massive Game

Sizes for games are increasing at a rapid rate. As game worlds get bigger and graphics get better, the amount of memory required to house that data increases. This has exponentially increased for games that support UHD output, which feature texture resolutions that extend up to 4K in size. Supporting this format of output has seen massive gains in space requirements from some 4K-enabled games, such as Forza Motorsport 7 and Rockstar Games' upcoming Red Dead Redemption II. Rockstar's outing is actually even bigger than Turn 10 Studios' racing game, clocking in at a massive size.

On the Rockstar Intel website, there's an image of the PS4 Pro box for the Red Dead Redemption 2 bundle. The box has a number of revelations, including that it clocks in at 105GB, which is 5GB more than Forza Motortsport 7.

The requirement sees a minimum of 105GB of hard drive needing to be free on your drive to make use of the game. What the box doesn't reveal is if this requirement also applies to the game's standard version or if this is only required for the enhanced version of Red Dead Redemption 2 for the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X.

It was revealed some time ago that Rockstar would be supporting enhanced versions of the game on both the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, but it wasn't clarified if the version included in the PS4 Pro bundle is the same version as the other versions, or if the enhanced versions require an additional download, or if all versions of the game will require 105GB of space.

It wouldn't be hard to believe that the game is that huge given that GTA V was 60GB, and there is a lot more content in Red Dead Redemption II than GTA V. There are hundreds of animals to hunt, and massive biomes to explore, including cities, grassy plains, deserts, forests, and even snowy mountains. Each of these locations have their own graphical assets as well, which further extends the size requirements.

Another thing that helps extend the size is the fact that the multiplayer component is being included with the base game even though it won't become active until a month later. Nevertheless, including that content into the base game will easily extend the overall size.

The multiplayer will launch with 32-players out of the gate, something that didn't occur for GTA V until it reached the PC.

Now, obviously, if you buy the game through the PS4 Pro bundle you won't have to worry about hard drive space since it's a new system. But for everyone who is thinking about purchasing Red Dead Redemption II for their vanilla PS4 or PS4 Pro, you may definitely need to do some cleaning up and space rearrangement to accommodate the 105GB installation.

This puts Rockstar's open-world Western in the rare category of other games like Shenmue 3 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare that take up massive amounts of hard drive space. You'll be able to pick up a copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 when it launches near the end of October.