For example, both Final Fantasy XVI & STALKER 2 take up 152GB & 165GB on my 2TB external SSD. I mean, why are steam games HUGE as f*ck regarding their file sizes lately? Don’t even mention CoD (200GB?!), even with the fastest internet connection: you can’t bypass patience as these things take up time. For me, it took me about 2 days to finish (pause & resume download). I’ve finished installing KCD II (Royal Edition) and that was 85GB (took up 8-12 hours with fast internet, I was binge watching a TV show on Prime Video the entire time).
Cheap storage and RAM availability (until recently) meant that developers could sacrifice space and minimize the amount of compression on assets.
Decompressing files require processing, and if you can avoid that, then you free up some computer resources.