Rome Remastered - is size indeed 40+GB?!

[alhoon]

Is there something wrong with the page for Rome Remastered in Steam? I was thinking to download it but then I saw, to my amazement, that Rome Remastered is BIGGER than Rome II, showing as 40+ GB of disc space. Is that an error in steam page? Perhaps they planned to put in "4.2 GB" and they wrote it as 42GB?


If RTWR is indeed 40+GB... what on earth is there?!

[Jurand of Cracow]

it is.
known Earth is there (oikumene)

[alhoon]

But... I really don't understand how it ballooned to 40 GB, that's 10 times bigger than RTW+BI combined!

[crazyroman]

Because of the 4k textures.

[alhoon]

I don't know what are the "4k textures" Do you mean the map has insanely detailed 4K textures? Or the units, that are (apologies) dated graphics use 4k textures? That would be a poor choice as from screenshots, I would say I don't need 40GB of modest textures that are not that much better than textures of M2TW.

[crazyroman]

Everything has way better graphics (and textures i guess) from the original game. Units, buildings, map, etc. The units, from what i know, are upscaled and they are 4k too. And that's, for the vanilla and it's expansions (BI and ALX). Maybe i'm wrong though. Also, if you install RR in your system, you install all 3 games and you can play with all of them. That's also, one reason for the huge space it requires.

[edddeduck]

You have ~45 factions each with their own rosters (As this is more or less 3 games of assets), you then have buildings etc. The original game has textures that are 256px or 512px in size, Rome Remastered has 2048px or 4096px textures (and they support PBR layers). You then add in the same for the campaign map, buildings, unit variation, trees, shrubs, a few extra sound files and newer videos. It all adds up to about 40GB.

[The Noble Lord]

It is very large indeed, very heavy for the rig, you should have plenty of free storage space for RTW Remastered to be able to run properly.

[alhoon]

And I will reiterate that such textures, which baloon the game to 40+ GB are a waste for RTW.
There is improvement, for sure. Especially if you zoom close. But not THAT much greater improvement. I.e. if went from 256px textures to 1024px textures instead of 4K textures, the game would be 7-8GB and there would be practically no visible difference.

Please take a look at this:
https://youtu.be/MsYlSgTvEJw?t=68

Are the Remastered graphics so stunningly better than the original to have us pull a 40GB?

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

Companies have become bolder with game sizes by including all these extra textures because storage is rather affordable these days and it is no doubt 'expected' that people are closer and closer to dealing in TB by default rather than the limited handfuls of GB that have prevailed in the past. This combined with an on average raised expectation for being able to just download everything no problem. This does not apply to everyone and I think the assets that take up huge fractions of game size should be optional, but I expect this is roughly where the line of thought comes from.

[alhoon]

Companies have become bolder with game sizes by including all these extra textures because storage is rather affordable these days and it is no doubt 'expected' that people are closer and closer to dealing in TB by default rather than the limited handfuls of GB that have prevailed in the past. This combined with an on average raised expectation for being able to just download everything no problem. This does not apply to everyone and I think the assets that take up huge fractions of game size should be optional, but I expect this is roughly where the line of thought comes from.

And I think the line of 4K textures comes from the, not unrealistic but honestly quite shady expectations that "4K textures and support for such things would have modders spend their free time to make beautiful, high resolution textures that are 2020s standards not mid 2000s standards, effectively doing much of our work for us."