Firstly, let me just say that I honestly don't get the great hardship in changing DVDs. People talk as if having something contained on more than one disc will require an infinite and gruelling journey to the console to switch them over halfway through the game. The amount of times that the Sony obsessives have said "lolz enjoy changing discs" as if it's going to cause somebody cancer is, in a word, laughable. Either way, those that truly feel that swapping a disc is the leading cause of injury and illness will revel in the fact that the Xbox 360's Lost Odyssey will be sold as not one, not two, not three, but four DVDs.
Of course, Blu-ray would only need one one quarter of a half of a quarter of half a disc to store the game, we all know this, but in DVD form, the sheer amount of CGI and real-time cutscenes contained in Lost Odyssey require a bit more. Another victory for Blu-ray!
In other news, Mistwalker's Hironobu Sakaguchi has confirmed that the game is due to clock in at around 40-50 hours, something of a J-RPG standard, but certainly nothing to be sniffed at in this age of typically short single player games. Also, the game is being primarily dubbed in English, with Japanese voice acting coming as secondary. Apparently this is Sakaguchi's way of thanking we in the west who have supported his games over the years. That's nice of him, even if the game was pushed back to 2008 for the US and Europe.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to purchase a tank to help reduce that long and arduous journey from my seat to my console.
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Lost Odyssey wants my odyssey to get lost.
Dammit. Does that count as exercise? I have to move the Cheetos off my stomach onto a table... or the floor.
I'm really liking the look of the game. As long as it isn't pushed back to 2009 I won't mind waiting too much for this game.
I never had a problem switching disks.
In fact, I kind of like multi-disk games because once in a while they get cooler packaging.
Jim, forget the tank.
I don't mind disks, as long as the game is equal or hopefully better than blue dragon, it could come on 20 disks for all I care.
People seem to have forgotten they used to do the same with the final fantasy discs during playstation 1 times.
To be honest, I do love that. I really do.
For all the people that berated the PS3 for having a fancy optical drive and said "next gen games fit on a DVD fine" we can see how well it fits on A, singular, DVD. It doesn't.
That doesn't ruin the game, hell, it hardly effects it at all, but there's some Xbox-exclusive content that says they were wrong about how useless a blu-ray drive is.
A very petty yay for that.
I love you Jim, i support the fact that saying "omg lol dvd swapping" is extremely lame. However for the developper, having to put the game on 4 dvds means more manufacturing costs which means less money for the developper.
I don't mind changing discs as long as it doesn't interfere with gameplay.
For example, if I had to change discs between Acts 3 and 4 in GoW, I wouldn't care. But, if I had to change discs to get to Los Muertos in Crackdown, I would care.
So let me get this straight. People have trouble switching discs a few times over the course of a 50-hour game, but have no trouble buying, say, six 8-hour games and having to swap discs to play all of those?
I call shenanigans!
OooOooOo
lol @ Baron
yah its pathetic when somenoe is so whiney that they hate getting up and changing discs... does anyone remember the days of PSX RPGS? But then again, 4 disc changes in 40-50 hours?
So every 10-12 hours you have to get up and change a disc? If thats a problem for you, then FOR SHAME
Barely any of the games I play are 12-15 hours anyway. I don't care. Bring on the discs!
I like multiple disc rpgs, its nostalgic.
I don't mind multiple discs, but there is a problem with it; if you scratch one of them, you're screwed on replay. I can't replay my non-greatest hits version of FF7 because theres a scratch on disc 3, and it'd be annoying to do 30+ hours of gameplay and hope the disc doesn't wonk out when you get there. Wouldn't that be an especially big problem for picking up a copy of the game used - making sure that each disc doesn't have any unplayable sections isn't possible ahead of time...
..what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, booze. Lovely booze.
Wow this Sterling fellow really has s chip on his shoulder eh? I own a PS3 and changing disks is NOT the main reason why blu-ray is an advantage. Changing discs sucks, yeah, but is something people will tolerate if the game is good and the changing discs doesn't hinder the experience. Now cutting content because it doesn't fit on a DVD on say, a racing game (PGR4) or a sandbox style game (GTAIV) is a major fail. An one that I hope developers won't do because they want to move a few more (okay more than a few) units. When you see a headline saying "Just releaed, *insert game mode* scrapped because od DVD limitations", then you will see sony fanboys pointing and laughing. For changing discs, you just get a chuckle.
This Sterling fellow just finds fanboyism obnoxious. I have no problem with the PS3 as a machine. I just hate the fans it has spawned.
BuckF1tches has the right idea here. Having to change discs once every 10 hours or so isn't a huge deal at all. The argument for Blu-Ray storage capacity is more for non-linear games. Back when I played Riven on the PC oh so many years ago, it was very annoying having to change discs all the time. Having to swap discs for different game modes in a racing game, or for different islands in a sandbox game would be horrible.
Changing disks in RPGs is nothing new, changing disks in racing/sandbox games would be rediculous. I don't see that happening though. For the 360s sake I hope rockstar figured out that whole no load time thing.
Point taken. Console fanboys can be the worst. Hell I wish I could afford all the consoles.
Lost odessy looks like it's gonna kick major ass. I'll swap its disc anyday.
honestly i hate the disc swap. its inconvenient, and annoying. if the swaps are placed in logical locations, which i'm sure they are, it doesn't take away from the gameplay, but i am really that lazy.
if its an rpg, and its 4 discs, and i can load from the last disc i was on, no love lost. but when i have to put in disc 1 to initialize the game, then swap to disc 3 to load my current state, i get pissy.
No big deal. I can stand to walk 2 feet every 10 or 15 hours.
In the near future, all Sony fanboys will be fat kids with fingers too fat to play games that don't include motion controls.
we also forget that both these games are made by mist walker and he loves using his old ways to make magic and summon spells by using CG Video intergrated into the game so as to give the effect of realtime graphics. Mass Effect looks 100 times better visually bigger by scope and all of the game will fit on one DVD much easier to compress raw data than it is video. So to people that say Blue Ray was a smart move that all depends on who you speak with because the visuals of Gear, BioShock, Oblivion and so on all fit on one DVD. These multi disk games are due to the programers and wether or not they wish to use real time engine for everything or take the shortcut and run tons of storage hogging FMV/CGV...!
how did they fit 80 hours of xenosaga on one disk
@ jim: and i hate the fans that the xbox/360 have spawned. there are good people on both sides and on either side. it only takes one to ruin it for everyone.
would people rather pay an extra 100 dollars on a console to have Blu-ray drive or just switch disks
@sylaxRKO
Dual Layer and it wasn't in high def.
honestly i think you are all missing the point...
Baron Calico hit the nauil on the head, if you need to swap a disc to go to a certian place thats fucking stupid, i wouldnt place a game if that was the case... but if this RPG is so damn linier you never need to go back to a starting place then maybe i dont want to play that either...
the fact is you need to swap discs to open up content thats not there with out the swap. its its open ended at all you might be swaping upwarsd of 7 times per long play session if your moving around the world
Changing disks amidst immersive gameplay is somehow not as bad as trying to understand what the point is on that picture's caption....
Well I guess I must be in the unique minority of gamers who are physically active and able to easily walk 5 feet to switch out a disk. What do you people who hate disk swapping do when you want to play another game? Sit there and wait for someone else to do it?
I'm just gonna put this out there: What was the last console game that required you to swap discs just to access an area, then swap back to leave?
I may be missing some entire group of games out there... but... I can't even think of one.
@ Jim: "Another victory for Blu-ray!" Don't you mean, "Finally, a victory for Blu-ray?" (With the question mark as a part of your sentence.)
@Baron Calico: There was Riven for the PC waaay back, but I can't think of anything else. I know you said console, I was just throwing out the only example that leaps to mind.
If it's anything like so many other japanese games, it's half cutscenes anyway.
So yeah, 10+ hours of cutscenes will do that for a game.
FFVII: 3 disks and the most beloved SQUARESOFT game in history... Could Mistwalker be trying to up the ante?
Oh no! Every 10 hours, I have to get up and change the disc! How horrible!
No problem with changing discs at all for me. If anything, the very concept of it makes me feel a bit nostalgic.
I think that disc changing is perfectly suited and fine for an RPG due to the slower pace. Now, regardless of console, if I had to swap discs often in say an FPS or something fast paced. That might kill the mood a little bit. But disc swapping in RPG's.. I think we're all used to that *nod*
I'd love to know what the actual size of the game is, in data. And no, I don't mind swapping discs either.
Despite what PS3 fanboys may try to say to the contrary, having to swap discs from time to time != teh failz0rz suckass game lulz xbox sux. I'm still looking forward to this game for when I finally get around to getting a 360.
lol i dont acre about disk swapping lol, i mean christ you didnt didnt see pc players lord it over console people when we had to swap disks... also...
Blue dragon + Lost odessey= 3/4 dvds
dvd= cheap
Every ps3 game= 1 bd
bd= expensive
So once of twice every year MS will release a multi-dvd game which will cost them a little more than their normal cheap as chips dvd...
While, with every game Sony sell, they have to spend the extra money on BD, a format which hasn't taken off as they'd hoped, as the whole HD video revolution is forced and unecessary lol...
"will be sold as not one, not two, not three, but four DVDs"
Zero DVDs, ZERO CRATES!
Seriously though, while it's not the end of the world, disc swapping is inconvenient. It's like having a wired controller. Or no rumble. It's not game-breaking by any means, just counterintuitive when you consider current-gen storage technologies. It should at least have an install-to-hard-drive option.
In the tone of Deuce Bigalow...
That's a big ass game!
I don't see it as being a big deal. I remember Final Fantasy VII being on multiple disk, and getting excited every time I was prompted to change disk.
What really is the big deal about it? I actually enjoyed moving from one disc to the next with all the FF games and they didn't really interrupt anything other then getting up and changing to the next disc. This actually kind of excites me to get the feel of those old games with something like this, lol. I'm not even a Sony fan.
Nooooooooo!!1 You're telling me I have to walk all the way across my 15 foot living room to change a disc?? R U SrEus?
I call bullshit. Theres no way they can expect us lazy ass gamers to actually stand up and move once in a while...