Mass Effect 2 to be two disc affair

360 News | More massive than we expected.

BioWare's Community Coordinator, Chris Priestly has confirmed that Mass Effect 2 will indeed be a massive title with game spread over two discs on both the PC and Xbox 360 iterations of the game.
Those who choose to purchase the collector's edition of the title will get three discs all up, thanks to a bunch of bonus content on offer.

The PC version of the title will allow you to install everything onto the hard drive and then simply have one of the discs in your drive as you play, while the Xbox 360 version will require gamers to swap discs at a certain point in the game. Priestly has assured gamers that the 'disc swap' will occur only once, taking place at a "carefully planned place in the game".

Priestly claims that the need for two discs is because "you cannot fit this much awesome on one disc" and while we'll leave that up to gamers to form their own opinion when the title hits the shelves next January, the extremely positive reception to their latest title, Dragon Age: Origins is reason enough for the company to be confident for the next installment of their space odyssey.

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39 Comments

Qbert

2 years ago

@Smurf80: Andy is right, on GCN (original release platform) it came on 2 discs. You swapped it over when you get the boat over to the island towards the end third of the game.

JackSlack

2 years ago

Here's what stuns me.

Dragon Age is, reputedly, a 100 hour game. I think it's really closer to 50 hours, but it's still whopping huge.

It was on one disc.

In a word, wow.

ANDYBALLINA

2 years ago

JackSlack wrote

Here's what stuns me.

Dragon Age is, reputedly, a 100 hour game. I think it's really closer to 50 hours, but it's still whopping huge.

It was on one disc.

In a word, wow.

Not sure if the Dialogue has anything to do with it, but Dragon Age had no Dialogue for your character, where is Mass Effect does. No idea if that has anything to do with Disc Space.

But Lost Odyssey has 4 Discs.

RichieT23

2 years ago

All this winge, winge winging about multiple disks. I wouldn't care if it was on 4 disks. The game is going to be absolutely epic. So what, if people have to get their fat asses off the couch for 15 seconds to change it. NON ISSUE.

Karai Pantsu

2 years ago

ANDYBALLINA wrote

But Lost Odyssey has 4 Discs.

Ah, but the expected standard is different when it comes to JRPGs - the equation seems to be 'multiples discs + JRPG = GOOD! multiple discs + western RPG = BAD!'.

No one ever said gamers were consistent.

Itachi

2 years ago

hahah good point Karai i think they look at it like this:

J rpg with multiple discs = Awesome heaps of content!!!

Western Rpg with multiple discs = Get stuffed i don't want to get up and change discs!

fupoisme

2 years ago

Lost Odyssey's multiple discs is due to the amount of FMV in the game. I'm surprised that anyone would actually complain about this though, particularly when the alternative would be to reduce the amount of content in the game in order to squeeze it onto one disc.

LeonJ

2 years ago

Honestly who cares. It will be 20 seconds of your life lost.

This game looks incredible, that's all I care about.

Benc82

2 years ago

JackSlack wrote

Here's what stuns me.

Dragon Age is, reputedly, a 100 hour game. I think it's really closer to 50 hours, but it's still whopping huge.

It was on one disc.

In a word, wow.

The graphics in ME are far better than DAO, so I'd say they would take up a lot more disk space.

Anyway I already knew the size limitation of DVDs (apparently this is new to some people?) so im happy ME2 will be a huge game! Changing the disk once in a huge game like this is no biggie.

nting

2 years ago

OMG, the amount of fanboyism and BS in this thread is astonishing. If you're not interested in this game, walk away. If you plan on playing it (eg you have 360 or plan on getting one) then great, let's talk about ME2 and what you think of it.

My 2 cents is that I'm glad Bioware have the decision to go to extra discs if needed. Rather than knock out some content or reduce the quality of FMV, etc... they have increased their production costs in order to deliver the full experience. They obviously are taking a lot of pride in their work. And when I say costs, I'm not just talking about the 5 cents to manufacture the extra DVD, I'm talking about the extra costs to create the content that goes on the extra discs (development, voice acting, scripting, resource files). Bioware deserve to be rewarded for producing AAA titles and I pray studios like this will continue to exist for the sake of better games that take this industry to higher levels.

Cyph

2 years ago

Here's an interesting read from joystiq regarding my favourite elevator loading screens (which I actually enjoyed as there was sufficient banter and other things to keep me amused);

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/12/06/mass-effect-2-ditching-elevators-for-load-screens/

JackSlack

2 years ago

I'm actually a little sad to hear the lifts will be going away. It was genuinely amusing to hear some of the chatter.

With any luck, they'll simply put that into while you're running around, ala Dragon Age.

(Nothing has made me laugh harder in a Bioware RPG than Wynne giving Alistair 'the talk', as an aside.)

Agent 042

2 years ago

ANDYBALLINA wrote

there was a hell of a lot of cut scenes in lost odyssey, i wouldnt be at all suprised if around half the data on the discs was videos.

Vervain

2 years ago

Agent 042 wrote

ANDYBALLINA wrote

there was a hell of a lot of cut scenes in lost odyssey, i wouldnt be at all suprised if around half the data on the discs was videos.

The dialogue is easily the big killer for ME2. Going by ME1, every single line that lets you choose what to say will have 6 different voice recording for your character (Male: 1 renegade, 1 neutral, 1 paragon and then again for female characters) as well as 3 seperate reply voice recordings based upon what you say. Then sometimes you also get the extra Intimidate and Charm options which put another 4 recordings onto it.

Seriously just the dialogue for ME and ME2 would chew up huge amounts of disc space.

Frozencry

2 years ago

It's the engine. Bioware use a custom built engine for DA and UE3 for Mass Effect 2. UE3 uses Texture Streaming technology which is notorious for having exceptionally large files accompanying it. Considering their heavy work on improved texture streaming for the second game and upped detail in general, this is likely the reason there are two discs.

Hell UE3 is a major reason why Lost Odyssey is 4 discs.

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Mass Effect 2

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Australian Release Date:
  28/01/2010 (Confirmed)
Publisher:
  Electronic Arts
Genre:
  Action RPG
Year Made:
  2008
Players:
  1

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