I noticed that French, Italian, English, Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish and German translations have all been installed for the game. Now this is probably not an issue for most of the data like text, but the sound files take ca. 500-600 MB for each language.
Just by deleting all directories containing translated audio files for all languages but English, I managed to free up 4.5 GB of my disk space. Together with translations, the game took more than 17 GB without the 4K DLC pack.
Everything is fine after deleting the directories, campaign mission text is still localized to whichever language I select in Steam, but the narration is always in English.
Should the game not install in a single language and then provide the option to install more? 4.5 GB seems like a big overhead to me.
Wow, this is really surprising and useful discovery . This information must reach more people of how they could easily free up around 4 GB of disk space.
Did you deleted from “AoE2DE\wwise” folder folders br, de, fr, it, ko, mx and zh? These have 3.94 GB summary size for me. I would happily get rid of them, if it really causes no problems.
I am afraid, that if I simply delete these folders, then if I ever use Steam “verify integrity of game files” feature, then these folders will be added back in.
Also note, that developers are soon going to add spanish spain language audio files into the game. Another unnecessary baggage for all people, who don’t use that language.
I can’t believe, that developers put so much effort into reducing game size and then simply waste space with translation audio files
It is important, that only english audio files are included in core game. Other language audio files should be distributed as official mods or DLCs.
This post needs developer attention. Also kinda wish there is more file compression updates in future to save disk space. Game should download extra audio files only and only when user decides to change language.
Yeah, you are right, it was 3.94 GB for me too. 4.5 would have been all languages. Yes, verifying file integrity will readd them. Spanish is already added. It is probably just not in a separate directory.
Thankfully developer Neros responded in Discord, that “loc audio should be split after the next update, AFAIK it will only download for whatever your steam language is set to”. So everyone can start to think, what to do with 4 GB of freed space on drive
. This information must reach more people of how they could easily free up around 4 GB of disk space.
