L.A. Noire takes up 3 Xbox 360 discs
Rockstar: "Disc swapping is hassle-free."
The Xbox 360 version of Rockstar Games' forthcoming open world crime saga L.A. Noire will be spread across three separate discs.
Developer Jeronimo Barrera told Kotaku that it was the only way to deliver the full experience Rockstar had originally envisaged.
"L.A. Noire was always going to be a massive game, from the size and detail of the world to the length of the cases, and of course, the sheer amount of MotionScan data required for the faces of over 400 actors in-game," he explained.
"To tell the story and make the game we wanted to make, we knew that it was going to take an entire single layer Blu-ray disc and three Xbox discs."
As a reference point, Rockstar's last effort, Red Dead Redemption, shipped on a single Xbox 360 disc.
Barrera added that the studio had been at pains to ensure users wouldn't be up and down off the sofa every ten minutes switching discs.
"Since the game is built around the concept of progressing through individual cases from desk to desk, players on Xbox will find disc-swapping is hassle-free. In fact, players will only need to swap discs twice at natural breaks between cases without interrupting the flow of the game."
The three discs' worth of content you'll get at launch day is only the start of it. As expected, there's also plenty of DLC on its way as well.
"Throughout development, we created lots of great cases, the bulk of which were central to the main story of Cole Phelps and his rise through the ranks of the LAPD, alongside other cases that felt more like strong stand-alone episodes," said Barrera.
"This gave us a powerful main story, and left us with quality extra content that we wanted to put out as DLC, that would slot seamlessly into the existing game."
The PlayStation 3 version squeezes onto one single-layer 25 GB Blu-ray disc.
Earlier this year Rockstar estimated that the game's core story, minus DLC and side missions, should take between 25 and 30 hours to complete.
Not long now until you can get stuck in – the game arrives on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on 20th May.