There was a phase of games shipping with uncompressed audio in every language they support for no good reason that ballooned file size (Titanfall)
Some games have gotten around this problem by having higher resolution textures or additional languages being optional installs within whatever ecosystems DLC implementation is. I think this is the smart way to do it.
Examples of games shrinking I are hard to come by but special credit to IO interactive and Hitman 3.
The install size with all the content of the previous games included (If you own them) is less than the install size of the first game. That is impressive and commendable.
Games are weird and some people will look at the file size and think it means the game is better, just the way some people think games with more hours are better. The psychology of people who play video games is weird.
Duplication of assets on disk was a very weird byproduct of HDD file access conventions, but we shouldn’t need that anymore. There is still a shrinking, but valid crossover window between devs being able to assume all storage is solid state. I think things will get better but the debate of file size vs average/expects storage capacity vs Network speed will never end but there is certainly work to be done.