lacktheknack said:
Treblaine said:
But that was the big problem with Mirror's Edge, it was ruined by how it contrived circumstances where you had to fight, it would have been much better to entirely focusing on misdirection, avoidance and stealth. And it wasn't even anything like "oh, position them where something knocks them over" it's crap like matrix-martial-arts moves snatching assault rifles out of the hands of SWAT commandos and gunning them down.
FAIL!
A complete lack of vision on what kind of game Mirror's Edge could have been, a pure free-running game. But they couldn't get out of an FPS mindset like the Valve devs were able to do with Portal. It never resorted to "well here's a fucking M16, go shoot GlaDOS Trolololol".
Though I appreciate the challenge the Mirror's Edge devs are in, how do you make a game where you have great agency in where you don't directly affect any of your opponents? Even the final climax, you can have all the running around dodging and sneaking but the big-bad will still be out to get you.
To be fair, it was possible to out-sprint nearly everyone in the game. Violence wasn't a tenth as necessary as people act like it was. If anything, it was baffling how many people assumed that, because there's a dude with a gun in your way, you had to punch him out. It was like Dishonored's "You can't go up those stairs" guards, where everyone took that at face value.
In fact, there's only one room (on the blasted boat level) where I actually need to knock out the cops. There's a couple bits on the Shard where I usually have to knock out one key machine-gunner, but again, that's four KOs, which is pretty damn good for a game that obviously expects you to pick up the guns and shoot everyone.
Maybe on replays and in walkthroughs, but I remember and area where riot police with shotguns bum-rushed me. I spent half and hour trying to dodge them and find a way out but it was hopeless, there were FOUR of them with shotguns! Unable to explore and navigate (so many containers to climb up and jump between, all the time the cops have easy shots) the game so strongly pushed me to at least try knocking them all out though how often if finishes a disarm with you pointing the gun it hinted even more at shooting them down.
There is no reasonable way that the game developers could think the typical person playing through this (without a cheat guide) could expect to avoid these gun toting killers.
And I know this is just once incidence, but it's so contrived, suddenly there are FOUR shotgun toting cops who don't hesitate at all to riddle this 120lbs unarmed woman with lead shot at the first glance. And I feel conned that that game would put me in that situation, it wouldn't even give me a chance to surrender and be arrested, they will always corner you and shoot to kill. Even though you've never hurt any of their other comrades.
It's the principal, if I have to assault "only four" police officers it goes against what could be a strong pacifist theme. It suddenly isn't about "resisting the totally unjustified man". The cops could be motivated by how you beat up one of their own. It's not just about their oppressiveness any more, it's then another war of mutual revenge.
If you can accept knocking out 4 guards, why not a 5th? After all, he is inexplicably trying to shoot you to death with no attempt at all at making any sort of lawful arrest.
And it's just implausible, these cops look like combat experts, look to have twice the lean muscle mass of Faith and are often dressed in riot gear that would absorb most impacts... it just seems crazy that the game would ever suggest trying to fight this "might with might". And they are usually armed with their guns drawn when Faith is without any weapon or body armour.
I'm willing to get into the gameplay mindset where I'm not the type of person to go beating up cops.
But Mirror's Edge had too many exceptions, or at least such strong indication that fighting was the only answer.
Mirror's Edge shouldn't have had ANY close combat mechanic, the WHOLE GAME, not merely "most of it" should have been entirely around free running and never more than slapstick interdiction of police. Like, I don't know, dumping a tub of fish onto them so they are all slippery and covered in fish so are delayed.
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