By Jim Rossignol on August 3rd, 2008 at 11:01 am.
Via the unsleeping Videogaming247, I bring you a Spanish language presentation of Mirror’s Edge. There’s a lot of footage we’ve seen before, but plenty we haven’t. There’s an extended gunfight sequence, and some running around inside (sigh) gloomy industrial tunnels.
CP 2008 Presentación Mirror’s Edge from Potencia2TV on Vimeo.
Anything gloomy and industrial is a win.
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DO WANT.
Seriously though.. even though there are gloomy industrial corridors, there’s a sense of ‘being’ here that I’ve not seen done in a first person game before; she actually grabs in game stuff and uses it to move around, she grabs the weapons out of npcs hands, not just picking it up off the floor. Just for that aspect, I want this game. But all the rest looks just shiney.
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Mirror’s Edge – A network of rooftops and aerial skyways.
My enthusiasm actually went down. I guess it’s harder to disguise jumping puzzles as free-running when indoors.
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The whole “Linear gives us focus” thing they’ve been talking about recently… I’m not convinced as a result of seeing this.
A major part of parkour is choosing your own route, and working out creative ways to get places – making your route your own. Like Jon Blow’s been saying a lot recently, it’s disingenuous – the metaphor doesn’t match the mechanic.
This looks a lot like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, in that you’re just picking up a prescribed path. You’re given a fantastic move set, but you’re hampered because you can only use the moves when they’re prescribed – not that far away from Dragon’s Lair, is it?
I just hope that it was a particularly linear level, and that some others open up, even just a tiny bit.
Still want it. Passion somewhat dampened. Great job on the first person animation though. They’ve thought of practically everything.
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for those of you in a hurry, or those of you who can speak spanish the gameplay starts at 8 mins 50 sec
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The game will have health regeneration, then. :(
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I personally don’t have a problem with that.
Looking for health packs sort of takes away from the focus of many games, for me.
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I love the applause every time he dies, although it did show off how good the checkpointing system is.
This game is looking fantastic, I can’t wait to play it. Just to feel that physically *real* in the world, it’s going to be a landmark game.
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Re: Health packs, I recently went back and played Medal of Honour: Allied Assault – I was visiting my parents and it was laying around – my god it felt old fashioned, its amazing how quickly you adopt the new mechanics and forget why the old ones ever made sense.
The whole picking up health packs, in the midst of a WW2 raid on a Nazi base just felt ridiculous.
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Reminds me of Portal, where you go from the perfect shiny white world portrayed to you by Glados, to the dark gritty industrialised areas “behind the curtain”. Perhaps this is the effect they were going for in Mirrors Edge when you move from seemingly flawless environments into more backwater areas?
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Wow, the gunplay looks shite, although i’m sure that’s the point. punching that police fella in the face looked mighty satisfying though.
Have to say, i’m excited.
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While I was very interested in this game at first, I now feel I’ve already seen enough of it.
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The health generation is a great thing. I’m impressed how they did it. Apparently your sight goes dim and blurry when you’re hit. No watching of stupid health bars tucked into an obscure corner of the screen. Aside: you’re not supposed to be hit in the first place.
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Think it looks quite good. Reminds me of Metropollis, or a hundred other sci fi flicks, where the utopian city surface is contrasted with the gloomy underworld to expose it for what it really is. (As long as theres not too much dark and gloomy).
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The more I see of this, the less excited I get. There better be some stunning set pieces up their sleeves or it looks set to be decidedly average.
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Aparently you can complete the game without ever firing a gun. Which I find very refreshing.
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Aubrey: The guys at 1Up played Mirror’s Edge at E3. Not only can your turn off the “Runner Vision” effect, but there’s also multiple routes through levels depending on your skill level. Alternate routes will require a greater skill level than standard routes, but even those standard routes are far from easy.
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Also, is that a crosshair is see? :(
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Apparently the only reason the crosshair is there is to prevent people from getting motion sickness, without it there’s no fixed point to focus on to alleviate the sensation of movement. From what I’ve heard that too can be removed; at your own risk I guess. ;)
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Hmm, following the trail of luridly coloured breadcrumbs left by the level designer is hardly freerunning. The original Tomb Raider was the closest I’ve come to playing this kind of acrobatic game and it was occasionally frustrating when it looked like you should be able to do some climb, leap, swing and grab combo to get somewhere and couldn’t. Some clues as to whether I was trying something possible but not doing it right would have been welcome there, but I’d prefer no clues at all to having it all spelled out for me. And what’s the point of having a nice big sandbox then stopping you playing in every corner of it?
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The marked trail is one (two) of the available routes, and the colouring is optional.
They were pretty explicit it’s not a sandbox game.
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The combat controls (is that on xbox in the presentation) and the ragdolls during the shotgun fight are kinda clunky. Hoping on the PC is more fluid using the mouse and keyboard.
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I hope the game isn’t all about hopping and capering around, that there’s some reasoning to do. I don’t like games that just rely on coolness.
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I kinda skimmed through the video, so as not to spoil things too much for myself when I most definitely buy this game.
I’ve got my expectation-o-meter™ firmly dialled-in to the “realistic” setting so as not to get overly hyped, but I’ve got a strong feeling that this will be the highlight of this gaming year for me. There’s just something about Mirror’s Edge’s atmosphere that’s clicked with me, catching my attention in a way that I haven’t really experienced since I first clapped eyes on Half-Life 2 footage back in 2003…
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I’d rather it leaned towards linearity personally. I would prefer it if I can peg it through a level at speed, working on instinct and/or markers instead of stopping to survey my options on every rooftop.
Of course, if there’s a choice of routes and an option to remove route-markers, that’s ideal for everyone.
I’ve always hated platforming in FPS games, but it looked very good here. The sense of motion and physicallity looked excellent.
The level shown was a little disappointing though. I’m sick to death of playing games in the dark, especially amongst industrial metal piping. And the combat looked a bit nob. Did she miss or will it really take 3 shotgun blasts to take someone down?
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To be honest this video did a good job of driving me away from the game than drawing me in. The whole underground sequence got boring extremely fast and I ended up fast-forwarding through most of the video. It seems like all the gameplay consists of is climbing/jumping/sliding over/through/under obstacles and some akward melee fighting and shit shooting. I’m also inclined to believe the parkour aspect is going to be piss easy, something like Assassins Creed where all you do is pretty much hold the “climb button” while running forward. If there’s a demo, I’ll try it, but as of now I’m going to stop actively following this game.
Does look purdy though.
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Ditto: my excitement is way down. It looks like a bunch of tedious jumping (and wall-jumping and wall-running, but those are hardly new either). I’d have liked it better if they weren’t showing it off with such a poor player, maybe.
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Heh, this video sold me on the game, so much so that I stopped at ~23 minutes because I didn’t want to spoil anything else. One person’s “tedious jumping” is another person’s awesome platforming, I guess. And Horrorshow, if it was like Assassin’s Creed wher eyou just hold the magic button, then the guy wouldn’t have missed all those jumps.
And about 20 minutes into the video he turns off the magic red-o-vision, for anyone who’s interested. I’ll be doing that immediately :D
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I can’t believe people are slagging this off. At least it is trying something new and different and I think that in itself lifts it above average. Average is homoerotic marines fighting aliens. I’m not convinved this is going to be brilliant but I am excited that finnally people are making some interesting games. I had become so bored of games recently, everything seems to be becoming so generic!
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For those who don’t understand spanish:
The presenter said that the crosshair (a dot, it seems) is there to have a point to focus on to avoid motion sickness, and it can be disabled. It also turns blue to indicate when your reaction time regenerates. Other than that, there’s no HUD.
Also, it’s not going to be on autopilot like Assasin’s Creed. The guy explicitly said that all moves are timing-based, like the roll to recover from a long fall. In fact he states that he doesn’t talk much during the second part of the demo so he can concentrate on the game. That’s why it requires more skill to go through the “red” routes.
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Great video! Can’t wait for this game.
At 20:00 he disables just that.
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nice environmental design, great lighting (lightmaps eh?)
But it looks quite awkward to play. Im still no convinced that jumping puzzles work from first person view
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This isn’t the first game to try first person platforming – Dark Messiah also gave it a go, albeit on a much less ambitious scale. However, even that was pretty cool and immediately made all other FPS games seem practically arthritic.
My main worry here is that it’ll make other FPS games feel retro-actively clunky; a bit like HL2 did with it’s physics, whereby subsequently any game without wobbly barrels just felt…wrong.
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“Aubrey: The guys at 1Up played Mirror’s Edge at E3. Not only can your turn off the “Runner Vision” effect, but there’s also multiple routes through levels depending on your skill level. Alternate routes will require a greater skill level than standard routes, but even those standard routes are far from easy.”
Thank god for all that – especially toggleable runner vision – I know a lot of GTA4 players swear by turn GPS off so that they find their own way around.
Thanks for the info. The level they demo’d seemed really rather linear is all… but I guess that’s because they were only showing one playthrough. Ah the perils of non interactive demonstrations!
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The thing that ruins the sense of realism for me is that the character seems to have a neck brace. Metroid Prime is about the only first person game that does turning right, first turning your head and then turning your shoulders. Right now the view is far too rigid. If you were really climbing you’d keep looking at your handholds and would flinch and shake alot more if you were panting and exerting yourself that much.
Also the guards still look really rubbish. As a citizen I’d be more afraid of societal collapse through sheer ineptitude than any kind of tyrannical authoritarian state.
Please prove me wrong Dice.
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“nice environmental design, great lighting (lightmaps eh?)
But it looks quite awkward to play. Im still no convinced that jumping puzzles work from first person view”
No offense, but I doubt that any game will be able to change your mind if that’s how you already feel. I think it’s a very personal thing – some people love Defrag for Quake 3 (myself included) or Rocket Olympics for Quake 2. Those are basically first person platformers. Some people just can’t take them, though.
Then again, there’s a lot of things you can do to fuck up FPP royally, especially with level design – like having hovering platforms which in no way intersect with any other geometry, thus giving no relativism to help gage distances.
I don’t see much evidence of this game doing it wrong, so… hey, maybe it’ll convince you?
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“The thing that ruins the sense of realism for me is that the character seems to have a neck brace. Metroid Prime is about the only first person game that does turning right, first turning your head and then turning your shoulders. Right now the view is far too rigid. If you were really climbing you’d keep looking at your handholds and would flinch and shake alot more if you were panting and exerting yourself that much.”
Makes for pretty nasty, loosey goosey controls if we’re talking mouse/right stick for turning. You get disconnected from what you’re doing when there’s too many automated view kicks. Ends up feeling pretty horrible/sea sickening.
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I dont get it, Vimeo has stated that game related videos will be subject to deletion, because videogame activities are not creative enough for the snobist Vimeo staff… so they didnt got the memo, or something changed in the middle?
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“I dont get it, Vimeo has stated that game related videos will be subject to deletion, because videogame activities are not creative enough for the snobist Vimeo staff… so they didnt get the memo, or something changed in the middle?”
There’s some leaway. If you’re a developer, you can post videos of your own games, since you’re being creative. It’s playthroughs and l33t skills compos they seem to want to stamp out the most.
That begs the argument “isn’t a playthrough a creative thing, too?” but eh. That might be pushing your luck too far with the vimeo staff.
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Reply to Aubrey
Yes but I find being shot and being unable to work out which direction you were shot from much more annoying. Why can’t we just use an action button to glance in important directions like when you’ve been shot or looking at your hands to make sure you aren’t slipping. I haven’t played a single shooter where I haven’t resorted to spinning on the spot and cussing because of cocking unseen shooty bastards.
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@Aubrey in the first 100 (of about 1000) comments on the blog they clearly state that neither developers are categorized as creative enough, hence dev videos are the same for them.
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The fighting in this game could go either way. Enemy AI doesn’t seem to be anything more than “stand and shoot” and, while this does make it easier on the player, it makes the “blues” seem stiff and lifeless.
When Faith goes against 4 enemies at once (aboveground, not the snipers) and takes a shotgun blast to the face in the video and the only effect is a short moment of blurriness, that broke the illusion for me. It should have killed faith. If you run up try to melee a tight group of armed police, you should be killed outright pretty quickly. Since Faith won’t have any means of inducing groups to split up in order to pick them off one by one, they should just reduce the number of enemies she faces at a time (unless they’re spread out, like the snipers).
It would make more sense if Faith faced one or two smarter enemies rather than 4 stand-and-fire enemies in a given fight (Yes, it seems like she goes against ones and twos early on, but they’re still dumb and stiff). Not every game hero has to be a mighty warrior and Faith’s character isn’t meant to be anything like that, so taking on 4 enemies with shotguns should be out of her league. Picking up a weapon off of the first defeated enemy to kill the rest makes sense, but when they’re all right next to each other, even that is impossible.
tl;dr Faith isn’t a tank; spread ‘em out!
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Aubrey : Ill make my mind only when I try this game myself :) Maybe it will play as good as it looks!
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“Yes but I find being shot and being unable to work out which direction you were shot from much more annoying. Why can’t we just use an action button to glance in important directions like when you’ve been shot”
Surely this is what surround sound (or even just stereo) is for? A game with a decent sound system should provide more than enough information for knowing where a shot has come from. Add on additional clues like highlights around the edge of the frame pointing towards the general direction of the shot and it should be enough for players to work out using the information provided – which I’d personally say is a more immersive route than a handy ‘auto aim’ button.
Having said that, I have noticed that some people playing games don’t seem to use the surround sound information at all. They don’t seem to process the data in such a way as to point them in the right direction. I wonder if different people interpret sounds differently? A bit like some people get motion sickness in FPS games really easily, while others don’t?
Neck movement is trickier…while standing still you have full neck movement in Riddick and Dark Messiah, but pressing forwards always results in the character moving in the direction of the camera. There’s no looking around while moving, in other words, without using strafing etc. I’m not sure how else you could do it while still using the keyboard/mouse combo. Maybe a new control system altogether is needed.
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I think most people don’t have surround sound systems in place (I don’t, for one). So it’s something a designer can’t put too much gameplay emphasis on, it can only really be an add on, at the moment.
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Campus Party sucks
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Lemme get this straight. People actually said that they are trying to innovate? And jumping from platform to platform is innovation?
Are….you…. FRICKING kidding me?!?
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It’s a bright, colorful first-person game that focuses on running and jumping rather than gunplay. If it’s not innovating, it’s at least doing something different.
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(why, when they send people to do these things, do they never send anyone who knows how to turn auto focus and auto exposure off?)
This looks great all you whingeing bitches. Looks even better when you see somebody play it rather than a demo where everything is done perfectly. You get to see more of how interactive the game is; can I try to run up any wall, grab on any ledge? Yes. That’s cool. This could be like Portal; gradually introduce new way of thinking about space and movement that people are gonna love playing with and miss in other games.
Yeah Prince of Persia etc. Doing it well in first person and making it feel fairly natural is new and completely different, and very difficult I’d imagine. We’ll see how it goes I guess.
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My only complaints are related to the turning speed and the rather clunky and static combat posture due to the use of a gamepad. This will feel so much better with a mouse and keyboard.
/very optimistic
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That level reminds me of the silo/train sections of Half Life (you know, the boring parts that seem to stretch on forever). The level they showed seemed ok enough, but if that’s the bulk of the gameplay (instead of rooftop running) count me out.
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Somebody recreated the Mirror’s Edge demo level with Portal.
http://kotaku.com/5032592/mirrors-edge-vs-portal
God, I love video games.
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Agreed.
The police are kinda dumb and stiff – where’s the AI?
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I’m not exactly inspired by this video – it is looking far too much like Bioshock on a roof. I guess the exploratory aspect is barely visible in the video but the big red GO THIS WAY colouring reminds me of how Oblivion was ruined by the same sort of crap. Give the player a reason to explore!
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