GTA 5 Demake Shrinks Game Down from 120GB to a Measly 2.5GB, with Some Sacrifices

GTA 5 typically requires around 120GB of space, however some modders have managed to reduce that figure to a mere 2.5GB. To be fair, you can still do almost everything you used to do, such as drive automobiles around Los Santos, fire firearms, jump off of planes, and so on. It’s just that the controls are a little goofy now, especially while driving, because they tend to lag.

These modders simply had to cut the fat to get the game down to its current size, so they eliminated the majority of the missions, which means the story mode is almost entirely gone. The sound effects have also been removed, which made driving through a silent film feel unsettling, with the exception of the occasional engine rumbling or screeching tires. Massive portions of the terrain have vanished, leaving only a flat grey texture that flickers in and out as you move about. Characters have lost all definition; even the main character resembles a blocky purple outline with stumpy small arms.

Surprisingly, the cars still handle normally. You can still jump curbs and maneuver through traffic, and the blue sedan appears as it should. The city center loads swiftly, with no wrecks, and helicopters continue to take off and hover. Combat still works; your shots still strike their targets, and explosions still occur when you hit something. The only true disadvantage is that the low frame rates make sharp turns a bit risky, as you never know when the game may jolt the steering wheel out from under you.

The real reason this project got off the ground was due to storage expenses. Just last year, the price of solid-state drives skyrocketed, and data centers snapped up all the supplies they could get, leaving gamers with a difficult decision: do we keep playing GTA V, Call of Duty, Cyberpunk 2077, and all the rest, or do we sacrifice some of our game library to free up space? A full installation of GTA V takes about a tenth of a one-terabyte HDD, therefore this hack is a lifesaver for anyone with little capacity.

The game’s visuals are now pretty low-poly, with trees appearing as nothing more than flat green patches, houses clipping straight through each other, and the skybox extending out beyond the horizon like a continuous sheet of blue. When you gaze around on foot, you notice even more of the game’s peculiarities, such as sidewalk steps that stutter under your feet, people’s arms flailing around in jerky motions, and a character jumping up in the air and just sort of hanging there for a while.

Even that is a relatively mellow experience when compared to what happens when you attempt aerial stunts, as Blaine County shrinks down to a few bare hills, Vinewood shrinks down to a few sparsely populated hills, and the ocean simply laps against the map’s edge as if it is not even present. Flying planes feels better, but landings are still a gamble since you never know when your plane will clip the runway. Golf courses devolve into patchy fields, while tennis courts become a slice of green with no net.
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