EA Games Boss Swears to God He Didn't Kill Mirror's Edge

[Dogstile]

Turn off the glare that made me squint every time I went outside, but aside from that, ROUGHLY KEEP IT THE SAME.

Even the gunplay, I would actually enjoy it if faith could holster a pistol, but you'd get extra "bonuses" if you didn't use it later on, like less police, etc.

The rooms where I had to fight also sucked.

 

[googleback]

I'm looking forward to a sequel if they make one.

 

[Andy Chalk]

It sold 2 million and EA finds that mediocre O.O

Unless the game had a much higher budget than you can tell from the visuals, I fail to see how 2 mill could be anything less than very good sales.

Not all games are created equal. Two million sales for Super Meat Boy is an unmitigated triumph; two million for a triple-A release from one of the biggest publishers in the business that it hopes will become a major franchise - and remember, that's over the course of roughly two years, not the first week or 30 days of sales - isn't very impressive. It's not a total disaster, but it's not anything to get excited about.

 

[Vanbael]

Things I'm praying for:
More kind of indirect combat: Like just disarms, sneak attack knockouts, hell I don't mind wall running with a pistol. But it would feel better to fight around then fight through.
Better story line: too many loose ends in the first on
Less vent sections: I don't mind the occasional sneaking around in vents but don't put them in every level, but enough to create claustrophobia for the runner (I don't mind throwing people out of their element for an effect)
Keep the art style: I liked it, and if it means having people getting lost then good. Makes the player think on his feet and not be guided. Good games let the player learn for himself sometimes because then you get the "AH! I see what you did there" moments.
More open of a world: If there was one thing that Dice does right its the more open expansive areas to play in like in the Battlefield games which made them much better than Call of Duty maps (At least in my opinion). So in turn it would be better to see some more open areas to choose routes. But I understand that it might botch runner vision, then so be it because then it would have us the players think like runners.

I hope Dice does at least some of these things, they were on to something in Mirrors Edge. So I'm hoping a HUGE improvement. You never know if they are actually working on it.

 

[Arec Balrin]

I think Mirror's Edge could also have done with some randomisation of levels so if the levels were to be made more open, then there wouldn't be just one fixed route that is objectively the fastest and that is it.

The combat and shooting however felt like Bioshock: shoe-horned in where it didn't belong and wasn't necessary. Games these days have this problem where even if you know what to do you can lose and this nearly always attaches itself to combat despite games often selling themselves on the basis of videos where combat is shown to be effortless. Look at Crysis where you're depicted as nearly invulnerable whilst in the actual game you're more fragile than Gordon Freeman, JC Denton or Garret. The promo videos for Mirror's Edge don't show you constantly miss-timing counter-disarms. In Bioshock it did manage it so that if you knew how to kill something you could do so easily but it threw such cheap tricks at us in close-spawning and re-spawning enemies and it was a fiddle to set up a kill scenario.

If combat can't be done right, it shouldn't be done at all.

 

[BonGookKumBop]

I really enjoyed the original and have been wondering what they'd do for a sequel because I actually liked the story too. The story aspect problem with the sequel is that it would have to shift the story a bit from Faith and have it be more about the city and the dystopia.

I got the impression that the EA team is looking at two different aspects to make the sequel better. The first is to tighten up the game play mechanics. The second is to attract a bigger fan base. As I've scanned through the posts here, I've seen many comments about the mechanics and I think the assumption is that if the mechanics are improved then the fan base will improve. This line of thought has strong merit, but I don't think it's the only valid line of thought.

I always thought it might be interesting to see EA do a little more with the Mirror's Edge intellectuality property. I don't think a movie would work, but a competition based television show might be interesting. Think American Gladiators crossed with Ultimate Ninja Challenge/Sasuke, or maybe just some free running reality type show where contestants compete each week for the opportunity to run the big Mirror's Edge challenge at the end of the season. This probably isn't my best idea ever, but I'd like to see it.

As far as the mechanics of the game go, I think the biggest problem was peripheral vision. Free running requires the participant to be aware of and interact with the environment quickly and accurately, but the game limited the player to seeing what could be displayed on a rectangular screen. Perhaps if runner's vision had an adequate way of enhancing Faith's peripheral vision, then the game would have been more welcoming.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Keep the FPV but at least have third-person as an option (or have third-person replay so that you can rewind and savour your parkour stunt-work; part of the whole appeal of the concept is how cool it looks).

Ideally I'd like to see them implement something like the Halo series' "saved films" feature. This saves the controller inputs to a file, which allows the game play to be recreated at-will in-engine in a relatively small file... and then you can take control of the camera, so you can pick between first-person and third-person perspectives whenever you want.

Best of all, because they're small they can be shared easily. It's an excellent way to expand the social aspect of the game.

-- Steve

 

[kael013]

4) No vent sections please. You're selling a parkour game and the vent sections defeated the idea of parkour (which is freeRUNNING), IMO.

Did you not pay attention to the story? It quickly became less about the 'parkour' aspect and more about Faith investigating, so she had to use vents to get in/out of places.

6. Bring back Solar Fields for the soundtrack.

Yes I paid attention to the story and I liked it, but the vent sections (ok, with the exception of the one for Ropeburn's office) just broke the flow for me because I had to constantly stop at vent crossways and slowly look around for the way to go. I just didn't like that, and also the fact that alot of times we went into the vents it was to escape cops. There were windows with ledges all over the place and I wanted to escape by running around the outside of the building, then break back in somewhere else. Oh, well. I did mention multiple paths (point 3, I think) so this is a prime example of it.

BTW, thank you for bringing up the soundtrack. I loved the soundtrack from the first game, but it was just a bunch of remixes of the same song. Please bring back Solar Fields, but can we add a bit more?

 

[Jonluw]

Give you the option to bypass fights (with some skills) the parts of the game I found the most weak, were the parts where the game MADE you fight. Against heavily armored enemies. With guns.

Actually, you can bypass pretty much every fight in the original. You naturally can't bypass the fights with Celeste, and there's one or two fights where you have to climb up a pipe to get out of the "arena", but other than those, you could bypass pretty much every fight in the game.

OT: I want more Mirror's edge. And please: no matter what people say, don't make it third person. That would be the stupidest thing you could conceivably do. The first person perspective was Mirror's edge's unique feature; without it the game is nothing. "Ooh, a third person platformer, that sounds new and exciting!"

 

[MarsProbe]

"We're just trying to figure out how to bring Mirror's Edge back

Hey Gibeau I have some advice for your sequel...
1) Switch to third-person OR fix the mechanics with first person platforming
2) Make it less bright
3) Give it a real storyline
4) ???
5) Profit!

Thar you go EA

Absolutely not. If they do that, I won't buy it. I'll just go play Prince of Persia again.

If they did any of the above (especially the first two) I would probably be averse to playing the sequel (note the way I didn't say I wouldn't buy it). I wouldn't go and play PoP though. I'd run off and play the first Mirrors Edge again.

Really, moving the perspective to third person would be a bad move. The first person perspective was what gave the game immediacy, whether you were sliding down the sloped side of a building or planting a running kick into the face of a riot cop. As for the point regarding the brightness, they should also keep that the way it is. By all means, make the environments look more lived in. The way I understood it, the clinical look of the city was meant to be down to the way the place was governed. Perhaps a more human touch to the city would give the hint that some of whatever regime was in place's power had been chipped away a little.

Chances are it would get more gunplay, which would be okay, just as long as they keep it entirely optional like it was in Mirrors Edge. Yeh, I finished it on the highest difficulty level without killing anyone. The one bullet I accidentally fired luckily whizzed past the cops head! So the possibility is there.

 

[MR T3D]

-Open world
-Forstbite 2
-In-engine cinematics instead of e-surance ads
It'll sell over 5 million

 

[JokerCrowe]

As long as they just make some small improvements and keep what made the game unique (FP Runny, jumpy, climby in awesome environments) then I'll deifinitely be excited. A few suggestions (in case anyone at EA/DICE is reading) 1) less gunplay, or at least less guards with guns. 2) Less linear corridor, this is a free-running franchise after all... 3) put some actual effort into the story, and make the cutscenes not cartoons and keep them in first person. That is what I would like to see in a sequel.
Also, only make a multiplayer if you work really hard on it, don't just throw one together because you think it'll sell more games.

 

[Boom129]

so its GOG incident all over again

 

[newdarkcloud]

I loved the game (barring the story/conspiracy part) until they reached the point where they just started putting bad guys in rooms and saying "No, you have to fight now. No more parkour for you." That's what began to earn my ire.

Also, Fuck the time trials.

Two things...

1. Only one room did that, all the fights were easily escapable if you know what to do (even the last one).

2. The time trials were the only sections without enemies. What's wrong with them? I thought they were fantastic, if not really hard.

I just found them frustrating after awhile. They didn't really allow much room for error and I often came up 1-2 seconds short. It seemed that I just couldn't get it right no matter how hard I tried.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

PR? Probably.

I guess I don't mind what they do because the first game will still be great in spite of it all. But info like this doesn't lead me to any positive conclusions. Games that appeal to the masses are by definition shallow (like Hollywood films).
-Make it 3rd person? Takes away that whole 'immersion' thing they were going for in the first game, nearly the driving force behind the game.
-Make it less bright? I concur with others in that we have enough gritty grey-brown games, and that the bright halcyon setting is what made it at the same time fun and unique. That was part of the...
-Plot: It had one. Two actually, the sister plot and the city plot. I'm not sure why so many people are clamoring for a story when the first ones' was just fine, and keep in mind this is essentially a FPS game. They're not all going to be Bioshocks -- a lot more are going to be Call of Duty and Quake styled [read: no tangible story]. In fact I think I liked the simplicity of the first story because you could read into it -- the pristine city represented both repression and the achievement of a 1984 style world - no stepping out of line and no fun.

I guess the one thing I'd hope for (in an otherwise ideal game) is that they tweak some of the tricks to be more realistic/involved. Jumping 18" to a hanging ledge is nigh impossible but wallrunning with 4' of runway or reverse wallpopping 12' into the air off a ledge is inconsistent.
-And make rolling a necessity. Otherwise all the armchair junkies that go out and try this stuff for real are going to end up in the hospital quickly.

 

[Continuity]

Bah, always looking for a bigger audience, translation: Dumb down, make more generic.

The film industry can release a title like Black Swan without having to worry about it not selling as well as Transformers... why can't the games industry be the same? why does everything have to sell fuckloads, can't they just be satisfied with critical acclaim and ok returns?

Not that i'm making any specific observation about Mirrors edge, I haven't played it, just talking about the attitude of the industry.