Mass Effect 2 - Requires Disc Swapping - Will be on Two Discs

Mass Effect 2 will require you to swap discs - on the Xbox 360 at least. So sayeth Chris Priestly in a post at the ME2 forums:

Ok some details for you.
1 - Yes, there are 2 game discs for both the PC and Xbox 360 versions, both the Collector's and standard editions.
2 - There is a 3rd disc with the Collector's Edition. This is a movie DvD containing making of and other bonus information.
3 - The PC version is a standard install. You install the information from both discs and then play with 1 disc in the drive. No swapping.
4 - The Xbox 360 does not have an install and does require disc swapping during play.
5 - Even though there is a disc swap, it occurs at a carefully planned place in the game (that does not interfere with gameplay) and is done once. You do not swap back and forth. 1 swap and then done.
6 - Why 2 discs? Answer: Because you cannot fit this much awesome on one disc.
Hope this helps.

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Do you think many more games will be coming out on two discs? And when will see the first game out on Blu-Ray disc - for the PC, I mean.
More information.

Baldur's gate had ... 4 CDs ? 6 ? I don't remember anymore.
Indy 4 came on ... 5 disquettes ? It's so long ago I don't remember this anymore.

Next will be blue-ray, I bet.

I think what's next is digital-only.

No more boxed copies.

Disc swapping is for consoles, and consoles are for sissies.
So who cares.

Just like the good old days!

The original release of Baldur's Gate had 6 disks. This is not uncommon on the Xbox 360 dince most rpgs on there have 2 or more disks.

This does tell us something about the structure of the game as well. It suggests that the game doesn't use the structure Bioware have used for their last few games. It suggests there's some kind of choke point/point of no return somewhere near the middle of the game.

Yeah, Lost Odyssey had four. It's not a big deal. Especially now that you can just load multiple disks to the hard drive on the XBox.

Riven was the worst I've ever hit for disk swapping. Not only did you have to swap disks for each area, you would often have to swap disks multiple times to get to more distant areas.

rbtroj said:

I think what's next is digital-only.

No more boxed copies.

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But if they can't fit a game on an 8-GB DVD, you're talking about some very large downloads. I'm on DSL, and I can't imagine how long a 10- or 15-GB game would take to DL. Ewww.

Yeesh said:

But if they can't fit a game on an 8-GB DVD, you're talking about some very large downloads. I'm on DSL, and I can't imagine how long a 10- or 15-GB game would take to DL. Ewww.

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What do you think we all did with Dragon Age?

txa1265 said:

What do you think we all did with Dragon Age?

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Buy the retail the version and install it from the disc?

Badesumofu said:

This does tell us something about the structure of the game as well. It suggests that the game doesn't use the structure Bioware have used for their last few games. It suggests there's some kind of choke point/point of no return somewhere near the middle of the game.

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I'm not sure I understand you. My original PS:T came on 4 discs, and I swapped those several times going back and forth. Didn't stop me from going back to previously visited areas.

Roi Danton said:

Buy the retail the version and install it from the disc?

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hehe ... I didn't finish typing what I was thinking ...

But yeah, for those who chose to get the most in-game content for their money over getting a crappy little map and environmentally hostile packaging, we had to endure the 15+GB download and install.

pibbur said:

I'm not sure I understand you. My original PS:T came on 4 discs, and I swapped those several times going back and forth. Didn't stop me from going back to previously visited areas.

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ME2 will apparently not require swapping back and forth - so it's safe to assume that whatever content is on disc 1 will not be re-used, except if some of it is installed to the Xbox harddisk or they both contain "redundant" data.

I'd be surprised if they cut off all previous areas entirely at some point, except perhaps near the end.

But who knows...

Doesn't really bother us pc gamers, ME2 will work just like kotor and other games. Install with 2 discs but play with one, no disc swapping.

stefan9 said:

Doesn't really bother us pc gamers, ME2 will work just like kotor and other games. Install with 2 discs but play with one, no disc swapping.

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That isn't always true, as some have said ... I remember the original Jedi Knight had you install and then you STILL had to use both CD's ... until they came out with a manual over-install method that 'faked' CD 2.

Say whatever you want, this is why I'm still playing games only on PC.

I don't have the exact quote, but Chris Priestly over at the ME forums said you will have to actively swap out disc 1 for disc 2 at some point in the game even if you installed both on your hard drive (due to some xbox requirement).

txa1265 said:

That isn't always true, as some have said … I remember the original Jedi Knight had you install and then you STILL had to use both CD's

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Those days are long gone. Early games required disc swapping because big files like videos and music were actually being streamed from the disc as needed and couldn't always all fit on the "play" disc. This not only necessitated some amount of disc-swapping but also impeded the developers' aspirations because CD drives were so slow in those days (which meant things like full-screen video had to be heavily compressed in order to be successfully streamed). To counteract these limitations, developers started offering a "full install" option where all content was copied over. For verification purposes you simply needed the first disc in the drive (helpfully labelled "play" in most cases). The full install was immensely popular, especially since hard drives increased in size far faster than games did; it later became the default, and for many years now has been the only option. I can't remember the last time I installed a new release that actually offered an install size choice. Unfortunately the elimination of disc-swapping has not carried over to consoles yet even now that hard drive installs are possible (and even required for some games).