Mass Effect 2 to span two discs

Kenny, I don't mean to sound offensive if this comes off that way, but did you even read the article. It says quite clearly that:
"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."
Meaning it won't be annoying and there isn't a whole lot of inconvenience with getting up for a few seconds and switching the disc.

@DRF

Did you play the first Mass Effect? There's no way they could make this a one time disc swap unless they drastically changed the way the game works. I don't understand how that could physically work, which is why I doubt that the wording and meaning of that quote.

I think they could easily make it work. Think about Mass Effect 1. You couldn't ever go back to Eden Prime after the beginning of the game. That's something that could have been on a first disc that, upon switching, would never need to be loaded into the game again.

They could probably fill up a large part of the first disc with a planet that gets blown up, story data that once complete is no longer used, characters that die early in the story and never appear again, etc.

Kenny, did YOU play Mass Effect 1? If you'll notice as the story progresses, the state of the Citadel interior chages with each major advance in the story. What this disc swap means to me is that the major story will continue pushing through on Disc 1, until that swap needs to happen. Once that swap happens and you're on Disc 2, then all those missions back on Disc 1 are ALSO on Disc 2, but they're in a different "state" because something changed in the storyline. There's a lot of technical magic that BioWare can weave into these two discs to really make sure that that one disc swap is all you need.

I get the feeling, though, that Mass Effect on PC will probably only have one disc. Or if it does have two discs, they're used for install, since they said the only use for the disc after install is a disc check in place of the old DRM. No swap necessary there, I imagine.

Lost Odyssey anyone? Each disc holds its part of the story, and the content which is accessible throughout, no swapping between discs every time you change area.

There's only two places where a disc swap could occur in Mass Effect 1. The first would be after Eden Prime, which was the first level of the game. The second place you could put it would be before Ilos, which was the last level of the game. Either way, the content break wouldn't even be close to half and half.

Transfer that logic to Mass Effect 2, in order for a disc swap to work properly, you'd need to make a significantly larger portion of the game linear and non-returnable, which goes against the progression that was in ME1.

The mandatory information with every game takes an 8.5GB DVD and cuts it to under 7GB, so you're looking at about 14GB total. If you copy something from disc 1 to disc 2, you'd be taking up twice as much from that total. If you had to completely re-copy the Citadel, you may be looking at a few gigs of space used here. In comparison, the GTA expansions were both over a gig each, and neither included much in the way of geometry.

In other words, if you had to copy the Citadel, you might really only have 12GB or 13GB to use on original content. Continue to pile on more re-used content, and that number continues to shrink. Then factor in that you'd have to copy the engine and all essential information, and you might only be getting a few extra gigs of space from what is a whole second disc, and since Microsoft has ridiculous fees on games with multiple discs, those few extra gigs need to be worth it for Bioware to decide and do it.

The point is, the only games that really work with multiple discs are either those that can have single player on one disc and multiplayer on another, or games that are linear in nature and don't allow you to return to previous points in the game. Since Mass Effect is neither of those (through from my understanding previous multi-disc RPGs on 360 are) I don't think this can possibly work well.

First, (this is DRF, thought i changed my name already but apparently not) and yes I have played the first mass effect, and am currently playing the game again to prepare for the sequel.
To be fair we don't exactly know how this game will play out, so everything we are saying is mere speculation, but whats not to say that the same is more of an evolution of the previous mass effect. Continuing on what Descender said I could see Bioware having more "limited timed" side missions throughout the game, giving the game a more dynamic and living feeling.
Such as(this is purely hypothetical and I'm not saying this is the case at all) there is a side mission where you need to save an ambassador, or else they will kill him/her. Say you ignore that side mission for the first half of the game then you want to go back to that, but since you took so long to respond the lets say turians sent out another spectre to do that job, or the mercs who captured the ambassador killed him/her.
That's my hope for the level of side missions that are going to be in ME2 because it feels like a real world and it has actual impacts. If these are the kinds of side missions going to be in Mass Effect 2 then I can easily see them only needed to swap discs once.
But again, we don't know much about the story about ME2 as of just yet.

Cal is right. In Lost Odyssey, despite having 4 discs, you only had to swap discs 3 times. You could go back to any area in the game without switching back to an older disc, unlike say, Star Ocean 4...

@ Armshrinker

I have no problem with changing the style of the game or the pace of the game if it's good, but the second disc may be the reason for a significant design change that would make an overall great game a lesser product. That's what I'm worried about.

As for your suggestion, ever since I saw that old teaser for ME1 that talked about decisions on distress calls and helping people that you had to make and all that, I was psyched up for morality choices that went beyond your conversations and went more into your actions. Sometimes maybe there wouldn't be a good or bad choice, just a one on your own morality (which they did a very good job with on some of the Citadel side quests).

Though Bioware never did anything like that (even though they decided to keep that teaser in the game and play it when you've sat at the main menu with no activity for too long). If that is the solution for the disc change problem, and they're somehow able to make that work and make that fun, I can live with that. Regardless it'd still be nice just to not have the second disc to begin with while still having the space needed. That's kind of a no brainer though.

heh.. you said read. dat der is funny..

but seriously, ME2 needs two disc? great news! theres no way the sequel could improve the series AND still fit on one disc..

heres to Mass Effect 3 needing 3 discs!! [cheers]