The footage looks amazing. It should be an amazing game, gameplay-wise.

My interest in the setting is quickly waning, however. Small instances of the game’s writing (by Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of Terry), like the trailer and the “preview comic”, seem to revert back to the Standard Action Movie Dialogue crap we are overly familiar with and which sucks the atmosphere out of any game, as far as I’m concerned.

I have to say, I find the idea interesting.

The implementation will be difficult, I’ll guess, simply because of the difficulty curve – if it’s too easy to make the right jump at the right time, based on the information at hand (i.e. the viewpoint of the player) then it becomes a bit too much like quicktime events – press jump now to not be caught and die. If it’s too difficult, then it becomes infuriating, because you don’t have enough information.

My example from the trailer would be at 1:08. Will the player be able to control the angle of descent there, aiming specifically for the pipe on the side of the building, or will it be locked from the point of the diving board, necessitating a load/reload or restart, making it potentially very DIAS? Or will it be that so long as you jump from the diving board, you’ll land that pipe?

In a way, it’s two extremes, but I do hope this one comes out well. In being a first-person puzzle game, it’s a bit Portal-y, which is never a bad thing.

How about Mirror’s Edge IN Portal?

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/248962.html

Yeah… It’s not that great, but it made me smile a bit.

Amusingly, my personal Great American Novel (doesn’t everyone have one of those nowadays?) was a story focusing on a courier in a dystopian society, transporting illicit or private messages. Now that there’s both Johnny Mnemonic (the movie version, really) and this game, I think I need to start suing people.

Either that, or give up on the GAN (not that I’ve touched it since I was 24, but, you know, it could still happen….)

Also, having the word “dystopian” in the description really means I’ll get it no matter what.

Also, to tie back to earlier discussions – Faith seems like a pretty good example of an attractive non-barbie badass video game heroine.

This game just pegs out my “unbelievability” meter, on a lot of levels.

There’s the world: We’re supposed to believe this is a realism / alternate realtiy style setting, but we’re jumping 100 feet from one skyscraper down to another and shrug it off with a roll. We can jump off a building and hang onto a wobbling helicopter with one arm. And we’re a supermodel looking female character to boot.

Then the gameplay promises: Multiple pathways through the world offering free roaming, etc. etc. Meanwhile we’ve got red light-up-vision that shows us where the paths are. I have trouble believing this is going to be anything other than running-on-rails. As for “never firing a shot”? Well, there are plenty of games that can be played without direct violence (Fallout?) but I’ll believe it when I see it. From what I’ve heard it’s not so much a goal of the game as a challenge mode for masochists.

i didnt like the fact that you are guided the whole game by those red lights, i guess they wont make several paths across each building

@cineris: “There’s the world: We’re supposed to believe this is a realism / alternate realtiy style setting, but we’re jumping 100 feet from one skyscraper down to another and shrug it off with a roll. ”

I didn’t see anything nearly that big. Also, have you watched some of the parkour videos on line? They go 5 stories and come up in a roll, and keep going.

Plus, I suspect she’s at least somewhat cybernetically enhanced. Very possibly the reason she sees those red lines too. Which I’m also betting you can turn off. But they’re a great stylistic device, and didn’t ever seem to be the only way – just one way. Occasionally the dev ignored them completely.

“We can jump off a building and hang onto a wobbling helicopter with one arm.”

Far from the craziest thing I’ve seen in a game, really. If it were “Mirror’s Edge: The Running Across Rooftops Simulator” I might worry. But it’s an action game.

“And we’re a supermodel looking female character to boot.”

See, I thought she was a pretty good example of a non-standard female character. Compare her to Lara Croft, who is probably the closest analogue. Angelina Jolie certainly wouldn’t play Faith in the movie – maybe Lucy Liu.

I think we’re seeing a cosmic balance here – Shamus came out in super-non spicy mode, and the comments are now slamming the game. Is Mirror’s Edge the anti-Witcher? ;)

EA is also releasing Dead Space this Halloween.

I think they want to actually be a good company for a change.

This looks really cool. It reminds me of “Assassin’s Creed” and that was pretty easy to learn. I loved getting chased around the rooftops and I always had that Benny Hill chase song running through my head.

Faith reminded me more of Jade from Beyond Good and Evil, if you need to find another character for comparison.

That, by the way, was a fantastic game.

Maybe with Track IR support….

@Derek K: I didn’t realize having skepticism about some of the hype surrounding the game constituted slamming a game?

I mean, I’m sure eventually there will be a first person platformer that really fulfills all the promises that have been made over the years. I think it’s inevitable. Will it be Mirror’s Edge? Maybe it will be. But since there have been a lot of games that have tried and failed, I’m pretty skeptical.

New? Innovative? What the heck are you guys talking about? It’s a platformer ala: Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, Prince of Persia, Crash Bandicoot, Mario. There is absolutely nothing new or one-of-a-kind about it; other than that the heroine doesn’t look like she works in a strip club. Plus, it’s made by EA which means the PC version will be loaded to the hilt with DRM crap. So what is so special about it?

Disclaimer: I only read the articles on it and looked at a few screen shots, those videos are too big for my 56k.

Edited for typosees.@_@

@Cineris: Not just you, the general tone of the first set of comments.

Slammed may be a bit rough – Pooh-Pooh’ed? ;)

Shamus is down on The Witcher, the comments are up. Shamus is up on Mirror’s Edge, the comments are down. Sorta karmic.

The tone is mirrored too – Shamus was down on the reality of The Witcher, a lot of people were up on the future of it (what he hadn’t played, missed, etc).

Shamus is up on the future of Mirror’s Edge, people on down on the reality of it.

Cycles and waves and gluons, man. It’s all connected.

Or it’s matter and anti-matter, and we’ll all explode soon.

@Drew: I think Jade is a good comparison. I was using Lara Croft as the Mirror to Faith. Both are action run and jump heroines. Jade kinda was, but she’s not in the same frenetic sort of context.

Ah. The last time i saw this game, it wasn’t nearly this finished… But already then they had the “red path”. And for those who have played Prince of Persia, know how boring it is to suddenly be stuck somewhere (even for a short time) just because you have no idea where to climb from here…

Anyway, it is also a simulation for how a real (and well-trained) super-parkour person would see the world. Not actually “red”, not a color at all, but a object standing out because she is (unlike the player) trained to watch for these objects.

It is a kind of way of being immersed in the game, which it does by keeping the flow.

I’ve seen the trailers a few times now and I have to say that this is the first FPS since the original Thief that has got my interest. Yes, I like the idea that you avoid fighting. Also this is the first game that really makes me concider to buy a console. Not that I’m not going to buy a console, I feel same as Shamus does about PC gaming, but the game that might drive the decision between the two options. In which ever platform this looks better…

From the wiki page:

It is a highlighting system that emphasises environmental pieces useful for progression—like pipes, ramps, and enterable doors—with the colour red as Faith approaches, though it does not always indicate the best route.[13] Further along in the game, the number of these visual hints is reduced to only indicate the end goal, though the player can opt to turn off this hint system entirely.[12]

Sounds good!

As far as the jump timing goes, my guess is that jumps are – or at least can be – performed automatically when you reach the edge of a platform while running. That, or there’s some kind of indicator to help your timing that we didn’t see.

Slow mo mode helps you (this is not a power your character has), basically on difficult jumps the game slows down so you can get your timing down better.

Platforming in first person games is the bane of everyone who plays them, its been done, nobody likes it, a well executed first person platformer on the other hand would be innovative.

Also this game is described as parkour makes a great deal of sense with the jumps, leaps, slides, and wall running, etc.

EA has been interesting recently, maybe they are starting to realize that they cant put out the same garbage as before? Alot of people seem to see “EA, this is going to be crap” nowadays. If they place a less invasive form of DRM (like just a CD Key, or less), I will be all over this game, as well as others such as Dead Space, Spore, Left 4 Dead, etc.

It was a shocking day when I looked at the list of games I was looking forward to this year and realized that only 2 of them (Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space) were original IPs. OK, maybe not that shocking.

Personally, I’d prefer 3rd person, though, especially with the heavy platforming elements. 3rd person better simulates the awareness you have of your body, even if you’re not looking at the limb in question.

Well, my point is, heroes in movies slide and leaps, runs on wall, and all that all the time, and no one seems to notice, but they do when it happens in a game.

I disagree on the movie/game split.

Maybe the big difference is in the fluidity, efficiency, and spacial awareness. Take, for instance, the opening chase scene in Casino Royale. Both Bond and his target did some sliding, climbing, leaping, and jumping. While Bond sort of bumbled through it, the other guy actually used parkour.

It’s the difference between 2 guys punching & kicking each other and 2 guys using Kung Fu.

In response to the free-running/parkour terminology:

Technically, I think that parkour is restricted to movements that help you get somewhere: wall running, jump & rolls, pipe climbing, etc.
Free-running adds in things that are done for style that don’t increase the speed & efficiency of travel: flips…yeah, that’s the only example I can think of that usually gets lumped in with parkour.

I was curious a few months back and looked into parkour. When confronted with a problem, your choices are Fight, Flee, or Diplomacy. Martial Arts hone your Fight, Parkour hones your Flee, and Trolling hones your Diplomacy.

I think.

(Edit: that wasn’t a dig on anyone trolling. Just a lame joke.)

To echo everyone else who recoiled at the EA logo; as soon as I saw it I thought to myself, “Whelp, there’s one game I won’t play.”

Yeah, when I saw the EA logo I thought ‘probably won’t touch it’. And then I saw the DICE logo and thought ‘hey, they made the Battlefield series, and those were good even WITH EA on board’. And THEN I noticed that the character has an actual BODY and the view moves as if the character had real eyes, and I thought ‘well, maybe for the console’…

I’m an indecisive one at times.

On that note, how much was there to do in Portal? Or in many FPS games for that matter, im sure theres plenty of extras, as far as I can tell this is only the first level of the game or some such.

I keep my hopes high as this game seems different from what I usually play, or played, I dont buy many games anymore.

@Illiterate:

Perhaps it’s just the youtube encoding, but I found myself feeling a bit motion sick watching that.

From what I’ve seen, it simulates head bobbing more realistically than a lot of other games do so that might be causing you some grief.

I’m sure they’d have an option to turn that off. Most games do.