Comment by JohnBooty

24 days ago

    I expect it's a story that'll never get told in 
    enough detail to satisfy curiosity, but it certainly 
    seems strange from the outside for this optimisation 
    to be both possible and acceptable.

From a technical perspective, the key thing to know is that the console install size for HD2 was always that small -- their build process assumed SSD on console so it didn't duplicate stuff.

154GB was the product of massive asset duplication, as opposed 23GB being the product of an optimization miracle. :)

How did it get so bad on PC?

Well, it wasn't always so crazy. I remember it being reasonable closer to launch (almost 2 years ago) and more like ~40-60GB. Since then, the devs have been busy. There has been a LOT of reworking and a lot of new content, and the PC install size grew gradually rather than suddenly.

This was probably impacted to some extent by the discontinued game engine they're using. Bitsquid/Stingray was discontinued partway through HD2 development and they continued on with it rather than restarting production entirely.