Gears of War 4 Patch Released to Reduce Game Size

Popular shooter Gears of War 4 is a bit of a fatty on the PC. At my last check, the installation file took up a colossally whopping 120gb of hard drive data. Practically wiping out an entry-level SSD. However, a patch has been released in an effort to combat this.

What does the new Gears of War 4 patch include?

The new Gears of War 4 patch, entitled Rise of the Horde, adds new skills for each class. This includes new items and abilities for your hero. There are also 2 new maps and new boss unlocks at higher levels. The news has been reported via PCGamesN. At 29gb however, you would think this is yet another fat patch adding to a game which is already squatting up enough of your hard drive. Well, yes and no. Yes, you do need a free 29gb to download the patch, so technically that’s true. One of the main perks of the patch is that it has a compression tool to massively reduce the file size on your PC. Even so, you might want to consider a new hard drive maybe?

What kind of reduction are we talking about here?

Impressively, the Gears of War 4 patch can reduce the 120gb (ish) game file down to 92gb. Whilst this is still a substantial file size (the envy of World of Warcraft) this does represent quite a significant drop. Such a patch doesn’t represent anything new specifically. World of Warcraft does ‘prune’ its files occasionally to try to keep it manageable. This 23% reduction in file size at least presents that it was acknowledged as a (no pun intended) growing problem. A problem which caused many to not keep the game for a moment longer than necessary.

So, given the Gears of War 4 patch being a bit more HD friendly are you considering a return to the seminal gaming series? or like a spurned lover, have you moved onto new things?