PICKING EVERY FIGHT IN MIRROR’S EDGE
Mirror’s Edge is worse off with guns. That’s the received wisdom, anyway. The theory goes like this: DICE, upon inventing the running simulator, panicked a bit. Any new series is a challenge for a AAA developer – a cacophony of newness, where a sequel builds on past successes. And this game, more than most, was an expensive unknown – one that stripped away the familiar paraphernalia of first-person games. Sticking Colts and SCARs in Mirror’s Edge was a way of anchoring it in something safe. The guns represented reassurance, both for the Battlefield developer and an audience it worried wouldn’t quite get it.
WHEREVER THERE’S AN OPTION FOR FLIGHT, I’LL PICK FIGHT FIRST
Perhaps the studio was right to be worried – Mirror’s Edgedidn’t sell particularly well by EA’s standards. But a core fanbase really, really got into it. They understood it was a game about momentum, and that the guns were antithetical to that goal. They encouraged you to slow down and take aim, breaking the pumping pulse the game offered at its best.
People never really stopped talking about , and when the time came for DICE to, the studio changed almost nothing about the pace or moveset of . But it got rid of the guns. In its place, DICE designed a melee system that would capitalise on momentum. You could gather speed, spring off a wall, and plough all that force into the face of an enforcer. A suite of attacks was built to weaponise your catalogue of slides and spins. The idea was that you would use your enemies’ armoured weight against them, sending them stumbling into your waiting foot for a roundhouse finisher.
