As someone who regularly hears “uh, you need to pay for that” or “ma’am, you need a license to drive this,” I’m accustomed to people interrupting my fun with strange, made up rules. And it looks like Starfield will also hit me with a warning I’m more than used to by now: “You need to clear storage space to play this game.” At least now I know how much; it’s about 140 gigabytes. Excuse me while I go throw up.
Starfield, the hotly anticipated Xbox and PC exclusive RPG from Bethesda, is arriving on September 6 and it’s expected to wow us with an epically mega huge large galaxy to explore. How large? 1,000 planets, apparently. Look, 1996’s The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall had a ludicrous 15,000 towns and dungeons to explore, so large games are nothing new for the studio, and Bethesda’s tendency toward vast worlds hasn’t stopped with more recent games like Skyrim and Fallout 4. But in terms of also taking up vast amounts of storage space on that always too-small SSD of yours, Starfield far outstrips its predecessors, arriving with an install size of 139.84 gigabytes on PC and 126.1 gigs on Xbox Series consoles.
While those on Xbox Series X might fare better with a stock SSD of one terabyte, Starfield will occupy a damn quarter of the available storage space on Xbox Series S.
You can start preloading Starfield on Xbox now
If you’re concerned about making space for this big space game, however, you can already start clearing space and downloading the game via preload starting on August 17 for Xbox. Us PC folx, however, will have to wait until August 30 to preload the game.
Read More: Starfield Reveals Even More Details About Its Sci-Fi World
Recently, we got a few more hints as to what to expect in Bethesda’s new RPG, which isn’t only the studio’s first new game in a while, it’s also its first new IP in well over a decade. Bethesda has stated that the game will feature purchasable apartments, a jail for you to go if you do bad things, and an atheist faction that seems to prove that even 300 years in the future, bros will still be quoting God Is Not Great at you.
But at 126 and 140 gigs on Xbox and PC, it’s time to clear some space and admit that Redfall won’t get better any time soon.