Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is a massive open-world game that will give players multiple ways to tackle the situations they face. Complementing that is the fact that it's gorgeous to look at and will, presumably, have a lot to offer players to ensure they spend a long time with it - like its online multiplayer mode.
Unsurprisingly, similar games that feature an open-world for players to explore, like Grand Theft Auto 5 and the recently released Batman: Arkham Knight, require a substantial amount of hard drive space, and as such, one wouldn't be wrong to expect a game like Metal Gear Solid 5 to follow suit.
One might think that the initial 500 GB hard drives found within the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 seem like enough space that would last most people a while. However, with games becoming larger, as well as requiring people to install them directly to the hard drive, that 500 GB can dwindle rather quickly - even more so if someone prefers to buy games digitally. The available space becomes even more limited if gamers regularly pick up whatever free games Playstation Plus and Xbox Live's Games With Gold offer that month.
This is all to say that, in a pretty unexpected twist, Metal Gear Solid 5's install size is on the lower end of the scale, coming in at a relatively small 25.1 GB. Quickly checking the PlayStation Store for comparison, the aforementioned GTA5 and Arkham Knight take up 41.8 GB and 46.1 GB of hard drive space, respectively. Fellow open-world game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, meanwhile, needs 28.8 GB.
The reveal of The Phantom Pain's file size comes from its own listing on the Japanese PlayStation Store (via GameSpot). The reasons behind this are currently unknown, but it could be for any number of reasons. As GameSpot suggests, it could be due to the game's cutscenes being in real-time, or, perhaps, because the game doesn't have a lot of audio files. Hopefully it has nothing to do with its visuals, because one of the last things Metal Gear Solid 5 needs is more people thinking Konami scaled it back. MGS5 and Konami have been at the center of more than enough controversy already, following the rocky departure of Hideo Kojima.
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is set to launch on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on September 1, and on September 15 for PC.
Source: GameSpot, Japanese PS Store