Quick Look: Mirror's Edge Catalyst

I love Faith's character design, but all of the other characters in this game look real dumb. The movement itself doesn't look like it flows all that well, and there doesn't seem to be much to do. Kind of a bummer because the environment looks really neat.

somebody should hold him accountable or something.

Did anyone else get a little motion sickness when Alex was fighting those armored guys? I've enver gotten motion sickness from a game before, but that was kinda bad.

It strikes me as really odd that people are referring to this game as open world. In Assassin's Creed there's no depth to the world, it's a flat plain with zero obstacles and you can point yourself in a direction and go. This is more like a vertically-layered maze you have to learn (or just use runner's vision I guess, but don't do that). It's large, but that doesn't really matter (also you cover ground so fast that it has to be large), it's still an entirely different kind of world design that more closely resembles a metroidvania or a Dark Souls than the kind of game most people think of when you say open world. Personally, I think that decision alone means they've made an improvement.

Most people who played the first game played it once and hated it, because you need to be familiar with what's coming up to really get your flow going. That first playthrough is awkward and fumbling for everyone. I think my first time took 7 hours and every run past that has been two hours or less. With this you can organically learn the fastest/most satisfying path as you travel back and forth through the same areas multiple times, which makes a lot more sense than saying, "hey you need to play this game twice to enjoy it." The upgrade trees and collectibles are an odd choice, but I don't really see how they make the game any less fun. You can get the abilities you're missing from the first game within an hour and collectibles can easily be ignored in any game. The combat is a blanket improvement. They've made it more like the movement in that if you understand the controls and the mechanics you can drop even the tougher enemies super quickly, and if you're not trapped in a combat encounter it's easier than ever to just run away or land on some dude from above and just keep going, etc. The whole game is about that flow, man.

I really liked the first Mirror's Edge. I loved getting super good at going through those levels and figuring out how to traverse obstacles in the fastest way. However, the paths in this one don't look like they have as many varied traversal methods. Looks like maybe 1 or 2 different ways to go for most paths.

The combat and some of the animations look kinda janky in this game. Probably would have enjoyed a purely free-running game.

@davidh219:Collectibles and upgrade trees don't make it a worse game, but it doesn't add much neither to me. I rather have seen them expand on the movement options. For example,i think adding ropeswinging to Mirrors Edge is a fantastic idea. And the movement of the swing seems pretty good, but when it boils down to 'you unlocked this traversal spot, press button to enter rope-mode' , it just dissapoints me. I wish it was more free-form. Like hey i see a bar sticking out, i swing my rope at it so i can swing. Or if i miss a jump i can still throw it upwards and hope that it hooks on a building or flagpost.

Ugh, "we're idiots, yall are idiots" Idiot breadcrumbs.

It's 2016, we're out of the dark ages, DICE.

@onemanarmyy: I'm glad that's not the case, because then it would exactly be a typical open world game where you can just go wherever with no limits, and personally I find that super boring and think we have far too much of it already. How is that any different than, say, the grappling hook you get at the end of Infamous 2, or the web swinging in the spiderman games?

And do you also dislike it when, say, you get the power to transform into a chicken and go through small holes in Guacamelee? Or how in Akrham Asylum you can only grapple onto certain specific spots? This is pretty typical metroidvania stuff. I think they missed an opportunity by not integrating the mag rope into the combat in some way like Arkham did with the bat grapple, but it absolutely should not just work wherever. That would ruin the entire game.

@davidh219: I don't dislike Guacamelee's chicken transformation , because that entire game is built on the premise that you need to collect moves / powers to progress. To me ,Mirrors Edge is more about finding a nice flowing route from point A to B. All the options are available to you from the start.

I haven't played Catalyst yet so i might be wrong, but to me it seems like you have 80% of the options available to you, but you unlock a few meaningful moves (pulling knees up / acquiring rope) that unlock the last few traversal spots. That's fine, but doesn't make it comparable to a metroidvania game to me.

A more free form ropeswinging mechanic doesn't automatically mean that there are no limits to where you can go. Like you still need to find an object to attach the rope to, and the rope is only so long. With good level design, it wouldn't trivialize the movement like Infamous , Spiderman games did.

@onemanarmyy: That's exactly how the game is though. You'll be passing by areas with attach points multiple times. The area where you first get it, for example. And you'll start integrating that into the movement naturally. It's no different than jumping or sliding at the right time, it's not some scripted event like you're describing it as, nor do these points only show up once or twice to get you to new areas. They're definitely around, some give you faster routes in old areas but aren't strictly necessary for anything, they're just very carefully placed because of how game breaking they can be and it often takes some ingenuity to figure out how to actually use them for shortcut purposes. I don't see how you could willy nilly place tons of these points all over and NOT break the level design and turn it into a pure open world, but sure, I guess it's possible on some theoretical level. I think you're asking for a lot though, and I think anything they tried to do to achieve what you're asking would drastically change how the city looks and how it plays in the moment to moment running in a similar way to how having FLUDD changed Mario Sunshine into a very different kind of platformer. Things would get super spaced out from each other, gaps would get wider, and that would be super weird for when you're just running. Is that really worth it for a single mechanic? At some point you have to make a decision, is the game primarily about running or primarily about swinging.

As for the metroidvania, idk..it seems like it to me. It may only have a few unlocks, but how many do you have to have for it to classify? Is there a rule book somewhere? Lots of people think of Dark Souls as a metroidvania and it doesn't even have unlocks like that. It's more about how the actual physical space is designed. Call it what you want, but it's definitely not open world.

@banicabolnica: Haven't watched this QL yet, but I remember in the first game, that it was definitely set in Neo Singapore, and that I was seeing kind of too many white people given where I (felt like I) was.

@crocbox:

I'm in the same place, and everything I see about the direction they are taking the game has me worried.

Plus the self-seriousness and baditude of the resistance characters is incredibly off-putting

Man that chat was toxic.

Low anisotropic filtering I'm guessing?

Hmmm, I thought this looked fine at first but there's something about the city which feels very videogamey, lots of crazy geometric shapes that look vaguely like a city but not really. I don't remember ME1 having that vibe but it might just be that this game is more scifi. The use of colour and lighting was on point at all times in the first game but it feels a bit random here, the flat lighting is making the white city look like an unfinished 3d render.

The levels in ME1 felt composed, it never looked messy, im looking at points in this game which look almost procedurally generated in its randomness, just loads of black and white and shiny glass all over the place.

The aesthetic of the first game was so strong, every second of it, I think it was too hard for them to transfer that into an open world setting.

Man faiths new face looks really unfriendly to me. I liked old more asian faith better.

Edit: heh pre-rendered cutscene faith doesnt look unfriendly.

That obviously wont stop me from checking this game out at launch though :)

I can't tell if the controls seem rather finicky, or If Alex is just real bad at the game. I'll stump for both?

We got it that you're a groupie and you defend the staff at all costs at all times, but you have to accept that some people are more suitable to showcase a game than others. Maybe Austin wouldn't have screw up moves as frequently as Alex did... or something.

Cheers. Usually it's easy to figure out whether it's the person playing making mistakes or the game handling rough but it was pretty hard this time. I mean obviously mistakes were made, but a lot of sequences I was left wondering how you'd do it smoothly without first memorizing it before-hand, given how it looked in the video.

I don't know about this one. I really liked the original, but this seems a bit boring with the needless open world.

I'm not sure if it's the person playing it or the game but the original had near-perfect flow from beginning to end. Thanks for the Quick Look. It is good to see that the development team explored using some more new ideas with this one. Though the introduction of the open-world elements like floating glowing collectibles and the living statues ruin the believability that the first achieved. It certainly wouldn't be easy making an open world Mirror's Edge. Overall seems good, but we can never truly know something until we experience it ourselves.

Take it with a grain of salt. Different gameplay suit different people. I remember the first game being subjected to a lot of criticism how it wasn't precise/easy enough to make certain jumps, meanwhile it felt absolutely perfect to me.

I'm not doubting some people will feel like it's off, but I am doubting I'll think the same.

You haven't played the first game then? It controls perfectly with a controller.

I kinda want a Mük game now more than anything.

I loved the first one but this isn't what I wanted from a sequel.

You can turn them off.

Less so in EA games outside of cliché bad guys roles, yes, but then that's just EA, and even Mirror's Edge has another video on this website with a white good guy. Granted a cocky unfriendly one, but you're still wrong.

But I guess you just wanted to stir up a shit?

Shit like this that is:

Cool it with the open racism, even if just for funsies, please.

They sure made another one of these.

This game looks so dull :|

That weird depth of field blur/focus thing that's happening is all I needed to see to keep me from getting this game. Looking into early talk of the PC version it's apparently there as well, and not a setting that can be toggled. Hopefully it gets added as an option for users at least, or someone finds a workaround.

Standing in front of someone talking to them and not even being able to focus on them just makes my brain twitch trying to process it.

Did something go wrong with the recording? Everything looks extremely blurry.

Edit: I guess not, they talk about it in the video.

Yup. The open-world curse strikes again. Turning our great SP experiences into soulless, unfocussed collectathons

The combat does not look good.

@zombieclem: I have been playing it on Xbox one and it's a seriously poor show, technically. Low resolution, poor quality textures and egregious levels of texture fade-in. It basically looks like an unspectacular 360 game with better lighting.

Frostbite engine seems to just be bad on the consoles.

This looks surprisingly disappointing.

Vinny, the short vest is intended for mobility, while still keeping guys from ogling at your boobs when you're running.

Like Arkham City, I think the open-world thing is detrimental to the experience. Sure, some people will be like "Open-world games are way better, because you can go and do anything" even if you can't, so I'm sure the fan response will be split on this one.

Also, I'm not a game developer, but the blurriness seems to come from the modern conception of "what looks good". Every modern game has tons of visual effects and filters to try and enhance the experience, but take a look something like Riddick: Butcher Bay which just looks sharp. Nobody really needs motion-blur or depth of field when you got razor sharp textures and good shadow-tech. What even IS"ambient occlusion"?? Does anyone even know?? Turn that shit off and just give me all the anti-aliasing instead. :D

Ok is the video stuttery and flickery or is that the game? I'm assuming the video since they don't seem to notice it.

Looks like they should have just left the combat out

Edit* seems like a lot of bad design choices in this game. I did like the first game despite the bad design choices there though because they nailed the running in that game, but the open world doesn't seem to service it very well. In the first game you kinda fucked up for a while then memorized the layout of the section and when you nailed it it felt real good. Doesn't seem like this game will have much of that and more of fumbling around.

The focus on the combat is one of the worst possible things they could do in this series.
You are runner, not a kungfu master. Way to kill what the first game made special.

Uh what? They made it ubi-open world? That's extremely disappointing to hear. Also I thought they said they ditched the combat completely? Or was that just guns?

Maybe it's the video quality but this game does not look that great visually. Can't tell if it's the console version or if it just isn't a great looking game to begin with.

@stocksy2097: I guess it was Faith and her sister, the city being extra-clean, protestors being executed, and the police state vibe. I thought the detective guy was asian too?

@darkbeatdk: Ambient occlusion literally is good shadow tech.

@assirra: Right? In the first game, taking out one guard was difficult and three was a miracle - it enforced that you should be running.

It feels like they took the complaints about the last game to heart, but then broke about six other things that made the original special, especially with the stock standard open world / character progression pasted on.

Bread crumb trail seems necessary given the open world compared to crafted levels, but it ruins the fun of spotting the red and flowing through the environment to just follow a trail. They took out the bad gunplay, but replaced it with equally bad combat of awkwardly charging at enemies and bashing your face against them, as opposed to dodging and escaping. And it looked like the combat was required at times, which looked terrible and completely out of character.

@phuturist: ROFL

Seeing those enemies just standing there with their guns pointed at you and doing nothing makes this look like a broken alpha version of the game.