How can this be possible at all? I mean, maybe the game doesn't have super graphics or tons and tons of content like Smash has... but hell, 2 GB is incredibly low! Nintendo must have some kind of magic to optimize the size of their games, because between this, Mario Kart 8 and 3D World they are constantly surprising me in this matter.

no or little pre rendered videos and dialogs. nintendo games have almost non of these. when you look at god of war or uncharted, these videos take most of the space.

Hopefully this doesn't mean the game is as barebones as many think it is.

And the Evil Within should cost 500$ at retail following that logic

Tons of uncompressed audio? Tons of FMVs? Large textures? Tons of assets? I think not.

I think the game focused on that online multi player.

Miyamoto is a wizard, that's all.

That's pretty good. Ass Creed unity has a 4gb patch or some shit like that. Super Mario 3D world was similar in size, so I doubt Splatoon will suffer from a lack of content.

Link?

It's actually bigger than Mario 3D World, that was only 1.7GB.

When your console only has 32GB of space, superb compression isn't a choice, it's a necessity. ;)