Mirror's Edge

[Arrqh]

Parkour-inspired game with an emphasis on running over combat and a simple, context-sensitive interaction system? Yes please.

Trailer in HD or SD

You'll notice the colors in the trailer... red indicates something you can climb on, yellow indicates something you can run on. The controls are simple, aside from running around you've only got two buttons: an "up" one and a "down" one, sort of similar to what they did in Assassin's Creed. There is combat and guns, but they're only secondary... according to the devs in most situations you're better off keeping your momentum up instead of stopping to fight. And it's also great to see a dystopian setting that's scrubbed clean instead of grungy and run down.

More screencaps

 

[dragunzng]

Yup, Mirror's Edge is another example of an interesting new IP coming from EA. I'm still constantly surprised that DICE is working on this, it's good to see they're looking beyond Battlefield though.

EDIT: For some reason it really looks like a SCEE game, I guess that makes sense since DICE is a Swedish developer.

 

[JoeZhang]

I'll need to be more of it - it looks to be "on rails" from the rather smooth way that character was moving and might get awfully samey awfully quick.

 

[dark angel_707]

I'll need to be more of it - it looks to be "on rails" from the rather smooth way that character was moving and might get awfully samey awfully quick.

it does look like its on rails (i hope not) it seems you press a button when you get close to a red object ingame (pipe, grapple line)

One game to keep an eye on

 

[Arrqh]

I'll need to be more of it - it looks to be "on rails" from the rather smooth way that character was moving and might get awfully samey awfully quick.

it does look like its on rails (i hope not) it seems you press a button when you get close to a red object ingame (pipe, grapple line)

One game to keep an eye on

Doesn't look like rails to me... you can see lots of red and yellow bits off the path the player takes in the video.

 

[Daedalus12]

What this game need is a skateboard to make it more extreme. Imagine that you have make a 100 feet jump from one building to another.

 

[firehawk12]

I just wonder if it'll work in first person... just seems like third person would be the best view for what essentially is platformer game design.

 

[BigFoot]

I will be definitely be keeping an eye on this. Hopefully it won't disappoint.

 

[dragunzng]

I just wonder if it'll work in first person... just seems like third person would be the best view for what essentially is platformer game design.

Third person would have been the easy choice, but I'm willing to see them try and work with a first person viewpoint. It's a change for the genre that much is certain.

 

[Brandonv]

I just watched the trailer. I think it looks like it could be a very fun game.

 

[firehawk12]

I just wonder if it'll work in first person... just seems like third person would be the best view for what essentially is platformer game design.

Third person would have been the easy choice, but I'm willing to see them try and work with a first person viewpoint. It's a change for the genre that much is certain.

My thing is that Free-running is all about environmental awareness... looking for safe places to land and for ledges to grab and what not. In "real life" human beings have peripheral vision which, quite expectedly, allow you to see more than you would in first person in a game.
I'll be curious to see if it works though... I'll say one thing, BF2 sort of gave them an idea of how to use verticality in a video game.

 

[Daedalus12]

I just wonder if it'll work in first person... just seems like third person would be the best view for what essentially is platformer game design.

Third person would have been the easy choice, but I'm willing to see them try and work with a first person viewpoint. It's a change for the genre that much is certain.

My thing is that Free-running is all about environmental awareness... looking for safe places to land and for ledges to grab and what not. In "real life" human beings have peripheral vision which, quite expectedly, allow you to see more than you would in first person in a game.
I'll be curious to see if it works though... I'll say one thing, BF2 sort of gave them an idea of how to use verticality in a video game.

Allowing FOV change should do the trick.

 

[Arrqh]

Allowing FOV change should do the trick.

Yup. Much as Bioshock used a narrower then normal FOV to give a claustrophobic feel (to the great misunderstanding of all the people who complained about how it looked on widescreen displays) they can use a wider FOV here to give you more of the environment. If they really want to get fancy, they can play with their camera projection so that the wider FOV isn't uniform which would do a really good job of simulating peripheral vision.

 

[firehawk12]

Yeah, that's true. I know people change the FOV in games to get an advantage in multiplayer FPSes anyhow.
Still, I dunno... I just can't imagine being chased by lots of guys and you're trying your best to move your mouse/right thumbstick around to try to find the next place to jump to. I already find first person games with jumping puzzles highly frustrating (even Portal, in some aspects... thank god for the Portal gun), but doing that under pressure? Ick.
I hope DICE can make it work though.

 

[Arrqh]

I'm assuming they're going to do something similar to Portal as well... there's an option in Portal that's on by default where portals will "suck" you in to assist with jumping. They just have to do the same thing with ledges and stuff here.

 

[firehawk12]

In which case... why not just make it third person and save everyone some time?

 

[Arrqh]

In which case... why not just make it third person and save everyone some time?

Because you make a game 3rd person if you want it to be cinematic and you make a game 1st person if you want it to be immersive. And clearly DICE is going for immersion.

 

[firehawk12]

Maybe. I just don't find first person platformers any fun, because for me they're not immersive. If the game really is as open as they claim it is, they will have to have good art design and solve the view problem. Hell, turning your head to look behind you for a jump on a controller would probably be a pain. Again, we'll see.

With BF2, pretty much every rooftop was accessible with the grapple rope and the zipline, and that worked because you had the time to set up.