asgard's wrath (9) — Image courtesy Sanzaru Games

‘Asgard’s Wrath’ Boasts Massive 121 GB File Size Thanks to High-res Textures

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Sep 27, 2019

Asgard’s Wrath is launching exclusively on Rift October 10th, so you know exactly how much time you’ll need to either clear out space on your SSD, or buy a new one for what appears to be one of, if not the largest game by file size to land on the Oculus Store.

According to its store listing, the Norse-themed combat-adventure is slated to take up 121.08 GB of space on your hard drive. As far as we can tell, this makes it the bulkiest game on the Oculus Store to date, with DiRT Rally 2.0 coming in at a hefty 81.92 GB and Marvel Powers United VR coming in at just under 56 GB.

Mike Doran, an executive producer at Oculus Studios, confirmed the file size in a reddit post, shedding some light on why its so massive:

It’s the textures. This game is huge.

I personally think it’s arguably the best looking VR game of all time, so far. Sanzaru’s artists have crafted some incredible looking levels. We find that people want to spend time in them just being there. For those folks it’s going to be an even longer game.

You guys will need to judge it for yourselves for sure. I’m really proud of it though.

Like Asgard’s Wrath, Marvel VR was created by Sanzuru Games in partnership with Oculus Studios, so that might explain some things. While high-resolution textures do take up a lot of space relatively speaking (the game admittedly does look pretty great to us), the game itself is slated to take the average player 30+ hours to complete.

Hands-on: 'Asgard's Wrath' Shows Titanic Ambition & Visual Finesse

For many users looking for full ‘AAA’ VR gaming experience, this is something of a Thor-sized godsend. You’ll of course need an equally epic monthly data cap and plenty of time to pre-load before it releases next month.

If you’re sorted for data but skint on C: drive space, follow these steps to reassign your primary game installation drive, courtesy of Oculus Support:

To install the Oculus app on a different system drive:

Press the Windows key + R to open the Run command
Enter the following path: [drive]:\Users\USERNAME\Downloads\OculusSetup.exe /drive=[new system drive]
– Replace [drive] with the letter of the drive where Oculus was downloaded to
– Replace [new system drive] with the letter of the new drive you’d like to install Oculus toEx: C:\Users\USERNAME\Downloads\OculusSetup.exe /drive=D or C:\Users\USERNAME\Downloads\OculusSetup.exe /drive:D
Click OK

The Oculus app will then open and attempt to install the app on the new drive you’ve chosen.

Jarilo

wtf that’s bull shit. 121gb , a fifth of my monthly limit. Give me a break.
- Jarom Madsen
  
  The actual download size will likely be compressed so it won’t take *quite* that much but agreed. Completely ridiculous.
- MeowMix
  
  Its a huge game.
  Other huge games are also in the 100GB+ size: GTA 5, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
  - Jarilo
    
    GTA 5 was around 50 to 70, and that’s all of freaking GTA 5.
Jarom Madsen

So stupid. You won’t appreciate the uncompressed textures they’re including with this on current gen headsets. Like, do they realize that even if this thing could run on Quest it literally wouldn’t fit on the 128gb deluxe model after OS install? I know that’s not really relevant but these large textures are so unnecessarily huge and are going to require long loading screens which are the WORST in VR.
- Ugur Ister
  
  The way playing rift games on Quest will work is that the game is installed and run on the PC, the Quest “only” displays the streamed picture and sends control input back.
  I also think higher res assets make more sense in VR as one can get closer up to things and also has the display really close to the eyes, more detail makes a difference there, even if the display is not crazy high res (for VR).
  My only concern would be if the loading is stuttery, I imagine they probably stream in assets or have faded out load times, let’s see.
- James Thornton Art Studio
  
  They will be compressed (most game textures are). Just a lot of well made 4096 textures with PBR shaders. Probably not much use of texture atlases. A ton of baked lightmap data. Personally, this is a welcome approach that will look incredible in VR, where you actually take a moment to appreciate details. A lot of people seem to like low poly in VR, but I just don’t enjoy it. As long as they can hit good frame rates with rich textures, longer load times will be ok.
  - Jarom Madsen
    
    Fair enough. This was a bit of a knee jerk reaction to the news. Mostly sad for my brother who was pretty excited about this game but has terrible internet options and will literally take him a week to download this.
    - James Thornton Art Studio
      
      Ah that sucks. It’s definitely on the extreme end of download size. Gonna start needing larger game drives too. Still should be pretty awesome in game at least
Peyton Lind

That’s ridiculous. What’s the point of having all those high res textures when the headsets out can’t even do them justice, given their SDE and other issues? Just for YT videos? As Jarom Madsen also said, you then have to deal with longer loading screens which hurts immersion, especially when the loading is for stuff you won’t get to truly appreciate.

My feeling is nobody will even be playing this game by the time headset display tech gets to the point where it could do all this justice.

I’m going to have a bit of a laugh if it ends up the actual gameplay is mediocre and they just made the game look flashy at the expense of gameplay. Gameplay is king in VR for immersion, not flashy graphics.
- johann jensson
  
  I have not seen anything yet of this game that made me go “ok, i’m interested to see more”. Looks mediocre at best and don’t understand what the hype is all about.
- Gonzax
  
  SDE is a thing of the past, I certainly appreciate good textures on my Index, it’s a big difference.
  - Justos
    
    as someone whos used index, riftS, quest, pimax…. SDE is not a thing of the past, at all.
- Jarilo
  
  “I’m going to have a bit of a laugh if it ends up the actual gameplay is mediocre and they just made the game look flashy at the expense of gameplay. ”
  
  That’s what I’m saying, everyone is already labeling it as a AAA to justify the file size. Where? has this won awards and de-throned Witcher 3? Must have missed the memo.
JesuSaveSouls

I think there’s a simpler way than doing all that just by using the settings in the oculus app and changing the default to the other drive.
JesuSaveSouls

No witchcraft(spells),lust(sexual explicit) or dark possession (paranormal) games for me,no thanks.Jesusavesouls !
- SataNeedSoulsToo
  
  Exactly, we only want fairy tales about rape of virgins named Mary.SataNeedSoulsToo !
- SataNeedSoulsToo
  
  Miracles(spells),rape(sexual explicit) or resurrection(paranormal) are all okay.SataNeedSoulsToo !
blue5peed

I don’t like obnoxiously large flat games because usually the high resolution detail is not worth all the space, download and load times however in VR you can lean in to look at things so maybe there is a justification there I don’t know. I feel like insane quality texture packs should be an optional download.
JDawg

AKA… non optimized game. It’s possible to reduce size on the drive if they wanted to make the effort.
Trevor Chandler

Even if current headsets cant take full advantage of the tip resolutions, with the emergence of new headsets, increased technology and different ways to stream, it could be quite soon that full support was available.

I understand it takes up a lot of space but it does bother be the negativity that I see when a company goes out of its way to go above and beyond in a way that will benefit people today and going forward, taking the virtual reality to new heights, and all people do is find something to complain about.

I’m sorry you have to hold of the ice cream cone with 2 hands, But I’m still not going to complain about its incredible taste even if it exceeds what my taste buds are able to enjoy today because tomorrow my taste buds will be ready to enjoy the extra flavor.

Do people complain when a sports car can go faster than the speed they drive it at? Do they want sports car any less just because they can’t drive it at its top speed because our speed limits don’t allow it? Heck no, they love it because they know what it’s capable of and when the time is right or the scenario is right they know that that extra experience will be there.

It’s about time we started encouraging and giving positive messages to the people that are pushing virtual reality forward.

Developers and artists, I commend and salute you for going above and beyond and pushing the limits of virtual reality to new heights.

Trevor Chandler
- Nick Wallace
  
  Trevor I think you’re getting your analogies mixed up here, in the case of a car that can go faster the car would be the headset and the road limit would be the title, ie the title only has so much but your headset can take more. The problem is here that it’s the opposite way around.
  
  It’s more like building a highway to the same specifications as a Speedway Track but only allowing 3 cylinder vehicles to go on it!
  
  I’m not going to crap on the graphics, it’s a bit ridiculous and over the top, but so long as they didn’t let the rest of the game suffer as a result then that’s fine. The problem will be if the gameplay has suffered because they’ve spent so much time trying to make it look as amazing as possible. Only time will really tell that.
  - SataNeedSoulsToo
    
    We do already have faster cars… People seem to ignore the fact that we do already have high resolution/fov headsets on the market which already works extremely well with Oculus games. I guess unless Oculus, HTC, or Valve made it, it doesnt exsist to some people…
    - appleman
      
      bless you! such a divine and fine person, you deserve souls too!
Greyl

Lot of kneejerk reactions and armchair developers in comments, but what else is new?
Gonzax

I just don’t get people, I’ve heard complaints about the lack of AAA
games for years, no we get this and people complain because it takes too
much space or a long time to download?? come on!
- MeowMix
  
  100%. Harddrive/SSD storage is so cheap nowadays (pickup a 1TB SSD for less than $100, or get a 4 TB storage drive for $100). 120GB should be nothing for anyone playing on a modern system. Heck, my gaming system has 6 TB of storage.
  Now we have that 40+ hour VR games, and ppl still find something to complain about. It’s lunacy.
  - wotever99ninynine
    
    i have 14.5tb of storage…
    
    500gb ssd,1tb hdd, 2tb hdd, 3tb hdd, 2x 4tb hdd..
    
    doesnt mean i have any space left on them thuogh.. 120gb is massive..
    
    not that im complaining. its good to see a AAA vr game with high resolution textures. but they better be damn good at that size, lol.
    
    i think im gonna have to sell a hdd and buy another 4tb+ drive..
- asshat
  
  we wanted a AAA game not a game the sizzzzee of a AAA game
- Jeremy Kins
  
  Haha. So freaking true. It’s horribly sad. The number one complaint, by far, is length versus price, and here comes a 30 hour adventure made for VR and people still complain. Jesus.
- Jarilo
  
  I haven’t seen the reviews so I’m not convinced it’s AAA yet. Lone Echo and all those games considered to be AAA by the VR community are AA at best. Now this game has some high expectation, good luck devs, I hope it’s the Witcher 3 of VR with the way some of you talk. lol
Hugo Zink

That’s what happens when you don’t pack your textures. They probably use 6-7 4k textures for each and every material. Diffuse, Normal, Detail Normal, AO, Metallic, Roughness and *possibly* even Specular.

Instead of leaving your Metallic, Roughness and AO maps separate, just combine them in one texture! Textures have 4 channels, and most larger games are just wasting most of them. High-quality textures don’t have to take up a ton of space, they were just too lazy to compress them on disk.
- Jarilo
  
  and to think, all of that just so we can set textures to medium anyways to boost super-sampling anyway. haha
david vincent

In my time, one floppy disc and 640K of ram were enough. https://media1.giphy.com/media/Vz3K2SHhpdgNq/giphy.gif
impurekind

Well that’s just crazy. My entire SSD is only 200GB, and I certainly don’t have anywhere near that left on it, even if I delete all the games I have an a whole other bunch of stuff that isn’t necessarily essential.
- J.C.
  
  SSDs are cheap, Intel’s 660p 1tb drive is routinely around $85.
  
  This game seems excessively large, but unlike pancake games, VR titles tend to have objects you get VERY close to. It’s possible they’ve gone bonkers on textures so those items looks super clear.
  
  That, or they went the Titanfall route and left all the audio uncompressed.
  - impurekind
    
    I don’t want to have to open up my PC and go in and change around SSDs to play a game. And I’m not rich, so I can’t afford to just go out and buy a new PC with a much bigger SSD just because some new game has come out that’s not taken stuff like this properly into account except for people who are tech-heads or rich.
    - Bamux
      
      Take a look at how big triple A games are now. If you are a gamer you will have to add hard disks sooner or later or you will just have to do without current games. A normal 1-4 TB hard drive, it’s extremely affordable. Opening a computer and adding a hard drive is not rocket science, everyone can do that.
      - aasd
        
        this is twice as big as GTA5 at 65GB. which is a massssssiiive game. So this is just stupid.
      - Bamux
        
        Maybe for performance reasons they decided not to compress the textures too much, I just find it absurd to condemn a game for its size without having seen it before. With the next generation of consoles, AAA games with +100 GB and 4 K high res textures will become even more popular.
        
        His statement that he can’t afford a new PC is also absurd. Who buys a new PC just because the SSD is too small?
      - aasd
        
        yeah right like if you can afford a 500-1k vr rig you better be able to get a new SSd
      - Bamux
        
        i personally have only a 120 GB ssd in the system and a 1 tb hard drive and can play everything wonderfully
      - aasd
        
        yeah i think i have 500 GB ssd and 2 tb and its just fine for most things, it is stuff like this and gta that make me have to double check though
      - MeowMix
        
        ??? I just looked in my games library. GTA5 on STEAM as of today sits at 88GB.
        Another game, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (w/ DLC) is 100 GB.
        
        Asgard’s Wrath will feature a lot of 4K textures, so that we VR users can appreciate the closeup fine detail.
    - gothicvillas
      
      Expect next gen games ranging from 100-150gb easily
    - T.I.
      
      well hey, your budget is yours to set. If you can afford a VR headset but not a larger drive, then you are limited. Simple. Whining about it is a choice, just like your budget.
- MeowMix
  
  That’s pretty small for 2019 standards.
  Even my school laptop from 6 years ago has a 256GB SSD bootdrive.
The Bard

Looks like a silly game. I watched gameplay on YT. Boring, silly game.
dota

I always liked games with small footprint.
Justos

VR gamers: We want AAA games in both length and QUALITY. VR is not going anywhere without content!!!

Also VR gamers: WTF i dont have this kind of space to burn!
- aasd
  
  gta5 is only 60-80…..120 is stupid.
  - Jarilo
    
    This
- Jarilo
  
  This going to be 3 times the size of The Witcher 3. Lets see how it compares in “length” and “quality”. lmao
AbradolfLincler

A Plague Tale Innocence using Quixel Megascans. Not only it looks better but install size is ~40 GB.
- MeowMix
  
  And “A Plagues Tale” is only a 10 hour game.
  Asgard’s Wrath promises 30+ hours (30 hrs if you speed run it). I expect to play 50+ hours my first playthrough. This is a huge rpg with a huge gameworld.
JesuSaveSouls

Someone get oculus arcade on the quest.
Lulu Vi Britannia

Jesus that’s so stupid. NO, I DON’T have 121GB to spare for a SINGLE game. It doesn’t matter what game it is. I’m not buying it if Oculus doesn’t reduce that size.
@Danny_Fr

VR Gamers: We want a tech with lower barrier of entry, to play with more people!
Also VR Gamers: Get faster internet and another SSD, peasant!
wotever99ninynine

jeeze.. you need to run a command just to install a game to a second hdd? ALL my games are on other hdds. my os drive is just that. for my os. c’mon oculus. get with the times already…
- Ben Orona
  
  You don’t have to. The article is wrong. They are only telling you how to move the Oculus App itself.