Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is set to become 2020's biggest install at launch

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond screenshot fighter plane in battle
(Image credit: Respawn Entertainment)

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond may be the biggest VR launch this side of Half-Life: Alyx and it turns out it also might be the biggest (read: file size) launch of 2020, too. At 170GB, Respawn Entertainment's WWII epic is an absolute behemoth that makes even Call of Duty Cold War's initial spec look reasonable.

Gobbling up a hefty chunk of bytes, Medal of Honor is most certainly in the running to make our list of the biggest install sizes in PC gaming today. Real mighty storage hogs, as we like to call 'em. There's another VR title on our list of venti games, too: Half-Life: Alyx, which takes up an impressive 68GB.

Yet Medal of Honor is truly on another level. Microsoft Flight Simulator encompasses a true 1:1 scale planet Earth and it's just 127GB in size. 

The minimum system requirements for Medal of Honor are pretty demanding (via Polygon). Take a look:

  • Intel i7 9700K ("or comparable AMD" chip—I'd guess roughly a Ryzen 7 3700X or better)
  • 16GB DDR4 RAM
  • Nvidia GTX 2080 or higher
  • 340GB free space for installation, down to 170GB once finalised. SSD recommended.

Yeah, that's actually over 340GB of SSD space that is required for the installation process. 340GB.

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond's release date is set for December 12, 2020, and it will be available across VR headsets, including Oculus and Steam VR compatible devices. That still leaves you a little time to get hold of one of the best SSDs for gaming if you're currently scuppered for space. I mean no one saw that storage demand coming, huh?

I'm still excited for Respawn's massive VR title—it sure looks like the game to follow in Alyx's footsteps. I just need to delete most of my gaming PC to make some room.

Jacob Ridley
Managing Editor, Hardware

Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog. From there, he graduated to professionally breaking things as hardware writer at PCGamesN, and would go on to run the team as hardware editor. He joined PC Gamer's top staff as senior hardware editor before becoming managing editor of the hardware team, and you'll now find him reporting on the latest developments in the technology and gaming industries and testing the newest PC components.

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