As the clock ticks down to the release of The Last of Us 2 (officially known as The Last of Us Part II), fans are getting excited about finally being able to get their hands on this eagerly anticipated PS4 exclusive.
Of course, the path of The Last of Us 2’s launch has been a rocky one: after years in development, the game was delayed from its original launch date last year. Actually, developer Naughty Dog’s survival horror game even went without a release date for a while due to the coronavirus pandemic, something which had fans fearing the game would be delayed indefinitely.
Luckily, though, the game is now slated to hit shelves in slightly more than 2 weeks time (on June 19) meaning we’ll finally get to play a continuation of Ellie and Joel’s adventures in a post-apocalyptic US.
Developer Naughty Dog has also revealed the game’s install size, as was recently covered on Forbes. Game install sizes have been creeping up over the years and especially as this console generation comes to an end, and those who get hold of The Last of Us 2 when it releases this month will need 100 GB free on their console hard drive to download and install the game (the installation process itself demands up to 100 GB, but the game’s file size is 78.3 GB).
This means that The Last of Us 2 is the biggest PS4 exclusive when it comes to hard drive space requirements after the Final Fantasy VII Remake, which weighs in at more than 85 GB after installation (Final Fantasy VII is actually a timed PS4 exclusive, and will almost certainly be coming to other platforms in the future though).
For comparison, Naughty Dog’s own Uncharted 4 has a file size of 48 GB, while their most recent game Uncharted: The Lost Legacy comes in at about 45 GB. Meanwhile, the other two PS4 exclusives demanding the most hard drive space (Marvel’s Spider Man and God of War) are close to The Lost Legacy in terms of install size. Other PS4 exclusives like Bloodborne are quite a bit less demanding when it comes to hard drive space requirements, with an install size of about 25 GB according to twistedvoxel.com.
Other non-exclusive PS4 games boast gargantuan install sizes too. Such is the case of Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2, which falls in at almost 100 GB, while Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’s Legacy edition raised eyebrows by demanding a whooping 130 GB of console hard drive space in 2016, although of course this also included the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare remaster.
Nonetheless, installation size does not equate to hours of playtime, as was the case with The Order: 1886, which only offered about 6 hours of playtime while also taking a hefty amount of hard drive space.
However, it’s clear The Last of Us 2 is not a game you’ll be able to finish in an evening. Naughty Dog’s creative director Neil Druckmann said in an interview last year that The Last of Us’ sequel is the biggest game the company has ever done, and that the story’s “twist and turns are complex”.
Also, recent comments by Naughty Dog writer Halley Gross suggest the game could take about 30 hours to play through. This means it would be twice as long as the original The Last of Us, which on average took 15 hours to play to the end.
The big question, nonetheless, is whether The Last of Us 2 will live up to the hype and be a worthy follow up to what many consider the best game of the last console generation. It’s clear Naughty Dog’s sequel definitely has some big boots to fill, so hopefully it will be a great successor to the first Last of Us when it hits shelves later this month.