Mass Effect 2 shipping on two discs

It appears Bioware is planning to release Mass Effect 2 as a two-disc game.

“Why (two) discs,” Bioware community manager Chris Priestly asks in an official message board thread about the game spanning two discs, “Answer: because you cannot fit this much awesome on one disc.”

Priestly doesn’t reveal the true reason for the need of two discs, but we’re willing to assume that it has to do with the sheer size of the content. Forza 3 developer Turn 10 had to break their game into two discs earlier this year because of the amount of content coupled with the restrictive size of DVDs.

The first Forza 3 disc is the main game disc. The second disc is something of a content dump which can be downloaded onto an HDD or popped in the tray as needed.

But disc swapping will be unavoidable for owners of the Xbox 360 version of ME2.

“The Xbox 360 (version) does not have an install and does require disc swapping during play,” writes Priestly in the same post.

“Even though there is a disc swap, it occurs at a carefully planned place in the game (that does not interefere with gameplay) and is done once. You do not swap back and forth. (One) swap and then done.”

The PC version of ME2 won’t require users to swap discs. Like Forza 3, owners will be able to download the content of the second disc and forget about it.

Mass Effect 2 ships for the PC and Xbox 360 on January 26th, 2010. The three-disc Collectors Edition hits the same day, but don’t panic: the third disc is bonus DVD-style (behind-the-scenes, bonus footage) content.