When I first got my PS5 back in 2020, I thought I'd finally escaped the storage anxiety that haunted my PS4 Slim days. That 825 GB felt like an ocean compared to the 500 GB puddle I was used to. Sure, I knew the occasional Call of Duty update would be a space hog, and open-world giants like Red Dead Redemption 2 would demand their share, but for the most part, I figured I was set. Fast forward to 2026, and that ocean has dried up into a desperate puddle. I'm staring at my console with just seven games installed and a terrifying 86 GB of free space left. What went wrong?
Let's break down my digital hoard. It's a tale of two tiers. On one side, the reasonable citizens:
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Braid, Anniversary Edition: A delightful indie, taking up a mere 2.67 GB. A model tenant.
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Dishonored 2 (53.68 GB), Bloodborne (36.51 GB), XDefiant (31.48 GB): Solid, normal-sized AAA games. They pay their rent on time.
And then... the titans. The space-gobbling behemoths that have annexed my hard drive:
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Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: The undisputed champion at a staggering 146.3 GB.
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Baldur's Gate 3: The runner-up, but the real problem child, at 122.8 GB.
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Red Dead Redemption 2: The 'small' one, at a still-massive 116.3 GB.
You might ask: why single out Baldur's Gate 3 when Final Fantasy is bigger? Simple. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will eventually leave. Baldur's Gate 3 feels like it has moved in, redecorated, and is now charging me rent. It's the big, hairy, loving clog in my PS5's drain, and I can't seem to snake it out.
Don't get me wrong—I adore this game. It's one of the best RPGs ever made, a masterpiece. But my love is currently trapped under the weight of its own ambition. Let's talk scale.
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Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: A 46-hour main story (per HowLongToBeat). It's long, but linear. You always know your next objective. You feel progress with every session.
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Baldur's Gate 3: A 66.5-hour main story listing is, frankly, a hilarious fantasy. For me and my wife, it was a 150-200 hour commitment. Each of its three acts is essentially a full AAA game if you engage with its world.
That's the core of the issue. FF7 Rebirth is a directed epic. BG3 is an open-ended tapestry. Especially in Act 3, the game doesn't give you a quest—it gives you dozens. A rat king of narrative threads, all tangling together. Do you help the haunted circus? Hunt down a serial killer? Storm the dragon's fortress? The freedom is intoxicating... and paralyzing.
This is why it's 'unfinishable' for someone like me. I play for work and for fun. My gaming time is precious and fragmented. Boot up BG3, stare at the quest log for 10 minutes trying to remember what I was doing, follow one thread for an hour, make 2% progress on the overall story, and then my time is up. Rinse and repeat. It's not the game's fault—its greatness is in that sprawl—but it demands a monastic level of commitment I can no longer give.
So here I sit in 2026. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, despite its size, was a glorious 80-hour journey I completed and cherished. It's earned its place. Red Dead 2 is my comfort world to ride through. But Baldur's Gate 3? It's the ghost in the machine. Deleting it feels like admitting defeat, like abandoning a novel 800 pages in. Keeping it means sacrificing the chance to play anything new. It's a beautiful, brilliant, 122.8 GB paradox sitting on my console, and I have no idea when, or if, I'll ever evict it. The storage crisis continues... and my next SSD purchase can't come soon enough. 😅