More on DICE's parkour inspired Mirror's Edge

By Tom Bramwell Published 6 July, 2007

Rejecting FPS principles.

DICE hopes that Mirror's Edge will do "what Prince of Persia has done, but in first-person", according to producer Owen O'Brien, as more details of the next-generation action-adventure spill onto the Internet.

The game's female lead, Faith, will sprint, climb and, of course, leap around a utopian metropolis where she's among a small faction of people who've rejected the corrupt, authoritarian methods of those in power.

That's according to a preview in the latest issue of UK magazine EDGE, which also fills in other gameplay details.

A far more physical game than the average first-person shooter, Mirror's Edge aims to give you a better sense of being in a body, paying attention to things like acceleration and deceleration, the way your head moves as you walk or come to an abrupt stop, and of course as you climb and jump.

Many of Faith's moves have been inspired by parkour, and controls are being kept deliberately simple - with movement kept away from the face buttons in service to fluency - and a "Reaction Time" slow motion feature, as well as a system of timing button presses, that dictate your success on the run and in combat.

Despite DICE's background, Mirror's Edge doesn't care so much for the "shooter" bit of FPS, either, claiming to use guns as tools rather than the focus, bias combat odds in favour of your enemies, and enforce realistic restrictions that are seldom seen in games, like being unable to perform acrobatic moves while holding a heavy assault rifle.

The final game won't actually be free-form like Crackdown or GTA (it'll simply have big levels), but that's not putting us off. Multiplayer, built around chases, is planned, but with specifics still some way away.

According to DICE, Mirror's Edge is due for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, although a release date has yet to be confirmed. The full EDGE article also includes some concept art that illustrates the player's movement options (highlighted by splashes of primary colours in-game), so have a flick through for more.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (35) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • agparrot #1 5 years ago

    A far more physical game than the average first-person shooter, Mirror's Edge aims to give you a better sense of being in a body, paying attention to things like acceleration and deceleration, the way your head moves as you walk or come to an abrupt stop, and of course as you climb and jump.

    I suppose I understand the desire to use the first person view for a sense of immersion... but in Gaming terms, wouldn't it be

    - easier to see where your feet are for precision roof-hopping
    - prettier to be able to see the tumbling in the third person.

    A notice a lot of the time these loons go hoofing around rooftops, their moves require them to end in some sort of roll, and for style they sometimes bung in a somersault - are we going to be experiencing this from the first person, and won't it be a little disorienting?

    edit for italics
    Edited by 1 at 06/07/07 @ 13:39

  • Eighthours #2 5 years ago

    Let's hope the first person jumping is easier to get a bearing on than Turok! :)

  • Bezzy #3 5 years ago

    Wow you said parkour.

    Lots of games being inspired by that, lately, eh? Wondering if any of the devs actually do parkour themselves, though.

    (I do. I'm in fooking jump britain, falling off a horizontal bar, twice. Yeah. Look impressed!)

    I am interested in this game, though. There's so many other ways an FPS game can go than just shooting. It's about time they were explored.
    Edited by 1 at 06/07/07 @ 13:41

  • agparrot #4 5 years ago

    (I do. I'm in fooking jump britain, falling off a horizontal bar, twice. Yeah. Look impressed!)

    Ouch.

    Am impressed!

  • RedPanda #5 5 years ago

    Post deleted at 14:31:59 28-01-2012

  • WriterUK #6 5 years ago

    Crap name. Like the idea though. :)

  • Schiraman #7 5 years ago

    Cool idea, I like the concept of an FPS with a bit more acrobatic flair - I get so sick of not being able to get over chest-height walls...

    Shame they're not going for a free-roaming Crackdown/GTA-style game though, I'd love to play something like that in first-person.

  • Pike #8 5 years ago

    Has the potential to be a dissapointing mess, but it's nice to see developers trying to do something new in an established genre.

    And I really like DICE's other games, so I'll keep a close eye on this in the hope that they make it work as intended.

  • Hugundo #9 5 years ago

    slow motion feature

    Have they no mercy!

  • karstux #10 5 years ago

    Certain types of camera movement can induce motion sickness even in hardened fps gaming veterans. I experienced this myself when playing the BREED demo, which had a most distressing way of implementing head bobbing.

    This game here has the potential of sending many a gamer on a swift rush to the next toilet bowl...

  • agparrot #11 5 years ago

    This game here has the potential of sending many a gamer on a swift rush to the next toilet bowl...

    Maybe they'll release a special edition which comes with a bucket to cover this eventuality, and some elastoplast for added realism.

  • SBfistfun #12 5 years ago

    And perhaps a bug report form for us all to fill?

    Couldn't resist


    Actually make that about 100 bug report forms...

  • sickpuppysoftware #13 5 years ago

    I was going to say it sounds like motion sickness heaven.

    Fortunately I don't suffer from it.

  • hulahoops #14 5 years ago

    I'll bet a tenner they throw in the towel and make it 3rd person before they release it.

    I just can't see how this sort of thing could work in first person.

  • El_MUERkO #15 5 years ago

    "as well as a system of timing button presses, that dictate your success on the run and in combat."

    is every game released is going to end up being a very pretty QTE?

  • bioreit #16 5 years ago

    Sounds a wee bit like the Opera mod, but with less emphasis on the guns.

    Man that had so much potential...

  • spongebob #17 5 years ago

    Can't wait to get my hands on the next issue of EDGE :)

  • hamstand #18 5 years ago

    Interesting ideas... I was thinking recently that 99.999% of first-person games are "motion towards" games rather than "motion away from". I guess it makes for more (visually if nothing else) interesting games but the chase multi player in this could be really cool.

    maybe.

  • drunkymonkey #19 5 years ago

    There's a few very early screenshots in EDGE. Mostly of blank rooms (DICE said that they wanted to show the game at as basic level so you could appreciate the movement before all the usual cosmetic additions are added in). Mirror's Edge is also only a preliminary title, although I doubt they'll change it.

    All in all it looks very promising. And I dif the female protagonist. She doesn't have out-of-proportion breasts, and her physique should be nice to play with, for something different.

    Edited by 3 at 06/07/07 @ 16:43

  • agparrot #20 5 years ago

    She doesn't have out-of-proportion breasts, and her physique should be nice to play with

    I thought it was a game about looning around on rooftops?

  • drunkymonkey #21 5 years ago

    It is, but what DICE are getting at is that the physique of the character you play as means that physical combat is something you'll try to avoid. Even the pistol you have is largely useless. If you had a big burly man jumping around like this wouldn't seem realistic, and so if you have a athletic but not particularly muscled woman, performing moves you would expect from big burly men wouldn't seem realistic. It's a game more about running away than getting into fights.

    According to the preview, anyway.

  • DanWhitehead #22 5 years ago

    What was the name of that PS2 shooter where you could look down and see your body, extend your arms etc? It was by Capcom or Namco. And it was poo.

  • agparrot #23 5 years ago

    It's a game more about running away than getting into fights.

    According to the preview, anyway.

    So why put the weapons in? Casino Royale perhaps showed us that running around after people can be a right laugh from an entertainment point of view... in short bursts... but what are the gameplay mechanics going to be that mean that the game doesn't depend on weapons?

    Don't get me wrong - I'm as keen as anybody to see a different approach to games development - but other than that Thief running-on-rooftops level, and that bit in Beyond Good and Evil and some bits of various Tomb Raider games where timing-motion-flow-controls means you get past the aliens or spikes or lava pits or whatever - is it really enough to make a whole game?

    I hope so.
    Edited by 1 at 06/07/07 @ 19:40

  • Pulsar_t #24 5 years ago

    What was the name of that PS2 shooter where you could look down and see your body, extend your arms etc? It was by Capcom or Namco. And it was poo.

    Trespasser for the PC is the only FPS that I know of which attempted something new (i.e. separate control of arms, ability to view own body etc).

  • septimus #25 5 years ago

    It looks usable as a PC game thanks to the mouse able to quickly look around (you can see your own body which of course helps judgment). Console not so sure.

    I do free running also, but the only way they will pull this off convincingly is by making the screen somewhat fish-eyed. You need your full peripheral vision which currently is doesn't offer... though seems better than most FPS tunnel views.

  • YourMessageHere #26 5 years ago

    @ bioreit

    Yay, The Opera! That was cool; the only FPS to properly show rolls from the player's perspective, disorientating, yes, but such a sense of achievement when you manage to blow someone's face off while coming out of the roll. Wish they'd managed to remake it for HL2. As I read this I was thinking most of the HL mod The Specialists (been messing with new TS3.0 recently); that has several stunts done via combinations of traditional controls. The thing is, they're useless and hard to pull off. Then again, if you're not trying to line up shots at the same time, it's probably workable.

    Tribes had visible body and legs. F.E.A.R. did too. This doesn't necessarily help to judge things, as movement uses predetermined animations. This, therefore, is going to need amazing abilities to blend and adapt player animations to the environment in order to work through visual feedback.

    Why is there even a pistol in the game when it's virtually useless? Either give a thing a purpose or remove it.

    EDIT: "controls are being kept deliberately simple - with sensible FPS peripherals such as mice and keyboards kept away from developers in service to screwing up FPS games on PC in order to sell them to console owners too" - fixed.
    Edited by 1 at 07/07/07 @ 22:48

  • MrsPacMan #27 5 years ago

    @arbiter

    Can't u give it a chance.... what a fuckwit

    You seem the kind of twat that said 3D gaming wouldn't work. How old r u?

    Do you play all your games on a gameboy advance?

    Just realised... you a free runner.... hope u break your neck on the bandwagon!!!
    Edited by 3 at 08/07/07 @ 00:30

  • Bezzy #28 5 years ago

    "The thing is this: No controller or control system known to man can simulate the feeling of being in a body. And unfortunately in Le Parkour what your body does is critical. That physicality is what makes it REAL and exciting; take it away and you have basically an interactive movie. "

    Well, ofcourse. That's the art of adaptation. If you made a game which was exactly realistic, and exactly like parkour, and felt exactly like it, it'd BE parkour, and you'd STILL be sat at home, writing on forums instead of going out and actually doing it.

    When when you're talking about adaptation... you look at things like Quake 3's Defrag, and it totally captures the essence of freedom and improvisational movement which parkour has, if not the actual parkour style movements.

    No game is ever going to be a perfect simulation, but they can atleast try parkour for themselves, learn how it feels to do it, and then try to capture a similar feeling in the interactive mediums' own way.
    Edited by 1 at 08/07/07 @ 12:42

  • derm #29 5 years ago

    TRESPASSER for PC did this all "see your body" business years ago. BUT, for a game obsessed with realistic physics it always puzzled me that the woman's boobs never moved. Not a jiggle. Nary a quiver. Nothing... Americans, so family friendly. DICE, bigger boobs on your asian ladies character please, she looks like a ladyboy. Oh, and make them jiggle. With selectable jiggliness. Maybe a slider bar representing the character´s tensile bra strength? I can't think of a better use of physics ingame myself...

  • SimonM7 #30 5 years ago

    Yeah, parkour on a keyboard, that'll be about as subtle as playing guitar with boxing gloves on.

    I sure hope they're designing it for gamepads.

  • Derblington #31 5 years ago

    It may just work though... EDGE seems positive in their write up.

  • the_dudefather #32 5 years ago

    "TRESPASSER for PC did this all "see your body" business years ago. BUT, for a game obsessed with realistic physics it always puzzled me that the woman's boobs never moved. Not a jiggle. Nary a quiver. Nothing... Americans, so family friendly."

    the game was released in 1998 with a beefy physics engine (a bit ropey, but cool for its time)and far too many trees and shit to render (leading to pop up and flat rocks after a couple of meters) , and they were supposed to make low poly breasts jiggle?

    what does family friendliness have to do with it, given that in the game you stare at tits to check your health

  • TheUnionFrag #33 5 years ago

    I won't knock it until I've tried it. Sounds quite fresh. Authoritarian regime though? Will we body-pop or jump to victory?

  • CrawlingKingSnakes #34 5 years ago

    Looks very nice, I really like the style of the city.

    As to motion sickness, the only title that ever got to me was in AvP, playing as an alien.

  • hybridial #35 4 years ago

    Breakdown did all this and made it work.

    But I certainly don't object to it being done again, since Breakdown's awesomeness was pretty much ignored by all the Halo obsessive Xbox owners giving it no real success.