And starfield could easily be way larger. The textures in Starfield aren't actually that high res (part of why, despite it being a very demanding game, it doesn't use much VRAM, generally topping out at 8GB)
And that's just comparing the storage, nevermind one being a vastly faster NVME drive that also takes up less space, is more power efficient, and doesn't have two annoying cables to manage.
IMO huge file sizes are more of a download speed issue than a storage issue
You don't uNdERstAnD, a game must be less than 1GB in size or it's unOpTiMiZeD.
But at the same time, man I'm sick of these last gen/old non raytracing cards are holding us back! Where are my rig melting next gen games?!?! Oh wait I have to download 100GB and still turn down settings to High!?!? unOpTiMiZeD!! furiously leaves bad steam review
I think the solution to game size (aside from optimization) is breaking up the game into optional downloads. Things like, 4k textures, high poly models, multiplayer, singleplayer etc.
This would be a great feature. However some of that has shared resources. SP and MP probably use 85% same stuff. Have seen UHD Textures as a separate download in some games.