Mirror's Edge Sequel On Hold 109
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."
Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Never heard of Mirror's Edge. What makes it so special that you say, "We've seen the single player campaign fps thing a billion times, it really needs to go big!"
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
*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 [brinkthegame.com] to look forward too, but it's very much a shooter, with a bit of Parkour tagged on.
Re:Bullshit (yes the game is bullshit) (Score:1)
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What specifically about the controls were horrible? I can think of stuff that perhaps could have been improved, like the wall running, but I wouldn't have called it "horrible". I tried Prince of Persia recently, and it was certainly better than that.
I don't know how anyone can enjoy any of Blizzard's games, but that doesn't mean anything - a large number of people still continue to enjoy them.
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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
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It's controls where also horrible and the game atleast the demo was very unplayable
It sounds like you mean that you hadn't played a hundred clones of the game before and thus didn't know how to play the game before you picked it up. Maybe you thought that since it was first person perspective, it should play like every other FPS out there. That's not possible since the game was about navigating obstacles, unlike almost any other game. Once you got used to them, the controls worked great.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
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Mirror's edge 1 was nothing revolutionary it was FPS with platforming mechanics... I quite dislike how FPS style has come to take over the industry.
Shame (Score:5, Informative)
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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
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Lot of player deaths? Maybe if you try to go through without shooting anyone to get the achievement. There weren't that many player deaths IMO, and dying is no huge problem in Mirror's Edge (the only place I always died is when you have to jump to that floor where the sniper rifle is, and then shoot out the tire on the police truck. How the hell do you get down there without dying? As soon as you step out of the vent you're standing on cardboard roof tiles!)
Now DMC4 on the other hand, that game is fucking h
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hah, you jump on the ledge and down. sad story, dying was faster way to climb down;) in speed run dying was a must
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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
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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.
Thats exactly the problem I had with the game, where dying becomes part of the game mechanic, then instantly re-spawning and doing it again properly. That to me screams failed map design. The game itself was very enjoyable and I didn't have any problem with the shooting that everyone else seems to have, it's just that it could have been so much more.
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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...
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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...
In most FPS games they have a bit about 2 thirds of the way through where the formula dictates they change the pace of the game before building up to the big finale. In many of these games they decide 'I know a really annoying jumping on moving platforms bit where the player falls down again and again before finally getting past would flesh this out'. In Mirrors Edge it had entire maps following this annoying jumping bit formula only when you fall down you die and respawn instead of having to climb back u
This is why corporations are bad (Score:5, Insightful)
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ME2 was an awesome product, but I fail to see what that has to do with TFA.
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For the parent, ME2 : Mass Effect 2
For the parent's parent ME2 : Mirror's Edge 2
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me too.
after finally seeing mass effect in action. i was kinda disappointed i actually wasted my time reading praises
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Because they do not judge the value of something based on quality, but exclusively on money. This way many good products get ditched...
May also have something to do with the fact that you cannot sample the quality properly without paying up first for the full crap?
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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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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This. Mod this up please.
Ubisoft gave AC a second chance and it paid off tremendously. Mirror's Edge is definitely worthy of another shot, too.
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not true. i have to admit that during first gameplay i thought somewhat like you.
then i tried speed run and since level time limit was 6 min while i still didn't finished it in 99:59:99 i figured i have to do something wrong. 5 days later i finished all speed runs in time limit and boy... i can tell you completely different game. purest high speed action i ever played.
biggest problem this game had was bad presentation how and where you should run. red vision marked probably THE most boring and unintuitive w
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Well, duh. That's the whole point of a business: to make money.
I suppose you think that without corporations we'd live in a fantasy land with unicorns and fairies where hundreds of people and millions of dollars can appear out of nowhere to start making quality video games.
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I suppose you think that without corporations we'd live in a fantasy land with unicorns and fairies where hundreds of people and millions of dollars can appear out of nowhere to start making quality video games.
I didn't see anything in his post suggesting that corporations are something we'd be better off without. He can't idly criticize something unless there's a viable alternative?
Good according to who? (Score:2)
Mirror's Edge was crap, which is why it sold poorly, which is why they didn't make much money.
To me your post just sounds like a generic anti-corporate rant, with no relevance to the actual issue at hand. Of COURSE corporations care about money, they have to or they'll go out of business. Making games is not free, it is actually quite expensive if you hadn't noticed. That means the games need to sell to make money back or they cannot afford to do it. They have to have the sales to pay all the programmers, a
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2.5mio is sold poor? well, it is not same as battlefield, but whole lot more than development costs. if they wouldn't like battlefield figures more, ME would surrely warrant a sequel
i kinda feel that most people liked that game (taking into account people that finished at least 1 speed run)... scores, videos on youtube (i doubt you will find game with more videos and more tributes), being constantly mentioned in gaming forums as their wish for sequel tells me game has avid fan base.
its only problem was it w
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May not be enough to cover costs. So assume that everyone bought the game at full price. They probably didn't all but just assume. The publisher sees maybe half of that. In the case of consoles it is less than half since they take about $10/copy sold. So $20ish per copy is what the publisher makes. Well that translates to around $50 million. Not bad, but it is easy for a game to cost that much. So if development was in the same area of cost then the game may well have been not very profitable, perhaps even
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me didn't cost that much. it just couldn't measure up to profits of BBC2.
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> 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
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"-The 1st person view of forcing you to jump or wall-jump makes the game more difficult then it needs to be. Seriously, who wants or needs a 1st person 360 camera spin squatting forward roll ??"
Are you saying you didn't like it how you saw exactly how you would see something when you jump and roll? I personally liked it but then again I much prefer 1st person camera over 3rd person any day for these kind of games (especially racing).
"- The escapism is just too blatant
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But was it really of great quality?
I played through it and personally I found the graphics a bit weak, the controls frustrating at times- especially when it came to wall running, and the story far from original.
I just really didn't find it a particularly fun game, and I'm one of those who bought it on release at full price. I completed it, but only because I don't like leaving things half-done. It was one of the first games in many years though where I kind of felt like I just didn't want to continue with i
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VHS vs Beta is a misnomer. Same with Gameboy vs Lynx. The problem is that you seem to think that everyone should buy everything purely on technical mojo and not actual, you know, content.
VHS won because it had longer recording times than Beta, 120 minutes to Beta's 60. The slight picture quality difference was MUCH less important [wikipedia.org] than being able to record more than an hour.
As for Gameboy vs Lynx, the whole problem is games. Just like it was with the Saturn, with the Dreamcast, with countless other failed te
Motion sickness (Score:2)
Mirror's Edge is one of the most tense and atmospheric games I've ever played, and it deserved to sell better than it did. Unfortunately it gave me extreme motion sickness. One time after playing it for just a couple of minutes I felt so nauseous that I had to go and lie down, and I slept for the rest of the day. It's such a shame because it was a brilliant game, but I could only play it for tiny amounts of time so I gave up by about halfway through the second level.
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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.
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Ya, it was almost as bad as that stupid "Mario" game... I just feel like I'm jumping on koopas down a hallway, you know?
Free roaming is nice, but 3d graphics don't necessitate non-linear gameplay. If you can concede being railroaded, as people are implicitly willing to do in scrolling games, you might find you enjoy the actual gameplay a lot more.
That said, Mirror's Edge just felt like a well done 3d Mario to me, and I agree it didn't deserve too terribly much praise.
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in any other game i HATE 1st person.
in ME just works, watch this and look how good it was done
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTrf5anN4k8&feature=related [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=iv&v=GdyOQSsw0f8&annotation_id=annotation_405148 [youtube.com]
parkour and 3rd person would be cheap prince of persia, nothing else
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Unfortunately it gave me extreme motion sickness.
This.
I played it just briefly... The demos looked fantastic, I couldn't wait to see what it was about. And after about 10 minutes I had to shut it off.
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There was a big noise when the game came out about how it screws up your proprioception, your internal sense of the positioning and orientation of the various parts of your body. You have a first-person view of a world where your avatar is doing all these rapid, acrobatic moves. But the difference between Mirror's Edge and other games is that you can see your avatar's body as she moves around. Your brain is immersed in this, and while one part of your brain accepts the body parts you see as your own body,
Enormous Potential (Score:2)
With one HUGE problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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If you felt that 99% of the time there was only one path, you didn't give the game a chance, or you didn't bother to try to look for a different direction. You failed, not the game design.
The only time the game felt like it was on rails like that were the many (not all) of the fight scenes. You weren't supposed to fight, they gave you the tools if something got between you and your target you had a chance to eliminate it, but at it's core it was a runners game and you were supposed to run, not fight. And
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The biggest problem was simply "first person + platforming". I have yet to see this work well. In fact, first person platforimg generally shows up on lists of "what not to do in video games". I'd love to see a 3rd person rework of it.
I tried the demo, but there was this part I had to run and jump at this thin vertical pipe way out from a roof edge. No matter how carefully I lined up and kept the analog stick straight, I would drift in midair after jumping and just miss it every time. The game offered no hel
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Your comment hits
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It really was a "one true path" game.
No, it wasnt. other than (you need to get from point A, to point B) and so the endpoints are fixed.
An amazing example of this, is if you try the online trials. Just the first main training course, even. there's an official "get gold" type of time, which is something like 1min20sec. And you think "wow, that's gonna be tough". Butyou remmeber the training, and maybe you manage to do it "just right", and get it. But then you check out the ONLINE scores... which come with **ghost replays**. and you see, "wow,
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No, it wasnt. other than (you need to get from point A, to point B) and so the endpoints are fixed.
Not really, it pretty much was a "one true path" game by design and while you could here and there add in a bit variation, that variation never was very large. What you do in time trial is very different, as there you have the time to do the exploration and try dozens of times, also you don't have enemies to worry about, on a single playthrough of the game you are never ever going to find many of those paths or even any add all. Adding a few hidden path just doesn't make it a non-linear game, more the oppos
Re:With one HUGE problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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> 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 n
Not surprised. (Score:2)
It wasn't ever meant to be a bl
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It wasn't ever meant to be a blockbuster which changed the way people think about shooters and gaming in general
I believe Mirror's Edge is a platform game. I would say it had puzzle elements too. While it was first person, I certainly wouldn't call it a shooter even if there was limited gun play in it.
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Not in the business of charity? (Score:1)
Looking at EA over the years, it seems they're not in the business of making games either. Rather, they believe their business is in making entertainment product labelled 'games'.
Let's not forget either that it was EA executives who tried to strongarm DICE into making Mirror's Edge a shooter, but DICE quietly refused to comply.
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Around the time Mirror's Edge came out, it actually looked like EA was starting to release some new and innovative games again, after years of sequels and sports games.
I liked Mirror's Edge, though the complaints here are all valid. I've have loved to see what they might have done with a sequel.
I don't know what the actual sales figures or reviews were like, but it seemed like a well received game. It's sad that games companies aren't willing to release a potentially good game because it's not going top the
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Not quite. They're in the business of selling multiplayer frameworks labeled "expansion pack fodder".
Very disappointing (Score:3)
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Only in the U.S. can you sell 2 million units of something and still be considered a failure. EA and Activision need to stop thinking like Hollywood if they are to survive another decade of this nihilistic dumbening of the industry. We (game developers) used to produce a much wider variety of games on comparatively microscopic budgets, and there was something for everyone. This is going way back, but I'm reminded of a few indie titles on the PS1 that I still replay from time to time, like Intelligent Qub
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Only in the U.S. can you sell 2 million units of something and still be considered a failure.
Success or failure is determined not by copies sold but by profit made.
Profit depends on your costs. If your game was made by a few guys in a single office over a few months then your costs could be pretty low. Mirror's Edge was made by a large team over several years.
Profit also depends on income. Mirror's Edge dropped in price quickly after release and you could pick up a copy for about £5 now. Additionally it has been on sale on Steam and at other online retailers several times. Copies sold at a di
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Profit also depends on income. Mirror's Edge dropped in price quickly after release and you could pick up a copy for about £5 now. Additionally it has been on sale on Steam and at other online retailers several times. Copies sold at a discount obviously provide less income.
While each copy sold at a discount provides less income, software has a very low cost of goods sold (especially with digital delivery) so it's possible (even likely) to make it up with volume.
From http://2dboy.com/2011/02/08/ipad-launch/ [2dboy.com] (emphasis mine):
It’s possible that $5 might have been a better price point to begin with. While $10 is less than most people pay for a movie ticket, or lunch, it’s still seen as a very high price for a game on the App Store and turns many people off. As you can see from the daily revenue chart below, World of Goo generates significantly more revenue at a $5 price point than it did at $10 (price was halved on January 14).
so... (Score:2)
Not enough forced on rails shooting (hell, one can finish the whole game without firing a shot), and limited multiplayer (and so less enforced sales as the match making servers will aggressively check serials and such) and i am not surprised the EA bigwigs dropped a sequel.
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Ok, how about a rephrase that to "not killing anyone"?
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And that is why it failed with the execs, as they do not get freedom...
Its kinda funny in a way, all the big entertainment sectors sell "rebellion" yet do not want their customers to rebel against them,
It seems Brink has already picked up the torch. (Score:2)
Shame, given a promising move from EA (Score:1)
While EA was continually (and rightly) blasted for putting profits before quality, Mirror's Edge represented them delivering on a surprising promise to invest in new IP, alongside Dead Space that year. Sadly they felt stung by the move with lower sales than anticipated despite a sizeable marketing push unusual for a new IP. Meanwhile Dead Space (great but less interesting to me) is becoming a new gaming heavyweight franchise.
I absolutely view Mirror's Edge as a success and think there's plenty of room for s
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We get more sequels because more people will buy them than new games, simple as that.
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MIRROR'S EDGE meets CALL OF DUTY (rifles only) (Score:1)
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I think the word you are looking for, instead of "stuff".. is "color" :-}
the colour pallet was almost greyscale.
Why? (Score:1)
Frankly, I rather liked it. (Score:1)
Then again, I guess I'm not a typical twitch fps gamer. Story is probably the most important element of a game for me, and I found the story rather appealing.
This is why I liked it.
* Story is the most important to me (which is why I liked Mass Effect *, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Halflife *, NOLF, Dreamfall)
* I'm a PC gamer. Maybe the console controls were problematic, but I didn't find the PC controls that hard.
* It wasn't about killing endless hordes of baddies
* The characters were appealing
* P
Rather disappointing. (Score:1)
Kinda disappoints me..I'm the kind of guy who never finishes games, but Mirror's Edge was one of those games that only come along once every 5 years or so, the kind that rips me in and won't let me go until I beat it. It was horribly difficult, I died practically every other minute, and I loved every second of it.
The fact that the team's being shuffled to an FPS just disappoints me even more. We need more innovative games like this, not more shooters. The military craze has led to essentially the same game.
loved it and hated it (Score:1)
I would have paid for a second ME.
I would have forgiven the bad dialogue, lame voice acting and completely unbelievable situations the protagonist found herself in ... I would have even overlooked the empty world she seemed to inhabit, devoid of pedestrians, cars (or anything really) If they could have just taken what they had and improved all of those things above just a little bit. I would have bought a second ME then.
ME was something of a racing and adventure game, I hated being chased and I hated the