If you’re planning to pick up Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond when it launches this Friday, take note of both the required space and recommended specs.

Update (December 10th, 2020): While Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond was originally planned to require 340GB of free space for its installation process of the Oculus version (resulting in a final instal size of 170GB), Oculus says it has optimized the process such that it will now only required 180GB to install. While still a massive game, this will make it significantly easier to squeeze onto your drive. Be sure to update to the latest version of the Oculus PC software.

The original article, which overviews the game’s recommended specs, now reflects the latest info.

Original Article (December 7th, 2020): If you aren’t rolling in extra hard drive space, the upcoming launch of Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond might necessitate some overdue Spring cleaning.

While the final installation size of Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond already sits at a huge 170GB, developer Respawn Entertainment advises you’ll need 180GB of free space for the installation process. The studio also highly recommends installing the game on an SSD rather than an HDD. If you’re looking to clear our some extra storage space, the excellent and free tool WinDirStat comes highly recommended by yours truly.

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond Recommended Specifications

For smooth VR gameplay, Respawn recommends the following specifications for Above and Beyond:

  • CPU: Intel Core-i7-9700K (or comparable AMD)
  • RAM: 16GB DDR4
  • Graphics Card: GTX 2080 (or comparable AMD)
  • Storage: 180GB required for installation, 170GB once installed (SSD or NVMe recommended)

The studio says that the game can be played with lower specs but players might see occasional performance issues.

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond Release Date, Price, and Supported Headsets

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is set to launch on December 11th in the Oculus PC store and Steam. It will be playable on Oculus Rift headsets and SteamVR headsets. Oculus Quest headsets can play the game if plugged into a capable PC via an Oculus Link cable.

Oculus has unfortunately not yet confirmed the price of the game, though we expect it will land between $40 and $60.

If you’re looking for more details on the gameplay, check out our preview of both the campaign and multiplayer, and our article covering the game’s multiplayer details.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."

  • 340GB????? What the hell… it takes a whole hard drive!

    • Adrian Meredith

      That’s because the Oculus launcher is awful. If they release a patch you need 2x the required space.

      • Jan Ciger

        True about that Oculus launcher issue but even 170GB is bonkers, especially for a download on a 10Mbit DSL.

        I have Borderlands 3 installed from Steam and that’s over 70GB too and took the entire night to download. Many recent games are tens of GB.

        If it keeps going like this, we will be soon buying the games preinstalled on harddisks/SSDs. Or have one or two games installed tops.

        Disk capacity is cheap – but not THAT cheap, especially SSDs. And you can only put so many drives in the machine.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Appearantly it’s due all the documentary video’s that come with the game..

          • wheeler

            IIRC, in an /r/oculus comment the main Oculus rep said the documentaries only take up 10GB

          • Gonzax

            That’s not the reason. As Wheeler says below the gallery only takes up 10gb of space.

          • Then I think they really should do an update that makes that an optional download, and also split both the single player and multiplayer into separate downloads too. Because this is just f’n ridiculous.

      • Ad

        Will it be less on steam?

        • jimmy

          no

        • Jarilo

          Yes, you don’t need twice the storage to update on Steam. So 160 GB plus head room for the HD to function so it’s not in the red.

  • VR5

    I only had 40GB left on my largest drive so I made some space for this game. I now have 390GB free so I’m prepared. But it’s not an SSD so I might still be screwed.

    I might get a larger SSD for games like this (and user folder app data, that is chipping away at my 100GB system drive), but no new GPU for a while.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Price of a decent SSD isn’t that high anymore, 1TB’s are already pretty cheap these days..

      • VR5

        Yeah, I was thinking about getting a 500GB but it is probably better to go for an even larger one. I haven’t checked prizes lately.

        500GB seemed affordable when Wrath released but I ended up not needing it then. Cleared the whole game on a 1050 Ti too.

        Will try with my current hardware first before I decide I need to upgrade.

      • Define cheap

        • Andrew Jakobs

          At this time, below 100 euro’s? and 2TB’s even well below 200 euro’s..

          • patfish

            So i would need 40 1TB SSD (4000€) if every game in my Steamlibrary would have over 350GB :D

          • Andrew Jakobs

            Are you serious? It’s not like you would install every game in your steamlibrary even on HDD..
            It’s not that I like it needing 350GB just to install, but that doesn’t make SSD’s the problem of being expensive, at this moment, compared to a while back, 1TB/2TB SSD’s are very affordable..

          • patfish

            that was a joke! but 350GB for one game is a joke too. … i think 15 installed Games on a PC is totally normal.

  • kakek

    Can we talk about the 2080 as MINIMUM requirement ?
    It doesn’t look bad, but it’s not better than alyx.

    I don’t even know a single person around me ( IRL ) that will be able to play it.

    • VR5

      That’s misinformation. As you can tell from the original AMA and this article, that’s the recommended spec. Minimum requirements haven’t been released yet, as far as I know.

      • Adrian Meredith

        Not really, the developers said you would get frame drops if you used anything less. That in my mind is the minimum spec

        • VR5

          Depends on how frequent and severe the drops are. I think I’ll be fine at low quality settings, low resolution scale and 72 hz. I’m assuming the recommended specs are for ultra at high frequency and high resolution.

          • Ivynator

            Recommended are never for ultra at high frequency, or are not on non vr games, which are usually for high preset at standard resolution (1080p) and standard fps (60), so I think in vr might be something like that, so it’d be high preset at standard fps on vr (90fps I think). But I don’t really know which is the standard resolution for vr games.

            Another thing that we might have in mind is that devs usually pump up requirements to stimulate customers to buy new hardware.

            You can correct me if I’m wrong. It’s just an opinion.

          • VR5

            Yeah, ultra was probably too high.

            Funny that since they usually don’t give minimum specs on the Oculus store, Steam now ended up listing the same specs for minimum and recommended. I’m assuming they had to fill in something but didn’t want to commit to any minimum specs.

            Given how the game apparently just isn’t that good I won’t find out if my PC can run the game anytime soon. December is already stacked as it is so I’ll hold off buying this for the foreseeable future. Was expecting this to be a highlight but seems FB were wasting their money in this case.

          • Ivynator

            Well, I’m a bit disappointed with this game, I spected much more, and of course not this requirements XD

          • VR5

            Apparently this doesn’t have quality settings. Wow. That makes the requirements a more solid wall than I had thought.

    • Jonathan Winters III

      Lots of folks running it no problem on 1060s and 1070s.

      • Baldrickk

        Haha.
        On a 1070 I can’t get over 60 FPS. With everything but resolution turned down (100%)
        This drops to 30 in cutscenes.
        Without 120hz mode, that’d be a fixed 45 (90 reprojected)

        A 1060 is significantly weaker.

        “No Problem”
        Just like one guy who told me it played fine, but on analysing his debug info from Oculus, turns out he was playing at 16 FPS!

  • Raphael

    How to kill a VR game at launch. MS Flight sim requires 150GB.

  • Ad

    Jeez. This makes me wish I just bought two HDDs and had them in RAID 0 because SSDs are so expensive yet games just get bigger and bigger.

  • wowgivemeabreak

    haha, this stuff is getting out of control.

    • fragments_of_a_hologram_rose

      It’s deliberate; controls were relaxed so that corporate developers could participate more aggressively in the synthetic market.

  • GOAT42

    wait a minute the quest port is a HOAX, theres no way there gonna port that game to quest with those pc requirment, and that storage.

    • jiink

      I’m wondering if the Quest MoH will be a different, watered down version rather than a port…

      • jamster440

        100 percent itll be watered down no way can the queszt 2 compete with a 2080.

    • They probably will if they really reduce all the textures to the point of looking kinda blurry and low-detail and crap, which seems to be the case on most Quest 1/2 games in my experience.

  • xyzs

    Cyberpunk 2077 is just 70 gigs… just saying.
    I think there are some people who know how to optimize and some who don’t.

    • Sporadik Styles

      Its the video clips in this a guarantee and they’re probably using h.264 instead of h.265 and still game devs make everyone download everyone’s languages

    • Jesuslovesyo

      It’s because the game Medal of Honor was specifically designed for vr.Every scene and setting is utilized for visual clarity.

  • Gamer1st1

    I picked up a $50 500GB SSD just for this issue. I’m luckily good on other specs but for running a 2060. I’ll be using the SSD to move over HLA as well.
    Assuming of course the game doesn’t suck.
    Steam and Index I hope are somewhat better at the install stuff over Oculus, but I’m ready if not.
    Biggest annoyance for me at this point is the lack of price still, and spec info so late.

  • Wild Dog

    It doesn’t even have VRIK, what business does it have being so fat?

    • Whats that?

      • Jarilo

        Virtual Reality Inverse Kinematics

      • Wild Dog

        It’s when you can see your arms and legs/body in VR games.

  • Jarom Madsen

    Boooo! Forget that! I’m not buying another drive just for this one game. If it receives glowing reviews maybe I’ll reconsider but it’s not really looking that way.

    Remember that cool PS5 Unreal Engine demo where they were able to render raw art assets in real time with little compromise? I doubt this game is leveraging any tech as cool as that and still has this crazy of an install size. If this is the direction gaming is going we need some better storage solutions.

  • GrimmyReaper

    Medal of Honor : Above and Beyond a freaking joke!
    Let’s be frank, you are now strangling your audience.
    You need VR, you need to even be interested in this game, you need the money, you need the space AND you need to have a card that costs 800 bucks??

    Way to kill your game before launch. And I honestly do not see ANYTHING that warrants an RTX 2080. The game looks no better than Alyx or Lone Echo.

    • Viktorianas

      It actually looks worse IMO, probably the engine is not up for the task… Valve took so long because they were developing the engine specifically for Alyx.

      • GrimmyReaper

        Yeah and just to be clear, I do not care that much about graphics. I will praise them if they are nice.
        But this game would not require an RTX 2080 if they did a tiny bit of optimization. Shame, I was looking forward to this but nope.

  • They f****d up big time with the requirements for this game imo. it’s now no longer on my radar because I simply cannot justify what I’d need to buy/pay just to get this one game downloaded onto and then running on my machine.

  • Jarilo

    Good lord Respawn Entertainment, learn to compress your files.

  • Roger Bentley

    Damn having cyber punk 2077 and MOH vr coming out this week = a lot of divorces this week.

  • Roger Bentley

    MOH VR and Asgards Wrath together are HDD space whores.

  • Adrian Meredith

    So thats what the tag line was referring to.

    Medal of Honour: Above and Beyond the amount of hard disk space you have.

  • marcandrdsilets

    Platforms should implement rules and guidelines on memory usage, this is getting out of control.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Why? Where do you put the limit 10GB-50GB-100GB-200GB? I think the problem here is more the way the game is delivered. But in reality, I also do question myself why this game even needs 170GB of data..

      • marcandrdsilets

        That’s to be defined by the platform. On old console, cartridge was defining the standard, after that it was the CD/DVD, then the hard disk on last gen console… but on pc it’s the far west. Honnestly, as a game developer, a 100gb limit would make sense for even the largest games. We have technique to compress unused files and textures.

        Define a limit to follow and developers will find creative solution to fit into those guidelines without any compromise on the final game quality. It might seems stupid but compress all video of you game at 1080p, and stream them at 4k over the internet if a connection is detected. Let the user decide texture/sound quality settings before downloading the games by showing him the difference in file size. Pre-detect hardware at installation and let the user decide some options and let him some options. Weird example but, doom on switch is 17,5go and on xbox it’s 45go, Yeah texture quality is different but at the end it’s still the same game.

      • marcandrdsilets

        But I would tend to be more aggressive and force it at around 75go :P

  • I got a copy of Asgard’s Wrath just to find out it needs 120+GB’s of space and there’s no way I could possibly install it. To have these monstrous games demand SSD’s is just LAUGHABLE! How important do they think their games are? And what’s with the over-the-top bloatware? Try compressing a texture with a JPEG sometime!

    I can’t even begin to imagine what they need the extra 170GB’s of space for while installing. I would assume it’s to compress all of your porn and upload it to the FBI.

  • Ivan

    EA F*CK YOU you cant do this most people don’t have RTX

  • Jim P

    Well if Nvidia didn’t sell all there stock to miners and bots almost everyone would have the pc to run it. Now sales are not going to look good for this game. Hope I’m wrong.

  • Jesuslovesyo

    It took me on a high speed 5G modem over five hrs.

  • Well it’s nice to hear they’ve basically halved the required amount of space to initially download the game, but I still think all the numbers are just way too high. If Half-Life: Alyx can come in much lower in ever single category then so too can this game imo.

  • OK, I downloaded and ran WinDirStat, but how do I actually know what stuff to remove in order to clean up the drive of only stuff that’s not needed? If I already knew that before getting this software then I would have done it myself already, so where is the bit where the software itself tells me something I don’t already know?

    • Andrew Jakobs

      200GB SSD isn’t going to cut it.. Just keep that one for the OS and buy a separate 1TB version for the rest, if you have a larger case, if you have a NUC or something like that, replace it with a 1TB version and you’re good for a while..
      I’m sorry to say this but 200GB these days is just way too small if you’re doing gaming etc.
      Don’t waste your time with trying to remove as much as possible (so don’t waste your time on WinDirStat), you won’t get Windows down to less than 20GB and still have room for the game or anything else..
      As I Said, just buy a new 1TB SSD and you don’t ahve to worry for a while, and if you’re gonna buy a new computer in the near future you’ll have a nice extra drive..

      • Well I can’t afford to go out and buy any new drives, so the only chance I have now is if I clear out enough space on my 1TB HDD and download and play it from there. That’s the best I can do. And I’ll be playing it with a lowly i5 and GeForce 1060. :-o

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Uhm, you can’t afford to buy a new 1TB drive (which start at $75), but you can afford a $60 VR game?
          Also expect to turn down the settings to low on a system like that.

          • I actually can’t afford the game at that price, so I’ll be waiting for a sale or something.

  • Even now this is still utterly ridiculous. And it looks like the Quest 2 version of the game is going be similarly absurd.