Recent games these days are coming out on multi-disks sets. LA Noir, ME2/3 etc. Oblvion managed to keep it to one disk by limiting voice roles. But I expect Skyrim to be much more richly detailed with more voice differentiation. Its hard to consider this level of awesomeness being on 1 disk when other not so awesome games are on multiple disks.

Sure, the lead game developer said that they have better compression methods now, and with the new XBOX disc format that could add 1GB of extra space, this could be a none issue.
But I would hope that they don't cut content just to try to squeez it into one disc. I also know that an open world RPG would be nightmarish to play by switching between 2 disks, Skyrim WILL be 1 disk, and Microsoft does not support the requirement to preload content via extra discs.

So I would suggest to Bethesda to throw all the content they can into Skyrim to blow anything else out of the water. If they happen to go over that ~9GB range, then save the extra content as extra dungeons that can be downloaded as free DLC's when the game is released. This way, ppl don't have to download them if they don't want and the few extra dungeons won't be missed since the Radiant AI will choose different locations for quests. But if we want the full content that a PC would enjoy, we could download the extra dungeons.

Would anyone mind downloading free DLCs at launch for hypothetical full content?

Nah I wouldn't mind it at all. I know where you're comin' from too...I've been thinking about the content of what we know already about Skryim and who knows how much there actually is. But 5 months after announcement it sounds like this game can be split up into at least 3 games. I wouldn't be surprised if Skyrim is on more than 1 disc (don't like that idea btw) but I'm all for free DLC.

I like the idea i feel down when developers cut game content due to disc space :nope:

Even with such a solution, the whole thing just seems sketchy and very worrisome, in my opinion. I don't think there is any way to fix the problem while still keeping the game a 360 game with only one disk. Some dungeons really shouldn't take up too much space, at all. If they end up going over the limit, it's going to be due to far more than a few dungeons.

Also considering that it was said that there are 1-2 hour dungeons. In OB it was only about 20-30 mins.

This pretty much assumes that every dungeon will have a large amount of unique art assets, which I think is highly unlikely. Maybe if they cut out some factions that have a lot of voice acting, and release those as free DLC for 360.

Well as a hypothesis, lets say all the dungeons in Skyrim big and small take up ~3-4 GB in space. If the original disk left the small dungeons in and maybe a few large ones, it could maybe have free DLC of maybe 2 GB for remaining dungeons. So that 2 GB of space could be used for alternate endings, more voice acting, horse satchels, more interactive environments etc etc.. on the original disk.

I really think they should just go with more than one disk by allowing an optional hard drive install for one or more of the disks for those 360 players who do have it (a hard drive). Then again, this is coming from a PS3 player, so I really don't personally understand the predicament and my opinion on the matter means less than that of actual 360 players, I'd say.

But the conundrum here is that cutting out factions would change game-play if one decided not to download the extra faction content. With dungeons, loot and rewards can be relocated so all have access.

Again, this assumes each dungeon has a large amount of unique art assets. The way it will probably work (and how it worked in morrowind, oblivion, and FO3) is that they have a big list of chunks that they can fit together to make a dungeon. One piece of a dungeon could be used in many, many other dungeons, but by arranging them differently you can get dungeons that feel unique. The actual information that specifies how the dungeon pieces are laid out in a given cell takes up very, very little disk space. So I think this would only really work with dungeons that truly are completely unique (which would probably be the ones associated with major quests), or by removing whole categories of dungeons that use the same assets (dwemer ruins, caves, nord forts, etc)

They sure would improve the next type of xbox if a good size of memory was available from the start so it would be no problem to save lots of content to the harddrive. Those basic 20 gig harddrives for the 360 fill up fast.

I guess I am going off the information that dungeons in Skyrim are developed individually and not like the cookie cutter Oblivion ones. This would make me think that they all are unique, but I am not in the know..

This is an irrational fear. There's no evidence that they've had to, or are even considering cutting any content.

More so than disk space, the limiting factor is time. If anything doesn't get included it will be because they didn't have the time to get it polished to a level that they're happy with.

Doubtful, it would take a ridiculously huge art team to make unique resources for 130+ dungeons. You can make unique dungeons even if you are using the same sort of "cookie cutter" system. The main thing is that now that there are 8 level designers instead of 1-2, there's an expanded possibility of dungeons being put together in unique ways that make them feel different from others.

I wouldn't think evidence or any leak will come out that content had to be cut to fit all on one disk. This is like covert intelligence with only those that need to know having that knowledge:) It probably wouldn't come out until TESVI:) But the history is there with Oblivion and Skyrim is the same land mass size with richer detail, more NPC normal interactions etc. So it was more of a concern. Maybe Bethesda knows something more about compression then the other multi discs games.. who knows.
But to the original posts, I don't think many complain about free DLC content unless they were on a system with no HD.

I can solve this problem.

10gb day one patch for the 360

It doesnt even have to be DLC. There could be a second disc with 6gb worth of content that could be installed on the HDD. As a 360 owner I wouldnt mind this either but then again I am a big TES fan. Microsoft however doesnt allow this, and not everyone has a HDD or an interet connection. Bethesda would never give those 360 owners a half game. So it won't happen.

So is the 360 keeping Skyrim back? Sure. But so is the PS3 and the PC in their own way. Many PC gamers are on average machines as well, this is also keeping the 'average' below the possibilities of the high-end devices. And the PS3 also lacks in certain departments such as RAM. Because of is Bethesda had a hard time brining all DLC to it. And besides there is always 1 console the weakest, lastgen that was the Gamecube, but even the PS2 wasnt strong enough to play Morrowind. This gen it is the 360, but it is still a great price/content console so it made the gaming standard very much like the PS2 did.

If I remember correctly Forza Motorsport 3 had 2 game discs, Disc 1 was the game, and disc 2 was optional extra content which was downloaded into the HDD and then the game reads and adds the content seamlessly.

Maybe Bethesda takes the same path if a space limitation is reached ... the only problem I see is the 4GB Xbox.

stupid greedy Microsoft

I'm not sure how xbox live system works, but with pc it's possible to patch the game and by doing so increase the amount of content....can't the same be done with xbox?

Dungeons would not be the thing taking up too much space. That would be stuff like sound files, large textures, etc.

Dungeons (as far as data is concerned) are just a bunch of numbers for the ID, coordinates, and alignment of a bunch of objects, their filesize footprint is quite small.

No, I don't mind it at all







oh, and I play on PC :biggrin:

As a 360 owner myself, I would have no problem with Skyrim requiring a second install disc.

However, as others have pointed out Microsoft does not allow that apparently.

How do you know this?

Oblivion had 2.03GB of non voice data and 1.66GB of voice data. Well under the 9GB limit. Hell, even a full gig under the 4.7GB limit of a standard DVD.

I believe that is what he was talking about - http://bethblog.com/index.php/2007/09/27/inside-the-vault-mark-lampert/