Two Discs Hint at Massive Amounts of Content

On Thursday, Chris Priestly, Community Coordinator at Bioware, confirmed that Mass Effect 2 will ship on two DVDs.

The news is stirring great excitement in the game community because of Bioware’s penchant for telling vast, sweeping, mature stories. It is expected, given the amount of content that can be held on two discs, that the game will be much grander in scope than its predecessor.

According to Priestly, the two game discs will be shipped with both the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game. The Collector’s Edition will contain a third disc, a bonus DVD containing making of films and other bonus materials. Most importantly, however, Priestly ensured users that there would be no swapping of discs back and forth during the game. Rather, Priestly said, “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.”

The plot of Mass Effect 2 will pick up shortly after the end of Mass Effect, and will find Commander Shepard searching the galaxy for a dozen of the most ruthless and skilled fighters who will join him in a fight against an alien force wiping out human colonies around the galaxy. According to Greg Zeschuk, the co-founder of Bioware, the plot elements will be much darker than that of the first game, saying, “If you recall, Empire Strikes Back was the darker chapter and that is how we designed the ME2 story and experience: to try and make the player reflect on the challenges of the character. If you put ME2 next to the original it is definitely a darker, harder game.” Given the huge amount of exploration available in the first game as well as the ability to craft the world around you through your decisions, Mass Effect 2 should be a sweeping, epic RPG that will further push the envelope on how your decisions in-game affect the world around you.

Mass Effect 2 is being developed by Bioware and will be published by Electronic Arts. It is releasing in North America on January 26, 2010 and in Europe on January 29, 2010. The standard edition will retail for $59.99 and the Collector’s Edition will retail for $69.99.

Sources: Mass Effect Forums, IGN







