Mirror's Edge Sequel On Hold

An anonymous reader tips news that Electronic Arts has rejected DICE's pitch for Mirror's Edge 2, halting development on the sequel to 2008's Parkour-inspired first-person action game. "'Patrick [Soderlund - EA driving and shooting game boss] acknowledges that Mirror's Edge didn't match up to their expectations regarding sales, and that has stopped the sequel that has been in development,' declared the report, published originally in December. EA was shown a prototype, but declined with askance. The project has been stopped — involved parties at DICE are working on something else now. Patrick himself seems to have Mirror's Edge near his heart, but they are not in the business of charity.' Presumably the extra development is going into Battlefield 3 — EA's well publicized attempt at wrestling shooter supremacy from the Call of Duty series."

Comments

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is bullshit, Mirror's Edge was barely a game. We've seen the single player campaign fps thing a billion times, it really needs to go big! The sequel really would of been what it needed to deliver the first time around. Ah well another reasonably original IP, dies another shitty sequel is made.

Re:Bullshit

[somersault]

*facepalm*

First of all, go and look up the definitions of Parkour or Freerunning.

There have only been a couple of games based on this, and the other was just a Tony Hawks style 3rd person trick-fest

Mirror's Edge was pretty much based on pure Parkour, first person view, with plenty of running, jumping, climbing and generally figuring out how to get your way through the level (kind of like Portal, but without the Portals). You could do melee attacks/disarms and use weapons too, but the game was designed such that if you were a good player you wouldn't need to do much fighting.

I was looking forward to this sequel a lot. The first game was indeed a bit short, and now that I do Parkour myself some of the movement options in Mirror's Edge feel a bit restrictive.

At least there's still Brink to look forward too, but it's very much a shooter, with a bit of Parkour tagged on.

Re:Bullshit

[HAKdragon]

I think combat, especially in the later levels, was the biggest let down to be honest. If they scaled that back a bunch or made it almost pure free running, I think I would have loved the game a lot more than I did.t

Shame

[rainmouse]

Such a shame, the first one had so much potential but was partially spoiled by terrible map design and an awful lot of player deaths.

Re:Shame

[Gadget_Guy]

Such a shame, the first one had so much potential but was partially spoiled by terrible map design and an awful lot of player deaths

That is interesting, because I actually expected to die more often than I did. But I don't have a problem with dying in a game anyway. That might be because I started playing games in the 80s when finishing a game was not a forgone conclusion (when you died you had to start again).

I really enjoyed Mirror's Edge, especially when you turned off the red colouring that pointed where to go all the time. That made it way too easy and it spoiled the tension when you had to think on your feet - or in midair.

I knew that it was short before I bought it, so I didn't get disappointed by the length. (It helped that I got it on sale for $5!)

Re:Shame

[hansamurai]

I would say the map design was pretty good, and dying wasn't an issue because the level design was implemented in such a way that dying wasn't that much of a punishment. There were only a few very large underground open areas where I was frustrated with the lack of checkpoints.

And like someone else mentioned, the real problem was with the combat. Mirror's Edge was all about getting into the zone and quickly zipping through the level smoothly. That was mostly interrupted whenever a gun-less bad guy showed up, and destroyed whenever you had to shoot back, or at least fight back against gun-toters

Don't mean to promote my site but I wrote lots of words on Mirror's Edge back in December: http://firsthour.net/full-review/mirrors-edge-greg-noe

On topic of the headline, this is disappointing, to say the least. The industry needs less focus on one genre (such as FPS). Mirror's Edge was a fun platformer from the first-person perspective.

Re:Shame

[interkin3tic]

and an awful lot of player deaths

How is that a thing? It's a videogame, your character dies all the... Wait, you mean -ACTUAL- player deaths?!? Like the game kills people? Whoa man... I really dodged a bullet there...

This is why corporations are bad

[giuseppemag]

Because they do not judge the value of something based on quality, but exclusively on money. This way many good products get ditched...

Re:This is why corporations are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

For the parent, ME2 : Mass Effect 2
For the parent's parent ME2 : Mirror's Edge 2

Re:This is why corporations are bad

[August_zero]

Except that Mirror's Edge was short on both.

It did have a striking visual design, and the basic idea was good, but after you get past that first impression the gameplay never really progressed. I liken it to the first Assassin's Creed, great first impression, but after about 2 hours you have seen everything the game has to offer and the experience begins to stagnate.

Re:This is why corporations are bad

[Nagrom]

True, and I think that's why this news is so disappointing - Assassin's Creed II was an enormous improvement upon the first one and there was plenty of potential to do the same here with a Mirror's Edge sequel. Oh well.

Re:This is why corporations are bad

[giuseppemag]

Sort of. Games can be good and tell interesting stories (ME was an instance of a decent critique of modern societies) with believable characters (once again, ME is one of the few games featuring a female protagonsit with less than 6kg of breasts). Making these games is harder than making dumb games with lots of shooting and semi-naked sterotypical women with huge breasts, and so is selling these games. That is why I feel a tad disappointed. There was a lot of potential that is now lost, and this is because in our society we are yet to find a way to balance money which is a but poor as a sole metaphor for value.

My original comment did not in any way imply that corporations should be removed or disappear.

Finally, I am an indie game developer. I have just rejected a series of sketches from one of the designers that my publisher sent me: the main female character was completely naked apart from some futuristic boots. So yes, I make this kind of struggle to avoid clichés and dumbness very often...

Re:Motion sickness

[Spad]

It was one of the things I really liked about the game; not the motion sickness, obviously, but the fact that you felt like a person rather than the camera-on-wheels effect that most FP(S) games seem to go for.

Not surprised.

[Onuma]

While Mirror's Edge was a fun game to play, I felt it lacked the substance that many games have. The storyline was short and hardly captivating, and the levels were too few to consider it for purchase and replay. This is where Gamefly and friends with games are great! However, I certainly enjoyed the Parkour style of movement, the combination of fist fights and disarming/shooting enemies with their own firearm, and the speed challenges after playing through the story mode.
It wasn't ever meant to be a blockbuster which changed the way people think about shooters and gaming in general, but it does have its own little niche in my VG memory. Many shooters have an extremely linear path which you're obligated to take in order to progress the storyline -- Mirror's Edge helped delineate that path, created a mode where the player could sometimes think outside conventional methods of completing a task. Jump over the pipe, slide under it, go around it? Avoid the guard, beat him up, or shoot him from a distance?

It wasn't a total revelation, but more than once I've wished I could do some of the things you did as Faith (the protagonist, for those of you who didn't play Mirror's Edge) while playing different games. Nothing wrong with shooting everything dead and letting God sort them out, but it's nice to have options. This game made me think about those options...even if I still choose the trigger :D

Very disappointing

[FromWithin]

This is very disappointing news. Mirror's Edge is one of my all-time favourite games. According to vgchartz.com, it sold over 2 million copies between the PS3 and x360 versions and probably a lot more since those number were last updated. That's pretty close to Dead Space's figures (2.6 million), and EA was also disappointed with the results of that project. Yet, Dead Space 2 has arrived complete with a ton of marketing. I don't see how anyone can claim that Mirror's Edge wasn't a success, even if EA's expectations were wildly optimistic. I hope that it doesn't get resubmitted and released in future as a terrible multi-player game, but I do hope that there is a sequel eventually.

It seems Brink has already picked up the torch.

[Joshua Fan]

A full combat implementation was one of the natural potential developments, and I think Brink will do it well, even if it doesn't give the original any credit.

With one HUGE problem

[SmallFurryCreature]

Apart from all its strengths it suffered one HUGE flaw.

It had the flaw of the most extreme console platformers. The HUGE "how the fuck was I supposed to know THAT" flaw.

Some platform games have lots of hidden features or specials that can only be found through methodically exploring every last pixel of a level. The worsed (or best if you like this) of them even have in the main game play. Where your progress through the game is a constant Trial and Error approach with you NOT being able to do just get it right the first time because there was no way for you to know what to do.

You know the examples, the landing target you can't see until you made the jump meaning a fall to your death until you got the jump correct. The enemy attack that you can only counter once you know what it is.

Mirror's Edge looked a LOT like a FPS and most modern FPS give the player a different style of game. If you are good most of them can be played first time around without dying because challenges are about seeing the problem and then solving it. Not, oops I died WTF happened. Mirror's Edge was nicely done in the tutorial but pretty soon you were to often caught by guards while trying to figure out where the hell you were supposed to go to.

There is a reason Tomb Raider doesn't have so many guards running around while you are exploring. ME just forgot that there is a reason racetracks have got far more signs showing you were to go then a ordinary road. Because at 300+ km/h you do NOT want to have any surprises about the upcoming corner.

For many the game held a lot of promise but since it was all about speed its "run a bit, fall, reload, run a bit more, fall, reload" gameplay just wasn't it. It appealled to the kind of person who gets a kick out of memorizing a Mario run through. For the ordinary Maria player who just wants to run through a level it was to unforgiving and to obscure with where you were supposed to go while also constantly adding pressure so you never could just look around to see what the designer had in mind you do next.

That 99% of the time there was only one path didn't help either.

Re:With one HUGE problem

[tucara]

I agree with your basic premise and found myself thinking the same thing at first. Then after playing for a while I'd get in the zone where I could go for long stretches w/o dying, that there was a certain logic in the layout. I ended up having a lot of fun playing it and wished it was longer. The atmosphere was well done, too. Also, I tried it with a gamepad at first and found the mouse/keyboard is WAAAY better, as usual, so perhaps that didn't help console sales. A few year ago a tried parkour around the Boston area and found it a lot of fun and very challenging. I stopped quickly after a) being terrible at it and b) breaking my toe. But, the people I did meet and watched had a philosophy which I think was captured very well in this game. That being said, I can imagine why video game that intends to appeal to people who are interested in parkour didn't sell well. They're too busy doing crazy stuff at your local T-stop.

Re:With one HUGE problem

[billcopc]

I had that feeling of disorientation in the beginning, where the sequence of events seemed totally random and idiotic. Then it clicked in my head, as if I suddenly gained the ability to instantly scan an area and piece together an escape route. The game is designed for you to race through, so by necessity there is a certain flow that must be maintained.

The problem is at first, I had also just finished playing the ludicriously violent Stranglehold. I thought Mirror's Edge was an art-house FPS, so I was thinking in FPS mode. I'd automatically look for cover, try to anticipate where dozens of bad guys might storm out, and they never came. Once I got out of that rut, and accepted the fact that, most of the time, I'd be free to roam the rooftops like a suicidal gazelle, I started thinking in terms of "can I make that jump" and "where does that zip line go". When a baddie showed up, rather than whip out the gun and go for the headshot, my thought was "hey fuck off you're blocking my ladder".

A sequel would have allowed DICE to expand on this concept, address some of the flaws (game length), add some ground-level urban maps to "bring it home" so to speak, maybe an option to remove all the shooters making it more of a zen experience. That said, it is clearly not in line with EA's nihilistic capitalism. If it can't sell 10 million copies and three expansions, it ain't worth EA's time.

Re:Bullshit (yes the game is bullshit)

[deek]

I played the first one on the PS3. The game was great! I thought using parkour for a game was awesome fun.

I don't know what the controls were like on other systems, but the PS3 felt pretty natural to me. It was so much fun to pull off strings of moves, like doing a wall run, then spin and jump, grabbing onto a pole, flinging yourself forward to some platform which you hit at a running pace. Once the controls became instinctive, the movement just felt so natural and fluid. An excellent game. One of my favourites.

Re:Good according to who?

[UnknownSoldier]

> Mirror's Edge was crap,

I'm a game programmer, designer, and my friends know that I tend to be very vocal about ranting (-negative) and rave (+postive) about games _with_ very specific design (& implementation) reasons WHY said games are good/bad.

You haven't listed _any_ reasons.

I am going to include what I emailed my friends back in Dec '09 when I finished it.

Raves

+ Story was engaging enough for me to actually finish the game - it was half-decent. I was entertained. Maybe I had no expectations, or was able to put all the hype aside. Regardless, they could of easily messed this one up, and was thankful EA didn't fuck it up or make it worse then it could of been.

+ The martial arts mini-boss battle with the white assassin was REAL interesting to figure out how to beat. The hand-to-hand combat was neat when you were able to execute the timing.

+ Artistic / Beautiful (over-saturated) world, even if bordering on "bland." The main menu definitely has a very cool look to it when you stop and considering it is all being rendered in real-time was used to be pre-rendered cut-scenes just 5 years ago. The "visuals" of the game reminds me of originality of the pre-rendered cut-scenes of Privater.

+ Music was awesome and fit the mood perfectly. Rank 11 / 10 .

+ The game is literally a puzzle game -- where do I go next. I enjoyed the last few levels of the game the best. Initial frustration turned to joy of figuring them out.
http://www.mahalo.com/mirrors-edge-kate (Start watching around 5 min mark)
http://faqs.ign.com/articles/953/953471p8.html (or start here)

+ You can skip the cutscenes! Thank-God.

Rants:

- Unfortunately, most of the time you have no clue how to actually get where you are supposed to go. Yes, I used the built-in hint to view. I still spent far too much time trying to figure out how the heck to get up there. Yes, this is a VERY fine line between spoon feeding the player and forcing him to solve difficult puzzles. While the overall level design was good, the individual specific environment hints of where to go next was terrible. The levels were for the most part, not intuitive. Which leads me to my next point...

- I grok the point of the game. I really do. You pull off all these amazing moves in one zen flow of execution and it feels fucking fantastic!

The hard Reality of the situation: You spend 1 minute figuring out where to go next. You die. You figure out that jump / climb, then you get stuck again trying to figure out the next 'segment'. Repeat ad nasuem. This constant interruption on trying to figure out how to make your way from 'Start' to some vague 'Finish' location, TOTALLY breaks the flow of the game. Each time you die, you figure out a little more of the "path" you are supposed to take. Finally, after 20 deaths, you can "chain" all the movement together, it feels awesome to do all these "stunts", and you think "this game has potential !" Then you die, and you realize you are a new checkpoint and you get to do it all over again until the chapter is done. LOL.

- Bad save-points. There was even one point where the save-point was BEFORE a cutscene, so when you died you had to skip it all the time. WTF? Place the dam save-point AFTER. If cut-scenes weren't skippable, I think this would of been a pretty major deal breaker.

- Was too easy to accidently skip the cutscenes. The first time I played I actually ended up skipping the cut scene when ending the first level because I didn't realize my direct action was over !

- The world is BARREN. Aside from a few pedestrations you see down below on the street, you never see anybody "normal" in any of the offices or indoors aside from Police or a few people dependent on the plot. Even the inside offices were "too clean." Not even a secretary was around ??? Grand Theft Auto was (partially) suc