OR the fact that textures are increasing in resolution and audio in quality means that the amount of data to move is increasing as well and the incredibly limited bandwidth of old mechanical hard disks is becoming increasingly inadequate.
It's not even a novelty, incidentally. A lot of games have started to become sub-optimal experiences on mechanical hard disks for more than a decade at this point.
Battlefield 3 and 4 were already unbearably slow to load on one.
I'm not sure where to start without this becoming overly technical. You are supposed to use RAM for immediate effects like combat moves and such, then load disc data to RAM when you are not in a time critical situation. The reqs for RAM is 16 GB, not a small amount of RAM space compared to the 150 GB of total game data. Taking a stroll in the city of Baldurs Gate may provide the biggest challenge, but even that should be possible with good resource management. This is of course a postulate which I can't prove without reprogramming the game so no use trying to, just saying I have my doubt as to the necessity of the requirement of SSD. Could be they weren't thinking so much about resource management as about making a cool game, who knows? We would need a statement from the developers to shed light over that matter I guess.
Additional comment: Some people have computers that are 5-10 years old or more. Not saying they should be able to play all new games, but game developers should allow for older equipment if newer equipment is not strictly necessary for what they want to achieve.
