Ignoring for a second that you, most likely, don't know how many different environments there are in the game, how much variety is in each environment or how large the environments actually are, you do understand that the space it taken up by quite a few things other than textures, right? The 4GB is a cache file, and unless I've missed any reviews mentioning this, we don't know how that cache benefits the game. But, I'm sure it's more fun to panic about it.
I'm not panicking. Just like you, I'm pretty apathetic regarding console games, but when it comes to things like this, I start to wonder what the hell happened exactly. Yes, textures don't take up a lot of space usually, I understand that quite well. I never assumed textures were the main issue regarding storage space, but that the quality of some of the textures stick out like a sore thumb. It doesn't make a ton of sense for MGS4 to look like how it does with how much money was poured into it. I suppose I'll get the last laugh regardless, because the chances are pretty damn slim that MGS4 will draw any profit.
I understand that there are many different environmental effects because you probably visit many different environments. However, you went from simply citing the quality of environmental effects to equating the effects to everything regarding the environment. Dust and fog effects, however complex, don't take up any space, and don't require a cache of hard drive space, but rather lots of RAM.
Sure, the size of the environments and the complexity of each of them are probably pretty impressive and daunting, and I'm sure KojiPro found it easy to make 50GBs run out with complex geometry, and hours upon hours of recorded dialog, which is probably what takes up the most space on the CD.
I think my rage-filled posts masked what I was really getting at. You simply cannot tell me that a developer who knows their exact limitations in hardware, space, time, budget and everything under sun can still produce a game that exceeds these limitations to the point of requiring a novelty. The novelty in question (bulit-in HDD space) isn't too much of a novelty, being that it's included in excess in almost every PS3, but MGS4 using it is sort of like opening the floodgates. Capcom has been using it, but people weren't surprised since Capcom has been sort of funky this gen in terms of quality, but MGS4 is a PS3 exclusive that Sony was more than enthusiastic to fund to the very end, and still the player has to suffer through some distinguished mentally-challenged installation process.
Now, don't fucking say that Halo 3 or Gears of War matches MGS4 in terms of character detail, because they really fucking don't. Halo 3 least of all, good grief. "Going there" is only a good idea when you're right. And you're not.
Personally, I dislike both Gears of War and Halo 3, but technically, their character models are superior to that of MGS4s. Would you like me to explain? While Halo 3 has some disgusting human character models, the aliens and Master Chief and other Spartans look pretty damn clean, and Gears of War as well. Now, we could go on for hours comparing polygons and complexity and textures and normal-mapping and such, but here's why my opinion is what it is.
Both Halo 3 and Gears of War are on older, inferior hardware, and are located on a disc that's a whopping 8GBs. That's less than one sixth of the size of a BRD. Even less if you consider the cache MGS4 requires. With those limitations, at least Epic and Bungie saw fit to work within them, and produced something that is at least comparable to that of MGS4s. Not better, not exactly equal, but the quality is in the same range.
As far as Half Life 2, I meant strictly the facial expressions, which happen to be nearly if not as impressive as the ones in MGS4.
Again, you don't know how this cache benefits the game. Until you can actually give some good reason as to why and how it is this useless and "lazy" thing (good grief, dude), perhaps you shouldn't act so determined.
Yes, but you don't know what the cache is used for either, or if it benefits the game at all. At this point, we both could be wrong. I'm not really determined about anything, I'm just irritated that this is what, the fifth game that requires an installation of 4GBs on the PS3. When I had my 60GB, the PSN games I had bought and the HD Trailers I downloaded left me with a little under 18GBs that dropped down to a little under 14GBs when I had to install DMC4.
I suppose simply saying "lazy" would sound absurd, but it sure as hell looks like laziness when games like Bully for the 360 come jam-packed with bugs and glitches because of poor testing.
The reason I'm so sincere towards this topic is without getting the same amount of quality control we used to when it comes to console games, what are we paying a premium for? Because of the popularity of Limited Editions, consumers are paving the way to a future of single video games that cost $100 in the US, and even more in other regions. This kind of premium made sense before, because the game we got for that kind of money was complete and required nothing additional. That's not how it is anymore.
