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.

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

[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.

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

[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.