Really, folks? Are you really going to complain about multi-disc games now? Of all the injustices in the world, of all the legitimate issues you can have with technology, you’re going to rally around this stupid issue? Good God.
I’m referring to, of course, the story that Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIII will ship on three discs, at least for the Xbox 360 version. This is a giant inconveience to gamers, apparently, who dread the idea of having to get up from the couch for 20 seconds to push the disc open button, open the game’s case, remove the new disc, put in the new disc, then put away the old disc. Twenty seconds of your life, gone. That’s twenty seconds you could have used to complain about having to switch the disc in the first place.
Like, what would you prefer Square Enix do? The game is huge. All those textures and pre-rendered movies take up a lot of space, and the Xbox 360 disc can only hold so much data.
Let’s put it another way: if the worst thing you can to face on any given day is switch from disc one to disc two in Final Fantasy XIII, I think it’s safe to say you’re living a pretty good life.
Now, there may be one legitimate complaint against the scourge of multi-disc games: it prevents you from accessing all of the game’s content at the same time. Say you’re level 99 and want to return to a town from early in the game to, I don’t know, buy a bunch of Potions or Tents or Phoenix Downs. You might not be able to, and that’s tragic. But what are you gonna do? Until all console makers include a spacious hard drive with the console—and really, the only hold out here is Microsoft, what with its Xbox 360 Arcade holding back innovation (Nintendo, with the Wii, is a mystery unto itself)—developers will have to struggle with creating multi-disc games.
And what would you prefer: a rich, detailed game like Final Fantasy XIII where you have to change the disc twice in a 40-plus-hour game, or feel smug with your victory of a single-disc game, and yet are playing something that’s been several hampered by storage.
The beauty is, this is a wonderfully pointless debate, and one that will be forgotten by the time dinner rolls around.