Do you remember Mirror’s Edge? It’s a single-player first person action-adventure platform game, made by DICE (the developer known for the highly acclaimed Battlefield series), which takes place in an unnamed dystopian city. Life in the city might seem peaceful and comfortable, but the truth is that its inhabitants are living under a totalitarian regime which monitors pretty much everything. You step into the shoes of Faith Connors, a “runner” who is living outside the law, and whose job is to get people’s information from one place to another without the government intercepting it. Of course, as it is the case with any video game, things take a turn for the worse, and Faith is the one who must uncover the conspiracies against her, her sister, and the whole city.
The gameplay is all about the training discipline known as parkour, with a few sections in which you can also fire some guns, but that’s completely optional. It’s a well realized tale of two sisters living on two different sides of the city, with a few plot twists along the way in order to keep the player engaged. The game is indeed a blast to play, and as such, here are 8 things we’d like to see in its sequel:
- An open-world experience. I feel like it was a missed opportunity to not include this feature in the first game as well. Think about it: you can execute all these cool moves on a wide range of buildings, running from rooftop to rooftop without any boundaries (except, of course, for the ones around the city). It would be something like Assassin’s Creed, but from a more engaging, and personal perspective.
- Lots of side-quests. With the open-world nature , come, of course, the side missions. In the spirit of the game, most of these would be what players use to call “fetch quests”. Even so, diversity is a must, so there should be different kinds of objectives for those missions. Races against other NPCs would also be great to add. Also, missions in which you have to perform specific kinds of moves on specific tracks would also benefit the game greatly.
- A longer campaign. The first one clocks around 7 hours at most, and except for a few speed runs against your “ghost”, and the usual leaderboards, there isn’t anything to do. Sure you could try a harder difficulty, but it doesn’t change the gameplay, except for the fact that you’ll die quicker from the gunshots. There are also collectibles, but there’s really no incentive for you to search for them.
- A better story. Faith is one of the few female protagonists in the gaming industry, but even so, I don’t really connect to her in the first game. The other characters aren’t helping either. We need to see her in more dangerous situations, we need to understand her feelings, her motivations for what she’s doing, so a stronger narrative is definitely something to take care of. Maybe even add a few missions, detailing her origins as a runner?
- Keep the gameplay focused. What I’m trying to emphasize on, is that this shouldn’t turn into a Battlefield game. The core mechanic is the parkour, and definitely not the shooting. Sure, the first one also allows you to shoot others, but it is never necessary, and even so, these moments are very scares, so keep it that way. It’s gotta be 140% parkour.
- Ditch the cartoon-like cutscenes. It’s not that in the first game they are bad. Not at all! It’s the fact that the transition from the cartoon to the gameplay itself isn’t very immersive. This should already be achieved, since it is rumored that the sequel will use the Frostbite 2 engine.
- Dubstep. I know some might completely hate this, but think about it: the world of Mirror’s Edge already looks a bit futuristic, and I think it would be incredibly awesome for the player to execute moves while on the rhythm of the current soundtrack. This scene from Black Ops II is an example of what can be achieved:
- Multiplayer. In the end, we should also have a multiplayer component (and knowing EA, this is definitely going to happen). The game could include modes like “capture the flag” (or, in our case, “get the bag”), one in which players race each other to the finish line, and maybe even one in which one player is the runner, and the others (let’s say 3) are the cops trying to kill him. There are lots of possibilities for expanding the mulitplayer side, and as a whole, the entire game.
All in all, we should expect great things from this IP, and DICE. But what about you? What would YOU like to see in the sequel? Let us know in the comments below!
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