Mass Effect to fit on one disc


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Mass Effect to fit on one disc, offer custom soundtracks

When Sony added a Blu-ray drive into the PS3, many people were slightly skeptical that it was needed for gaming. We're doing okay with DVDs, right? You can also put a game on multiple discs if you run into space issues. The question of the needed size for gaming media is one that will play out for a while yet, but Bioware's huge new title Mass Effect (coming on DVD to the 360) was able to pull off what many people thought impossible.

Does
Mass Effect
fit on one disc?

Yep, but just barely. This is a monstrous game. In fact, there was a time?not too long ago?when we pretty much scoffed at the idea of fitting onto one disc. But, there's an art to optimizing the data that goes on a disc?plus we have a few programmers that seem to pull off magic tricks right when we need them.

It sounds like they were scraping against the size constraints to fit it on one disc. I'm not sure what I think about this: I don't like having to pay more money for a Blu-ray drive if developers and publishers don't actually need it for the games, but I also don't want games to be cut down in order to fit on a single disc. I'd also rather not switch discs while playing a game, although that's a pretty minor annoyance.

Casey Hudson also talks about custom soundtracks:

Do you care if players use a custom sound track?

This is actually a controversial subject, as most game developers don't like the idea of people replacing their carefully crafted audio experience with random songs. But of course, players don't have to use that feature, and I think most players don't ? especially in this type of game. And if the feature didn't exist, you'd still be able to adjust your sound settings to mute the music and play your own music on a stereo. So we don't mind supporting it. Having said that though, my last update was all about the huge original score that's goi
Mass Effect
fect, so you won't want to miss out on that part of the experience.

Neat! I'm always happy to have a choice when I play a game, but if the music is as good as they're saying, I wouldn't mind leaving my own soundtrack behind.

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I have been looking forward to Mass Effect for a long while. I hope this game lives up to the hype, and if it does it'll be like KOTOR on steroids.

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With reference to custom soundtracks:

I can see the point about developers not liking it - they craft a soundtrack, etc. But then again, it's only the same as muting your console and playing music on your stereo (which I USED to do) but still with the benefit of sound effects.

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DVD will not live for long I say...

If they are started to not have enough space I can't think what will appends in 2008-9...

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Graphical textures are getting richer

Soundtracks are getting more complex (reactive, etc)

Options are becoming wider

Landscapes are becoming larger

DVD will not last long.

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Actually the cost of game developement is limiting games ability to use more data than a DVD offers.

It's just not cost effective to create enviroments and number of characters and all that beyond what fits on a aDVD. not when you consider how much you can actually fit on a DVD when it's done right.

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DVD will not live for long I say...

If they are started to not have enough space I can't think what will appends in 2008-9...

Or it could be the fact that this game is huge. Yea, that seems more likely. :p

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