Mirror\'s Edge Archives - A+E Interactive (2024)

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Battlefield 3 executive producer on making memorable maps, rivalry with Modern Warfare 3 (interview)

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Gieson Cacho

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Earlier this month, EA held a Final Hours event for Battlefield 3. I had an opportunity to interview executive producer Patrick Bach. I asked him a few questions from a Twitter follower Juan Letona (@ibitjuan). Here are his answers to them and some questions of my own.

These are from Letona:
Why are military shooters so popular?
I think it’s human nature to hunt prey, to aim and hit stuff. There’s a natural feedback loop of chasing and hitting something. You see people playing paintball. It’s a natural part of how the human brain works and translating that to a first person shooter is a good way of getting that. You can do Battlefield as a sci-fi game or a paintball game. It doesn’t have to be a military shooter to be fun. People read military books and they read conflicts today and conflicts tomorrow. The modern day war is interesting.

Where does your creative drive come from?
Great media — whatever it is — is always inspiring. Books and movies. Architecture. People being creative. It’s always interested me. I get satisfied when you do different things, when you use all different senses.
More Q and A from Patrick Bach on the jump

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Mirror’s Edge getting head-spinning new maps

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Gieson Cacho

If you’re like me and you have no problem with first-person platformers, then this is good news. But if you’re like other folks who can’t handle the head-spinning, herky jerky motion of a Mirror’s Edge, this could be something you couldn’t care less about.

But one of the most refreshing games of the year is getting some downloadable content. In late January, fans can download a map pack that includes nine new races across seven new maps for $10 or 800 Microsoft points. If you’re a Mirror’s Edge fan, you’re probably salivating at the video (above) of the free PS3 map.

Wes Schwengels did the review of Mirror’s Edge for Gamester, and I’ve played it here and there. Now, I may just go out and buy it outright. Ah, so many games, so little time.

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Mirror’s Edge (guest review)


By Wes Schwengels
Reviewer

So here I am, running from masked police who are shooting at me just because I was doing my job. Sixty floors above the city’s streets, fleeing for my life, looking for any possible escape route, and yet I can’t help but notice how gorgeous the skyline looks today. Especially that crane over yonder…

This is Mirror’s Edge, an absolute masterpiece of a game that has received a lot of hype since it made its debut earlier in the year. In this case, the buzz is well deserved.

Mirror’s Edge follows the story of Faith, a young Runner — or more accurately put, a messenger-acrobat-martial arts fighter — whose job is to relay information between people who are rebelling against the authoritarian government and police force. As the game opens, Faith learns her twin sister, a cop, has been framed for murder. It’s up to our heroine to free her sis from a certain prison sentence — and likely worse.

But the plot, while solid and even touching at times, is about the 20th-best reason to play Mirror’s Edge. The main reason for all the hype is the gameplay, which can best be described as a first-person, parkour-style take on platformers with a nearly constant sense of urgency.

The game teaches you all you need to know early, including wall-running, slide kicks, speed vaulting and even slowing down time to disarm enemies. But it’s up to you to be aware of your surroundings and find the quickest way from Point A to Point E, even if Point B is a moving subway car, Point E is a flying helicopter and Point C is guarded by dozens of angry, ninjalike cops.

There are more than a handful of jaw-dropping moments, led by the one involving the aforementioned crane, but getting to those points is equally as fun. The developers at DICE did an excellent job of pacing the game and knowing when to give the player a break. Make it past a round of trigger-happy police, and you’re rewarded with a challenging but authority-free climb through the innards of an office building.

Then again, it’s so fun to take a cop’s gun while kicking him in the head, sometimes it’s worth it to try and shoot it out John Wayne-style. Heck, sometimes it’s necessary.
More on Mirror’s Edge on the jump

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Mirror’s Edge launching Nov. 11, demo coming earlier

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Gieson Cacho

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Mirror's Edge

Not to be outdone, Electronic Arts also released its launch date for Mirror’s Edge. The first-person parkourlike game will be coming out Nov. 11 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. (Gotta mark that on my review calendar.) PC folks will have to wait until later this winter.

Along with the release date, EA also said that “prior to launch” the company will also be releasing a demo on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. The demo will include a tutorial level and a segment of the single-player campaign. Folks who pre-order will get a code to unlock a Time Trial mode in the demo. Eh, that could be worth it.

I just have two pieces of advice when playing this game: Always follow the red on the screen and long jumps need a ton of momentum so get a long running start.

Now, I wonder if there’s going to be any more release date information?

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E3: A leap of Faith with Mirror’s Edge hands-on

Posted on July 21, 2008 by Gieson Cacho

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You can’t go on making Battlefield games forever. There’s only so much you can do with a multiplayer war game before it becomes trite and almost burdensome.

DICE, the Swedish studio that helms the series, has taken it to the future, to Vietnam, to contemporary times. Following this pattern, I could predict that the next five titles may be Battlefield: Civil War re-enactment, Battlefield: Sparta or Battlefield: War and Peace.

But thankfully, DICE has gone a completey different direction for its next project. It still retains that first-person perspective but the gameplay concepts they’re introducing are new to the style.

Lars Gustavsson, creative director, says that the team has always been a fan of platformers, but the problem they had with them was the third-person perspective.

“We felt like we were watching a movie, not being in a movie,” he said and that’s where Mirror’s Edge comes in.

At it’s heart, it’s a first-person platformer coming to gamers via parkour. As the main character Faith, players take on the role of a courier in a highly monitored society. The only way citizens can communicate private messages is through runners like her.

More on the easy controls and acting like David Belle on the jump

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A long drive back to the Bay Area

Posted on July 18, 2008 by Gieson Cacho

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Wow, what a week. It was a good E3, and we have more than enough to write up over the weekend. Check back with us this week and over the next week as we write up every game we saw at E3, including Killzone, PlayStation Home, Dragon Age: Origins and Mirror’s Edge. For now, it’s going to be a long trip back to the Bay Area. Let’s hope we avoid that dreaded L.A. traffic.

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Mirror’s Edge Preview

Posted on February 29, 2008 by dwillis

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The third and final game from my DICE excursion, and the most interesting one, is Mirror’s Edge.

The only non-Battlefield game at the event, and as far as I can tell the only non-Battlefield game from DICE since RalliSport Challenge 2 in 2004, Mirror’s Edge was touted as a first-person action-adventure game. It’s not a shooter because you don’t begin with a gun, and if you take one ammo is very limited. Rather than combat the game focuses on movement.

The game takes place in a contemporary city, but one where non-conformism is punishable by law. The citizens of the city have no rights but, as you can see in the screen shots, it’s a gleaming, clean, crime-free utopia. (These, by the way, are actual screen shots. You really can see for miles.) But what happened to those who weren’t willing to trade freedom for security? They were pushed to the outer edges of the city and mostly ignored.

This is where you come in. You are Faith, a Runner. Since the government openly admits to monitoring emails, cell phones and mail, your job is to hand-deliver messages between resistance leaders. Since there’s so much surveillance this forces you to rooftops and other precarious positions.

As is suggested by the term “Runner,” you spend most of the game running while police and other armed people chase you. The goal is to maintain momentum since slowing down makes it an easier shot.

The game helps you do this in a few ways. First, Faith is extremely agile. She can get to places fairly easily and will compensate and grab ledges so you don’t have to precisely line up jumps, a common complaint in this sort of game.

The controls are also simplified. To make Faith use her agility requires only two buttons, one to go up and one to go down. Up makes her climb fences, jump over low obstacles, pull herself onto ledges and so on. Down makes her slide under low obstacles as well as land in a roll at the end of a jump.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, they don’t make you hunt for where to go next. The game is based on running, evading enemies and navigating obstacles, not searching for the best route. To that end the next step turns red as you approach. (For example, this crane.) Their explanation for this is that Faith can see the best way to go based on her natural talent and experience, but really it’s a built-in pathfinding system. Whether or not it simplifies it too much or pulls you out of the action remains to be seen, but it removes the most obvious source of frustration in a game like this, namely being shot because you couldn’t find how to advance.

All in all it looks like it could be an interesting new idea and it’s good to see a big company like EA greenlighting a potentially innovative gameplay concept. At the same time there’s a reason innovation fell out of favor, it may not work, but so far it does look promising. We’ll find out when it’s released later this year.

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All the screen shots are right here in convenient Flickr slideshow form.

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