Xbox's new open-world RPG will devour your storage space

The long-awaited first-person horror shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is officially out as of today, but Xbox players have noticed that the game has been going through a rather bizarre amount of updates prior to its launch.

A lot of people have been thoroughly excited to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl the second it dropped (guess what I’m doing this evening?), which is why most fans over on Xbox Series S/X systems opted to pre-load the title as soon as the option was available.

However, it seems something a little odd is going on with this one - as Xbox players are reporting that the title received a massive update post pre-install that just reinstalled the game for a second time.

Then, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl received a second, hefty update… which was then followed by a third, even chunkier, 36GB update. At this point the game wasn’t even out yet, so players were starting to get a little worried that something was amiss.

Even stranger still, one commenter over on the r/Xbox subreddit noticed that, post 36GB update, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl’s file size hadn’t actually changed.

“I can confirm it's just reinstalling existing files” revealed user Xazzor_FCB, “It's at 143.7gb on Series X after all the updates.”

Yes, you are reading that right by the way. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is roughly 143GB. Good lord.

Official reviews for the game are starting to trickle, following the 2pm GMT embargo, and it does sound like the game has its fair share of technical issues - so who knows what kind of state it was in before all of these updates dropped.

Probably best you install every update the developer throws at you from this point onwards, provided you have the space.