Like many others, I just bought the digital version of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on my switch. I paid for the game, exited the eShop and then it just… started downloading. No prompt to delete anything else to make room. No small crisis in deciding which of the half-dozen unfinished games on my console would get the go-ahead. The download finished quickly and then I started playing. It’s easy, isn’t it? And yet I can’t remember the last time the installation of one of the biggest games of the year went so smoothly.
The Week in Games: Return to Hyrule
Monday 3:53 p.m
Most Modern blockbusters have file sizes of at least 50 GB. The largest are over 100 GB, even significantly more. Since standard PS5 and Xbox Series do I really have time to replay? The witcher 3 at the moment? Should I say God of War Ragnarok on hold while I’m done Horizon Forbidden West‘S Burning Shores DLC? What if I just play another hour of the latest Random 2D? Did I download Soulslike before deleting it?
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor threw that whole gauntlet into overdrive. The game was huge. The patches were huge. The Patches kept coming. I love what I’ve played so far, but man, this whole role sucks. God help you if you also have an online multiplayer game that you jump into regularly destiny 2, Apex Legendsor Fourteen days. And if yes Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
Hence the great relief when I installed it Tears of the Kingdom and didn’t have to deal with any of it. I have a 128GB microSD card in my Switch and have never hit the invisible barrier of its storage limits. Nintendo is known for optimizing its Switch games, with file sizes routinely being half those of ports demise 2016 required. Tears of the Kingdom is only a gigabyte larger than breath of the wild, despite an all-new crafting system, a much larger map, and a ton more voice acting. It’s a little marvel and I appreciate it now more than ever. And the version 1.1 day-one patch? Barely 300MB.
I get it. With 4K textures, mountains of cutscenes, and full voice acting, cutting-edge blockbusters will never be this small on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC. External storage upgrades are also becoming cheaper, easing the worries of those who can afford them. And maybe one day all our games will be streamed from the cloud anyway, eliminating the need for local storage. In the meantime, I don’t take small wildlife footprints for granted.
Something feels a little dated Tears of the Kingdom, and it’s not just the latest adventure for some of Nintendo’s oldest characters. The midnight start. The Lines wrapped around the block. The fact that a gaming culture that’s becoming increasingly splintered, fragmented, and heated is currently focused on Link gluing rockets to a raft. It’s nice. Also, The game just works. Unbelievable.
