sNeaksieGarrett on 18/6/2015 at 05:16
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Taking guns out of Mirror's Edge is like getting rid of the sword in Thief because it was intentionally cumbersome. Which, uh, actually happened I guess.
Haha, that's actually not a bad point. I mean, I guess taking options out of a game is never a good thing, but at the same time in this particular instance, I can't see taking guns out of the equation as necessarily being a bad thing.
gkkiller on 18/6/2015 at 06:09
The main problem with the guns was that they were too cumbersome to use. Disarming was punishing, the shooting mechanics were terrible, auto-discarding the gun was annoying ... and the loss of momentum just compounded the problems. The hand-to-hand combat on the other hand worked quite nicely; if they find a way to refine it and give us some more fun combat abilities, that'd be great.
henke on 18/6/2015 at 07:03
Surprised to see people bummed out that it'll be open world. That's the one area where I felt Dying Light's parkour improved on Mirror's Edge. Like I said when I wrote my final impressions on DL, in ME the world is there for you to parkour through, in DL the parkour is there so you can get through the world faster. By making the world not explicitly be a series of parkour-challenges you make the character's parkour skills feel more like a useful tool, rather than a solution to a puzzle. It feels more organic, more real, just plain better.
Yakoob on 18/6/2015 at 16:58
Looks aside, I'm digging the setting and story premise in the trailer. Seems to go into dystopian police state even more than the first game, and I'm a sucker for good totalitarian propaganda :p
But lol at the obligatory Morgan Freeman lookalike... with birds!
Sulphur on 24/6/2015 at 07:17
Quote Posted by henke
Surprised to see people bummed out that it'll be open world. That's the one area where I felt Dying Light's parkour improved on Mirror's Edge. Like I said when I wrote my final impressions on DL, in ME the world is there for you to parkour through, in DL the parkour is there so you can get through the world faster. By making the world not explicitly be a series of parkour-challenges you make the character's parkour skills feel more like a useful tool, rather than a solution to a puzzle. It feels more organic, more real, just plain better.
It depends on your perspective. I'm a hardcore oldschool platforming kind of guy, and Mirror's Edge was, first and foremost, a series of interestingly placed platforms to traverse as a challenge to your skills. That was its raison d'etre - guns just distracted you from the moment-to-moment adrenaline rush of entering the zone and executing a flawless set of moves, cursing yourself when you made a mistake, and then doing it all over again.
When you make something open-world and re-traversable ad infinitum, the nature of the beast changes - it's no longer a tight series of challenges, but a bunch of scenery to navigate on autopilot while you engage in a collect-a-thon or race to the marker for the next plot point. Examples: all of the Assassin's Creeds, Prince of Persia 2008. PoP 2008 was in no way, shape, or form better than the previous PoPs. It's a very pretty game with some very boring gameplay. AssCreed requires just about nil skill in its traversal. The priorities change. And for Mirror's Edge the priority really needs to remain on maintaining that element of directed challenge.
Thirith on 24/6/2015 at 07:45
Quote Posted by Sulphur
When you make something open-world and re-traversable ad infinitum, the nature of the beast changes - it's no longer a tight series of challenges, but a bunch of scenery to navigate on autopilot while you engage in a collect-a-thon or race to the marker for the next plot point. Examples: all of the Assassin's Creeds, Prince of Persia 2008. PoP 2008 was in no way, shape, or form better than the previous PoPs. It's a very pretty game with some very boring gameplay. AssCreed requires just about nil skill in its traversal. The priorities change. And for Mirror's Edge the priority really needs to remain on maintaining that element of directed challenge.
I don't think that B follows from A here. Open world can mean
Assassin's Creed, but it doesn't have to, and
PoP 2008 wasn't particularly open world, it was much more a case of designed routes that all led to the same hub (or hubs - I don't remember exactly). By and large, the individual bits were still as linear as in previous
PoP titles, they just weren't designed to be particularly challenging, but that in itself had nothing to do with whether the game was open world (which I'd say it wasn't really, not in the way that
AC or
GTA are) or not.
Arguably, something like the
Tony Hawk games could serve as something of a template. While not open world in any conventional sense, they put you in an environment and you had to figure out yourself what sort of trick combos you'd want to do. There was no linear progression within the individual areas, but there were plenty of designed challenges that could be tackled in different ways. IMO this could work quite nicely for
Mirror's Edge, if pulled off well. Basically what some of the original game's environments - particularly the early city ones - offered writ large.
henke on 24/6/2015 at 09:14
Yeah I don't really know what you're talking about here Sulph. "Navigating scenery on autopilot"? Do you think the gameplay is suddenly going to change to Assassin's Creed simply because it's open world? There's really no reason at all why the platforming and world-traversal should be more easy simply because it's open world. And you'll still need to make the same moment-to-moment decisions of "do I climb the vent and jump for the railing to get up there, or do I head for the ladder across the rooftop?" except this time the scope is pulled out to include questions like "which rooftop should I even head for if I wanna get to 9th street?".
However if you're really into the aspect of the levels being a tight and focused course which you can perfect over time, and you enjoy improving your time and comparing it with other's on the leaderboard, I can see the disappointment, since this is obviously less geared towards that. Although, seeing as how big a part that was of the previous entry, I'm sure this one will include time trials and checkpoint races, for those craving a more focused challenge.
Personally, I never cared about the challenge. I enjoyed the world and doing sweet parkour moves. My biggest disappointment with ME was the first time I played it, realizing just how linear the first level was. I kept falling to my death trying to jump or wallrun to nearby rooftops, but ultimately resigned to my fate of having to stick to the path, and not really getting to explore this world.
Sulphur on 24/6/2015 at 19:03
Quote Posted by Thirith
I don't think that B follows from A here. Open world can mean
Assassin's Creed, but it doesn't have to, and
PoP 2008 wasn't particularly open world, it was much more a case of designed routes that all led to the same hub (or hubs - I don't remember exactly). By and large, the individual bits were still as linear as in previous
PoP titles, they just weren't designed to be particularly challenging, but that in itself had nothing to do with whether the game was open world (which I'd say it wasn't really, not in the way that
AC or
GTA are) or not.
Arguably, something like the
Tony Hawk games could serve as something of a template. While not open world in any conventional sense, they put you in an environment and you had to figure out yourself what sort of trick combos you'd want to do. There was no linear progression within the individual areas, but there were plenty of designed challenges that could be tackled in different ways. IMO this could work quite nicely for
Mirror's Edge, if pulled off well. Basically what some of the original game's environments - particularly the early city ones - offered writ large.
Perhaps open-world isn't the best description for PoP 2008, but it's not quite a closed linear experience or sandbox either. It's a hub system with different areas closed off a la Metroidvanias. The issue I have with this sort of design is that, if it's a platformer, having to criss-cross the same sections of the map over and over to get to point A from B through C gets boring fast. PoP 2008 removed the challenge to the platforming, which in hindsight makes sense considering the amount of bouncing across the maps you do - if they'd made it more challenging, it would have been a chore.
But back to Mirror's Edge. I get the Tony Hawk comparison where freeform combo building is the idea, and that would work with a more open cityscape for ME. More organic? Sure. But more focused? No. And that's where our preferences are, I suppose. I mean, I love Saints Row IV for the sheer joy of being able to leap into the air, float towards a skyscraper, run up the side of it, and then jump off again towards the corner of the map. It's
great. It also hasn't predicated its challenges on a platformer template, so I have the freedom to appreciate the tactility of how you get to move around in it without worrying about failing a jump or being shot up by people.
henke - looks like you and I liked ME for almost completely opposite reasons, which is... really interesting. I wasn't too fussed about exploring the city because the sight lines kept the focus on the next bit you had to get to, and that was the entire point. Running off in a different direction held no value to me unless it looped back to the area you were supposed to be headed towards, because I was in it to move on to the next puzzle-y platform section. Figuring out how to move forward, and then executing that flawlessly, is the sort of loop that kept me going back to Mirror's Edge. I can't see that being very fun in an open city that lets you run around free unless it's radically easier, and to my mind if that's what they're going to do, it might as well just be Assassin's Creed or Dying Light without anything much to differentiate itself from them.
I wouldn't mind being incorrect in this regard, but we'll have to wait and see; my gut tells me that the best of both worlds isn't going to happen, though.
Thor on 24/6/2015 at 20:14
I'm a little torn myself with the open-world design. On one hand it makes you feel more like an explorer. But they better make those paths challenging and not obvious. Maybe just 1 obvious path at a time. I have 2 worries with it being open-world (at least 1 was mentioned):
1) traversing the same locations - if that happens, the area should have something different about it (e.g. someone put a ladder up a wall, opening up a new pathway) but even then I don't want to cross the area too many times. And I don't want some annoying hub area. If there has to be one, then I'd like to visit it no more than, say, 3 times, all for good story-driven purpuses (but I suppose in stories you don't usually visit an area more than 2 times). All that said, I still might change my mind and want to revisit areas that have grown to me for one reason or another.
2) it will be easy to get from one place to another cause that's how I've seen most open world games be. I don't know how they would design it well. It would probably take a lot of time and some serious skill and expertise to design open-world but challenging to traverse. I fear that most of the map that is referred to as "open world" will be pretty easy to traverse, leaving challenge only around the target points. It sounds uninspired and I hope I'm super wrong, but that's probably my darkest fear I have for the game (another fear would be a lame story, rather than... youthful, rebellious and cool? Not sure how to describe it).
sNeaksieGarrett on 25/6/2015 at 04:29
Great discussion, I'm glad a thread I made led to such in depth analysis. Interesting perspectives on the game.
Yeah, it seems like what people like Thor and sulphur are talking about is that with the game going open world, it will lead (or at least has the potential to lead towards) to the game becoming "dumbed down" (maybe those aren't the best words to describe it)... that is, in the effort to provide more choice, you end up making the actual gameplay boring and less challenging/compelling whereas had it been left to be a linear experience the paths provided could be more thought out and more compelling. I don't know if I explained that very well, but I've never been that articulate. Sulphur's post was more well written and articulate than I could ever be.:p
Going sorta off-top, one thing I can say is, I think there's room for both types of games and I don't think we should ever completely move to open world. We need to have varying types of games to cater to different players' moods, interests, and time constraints.
It'll certainly be interesting to see how this new Mirror's Edge compares to its predecessor considering they moved from a more linear style to an open world format.
