BioWare has revealed that Mass Effect 2 is so huge, so massive, so mind-blowingly big, it’s actually going to have to be spread across two separate DVDs.
An image of the Mass Effect 2 Collector’s Edition that turned up yesterday showed not one, not two, but three discs, only one of which appeared to be labeled as a special bonus DVD. Speculation immediately took off: Mass Effect 2 is expected to be a sizable game, sure, but two DVDs? Dragon Age: Origins, a pretty beefy game itself, fit on one disc; Mass Effect 2 couldn’t possibly require two game discs… could it?
Turns out it could, and it does! BioWare Community Coordinator Chris Priestly has revealed that both the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game, regular and collector’s editions alike, will span two DVDs, with the collector’s edition including a third DVD with a “making of” video and other content. The PC version of the game will be a standard installation with no disc swapping, while the Xbox 360 version will require one disc swap midway through the game.
“You can install the game to your Xbox 360 Hard Drive as long as you have enough memory to do so and have the correct disc in the drive when you play,” Priestly wrote on the Mass Effect forum. “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. One swap and then done.”
And why on Earth would BioWare need two DVDs – that’s over nine gigabytes of capacity – for one single game? “Because you cannot fit this much awesomeness on one disc,” Priestly said.
Mass Effect 2 comes out on January 26, 2010.
