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Comment by mortenjorck | Hacker News Reader

Too bad all these beautiful effects will be covered up by the foreshortened perspective of a gun in one corner and a health bar in the other corner.

I kid, but honestly, seeing this doesn't excite me anywhere near as much as a preview of whatever the team that made Mirror's Edge has in store next for current-generation consoles.

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DICE made Mirror's Edge, but it was a commercial flop, so we are unlikely to see a sequel anytime soon :( Personally I loved it.

Slightly OT but interesting: from what I hear from people at EA, it was a huge internal political war that year between the people who wanted to build more sequels and licensed franchises, and the people who thought that EA would die if it didn't innovate on its own IP. The latter won and were given a chance to prove their worth - the two main titles to come out of that were Dead Space and Mirror's Edge. From what I hear management considered this direction a flop (Dead Space, while popular, and spawning a sequel, was not the sort of hyper-blockbuster it needed to be, and ME was an unquestionable flop) and now EA is culturally back to the sequel-mill mentality.

A sad opportunity that didn't pan out :( There are precious few new IPs being worked on at EA right now.

The economics of the games industry mean that you can't turn a profit on AAA games without sequels. The new IP push was about reducing EA's dependence on sports titles and externally-licensed IP. (Also, to a degree, an attempt to reinvigorate EA's corporate culture) It was always in the game plan that the successful new IP games would receive plenty of sequels.

I wouldn't say it was a total failure. Mass Effect and Dragon Age are pretty good. =)

This is very true. The first title establishes a buzz about the game, the second (and third, etc.) game often make more money because the brand has been established and demand created. There are a large number of people who don't want to spend the whole $60 when a new IP is released and will instead wait for it to be discounted, or buy it used.

EA circa 2003/2004 was pumping out sequels yearly for titles that should have long been put to pasture. This has changed quite a bit in the last 5 or 6 years with IP's like Skate, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Battlefield (and Bad Company), Dead Space, where the sequels aren't rushed out the door without much thought, not to mention other new projects like Dante's Inferno and Mirror's Edge.

A lot of the presentation techniques from DICE's upcoming Battlefield 3 borrow very strongly from Mirror's Edge. I was watching a shakeycam video of B3 from last week's GDC and the influence was very apparent.

From this interview (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380794,00.asp)

"[...] a lot of the physicality of Battlefield 3 comes from the thinking behind Mirror's Edge. So the fact that your hands are a part of the world—it's not just a gun on a stick—it's actually a character that moves around. You can see your feet, you can see your hands, you can touch stuff, you can interact with the world. A lot of thinking comes from Mirror's Edge and that's what you want."

You kid--but it's the sad reality of most modern games (or at least the ones that generate the most press). Rather than just putting a new "pretty face" on the same old shooter concept that's been the norm for the past 15 or so years, I'd like to see game companies get back to innovative gameplay concepts. Interestingly, I see far more of that innovation coming from the indy publishers who don't do anything in the realm of "crazy 3d graphics" than I see coming from studios churning out "DOOM clone v 29345.2"

Yeah, unfortunately as you ramp up on art assets to get to the level of "crazy 3d graphics", the people holding the money tend to want more and more of a sure thing. 'DOOM clone v 29345.2' will inevitably sell boatloads. 'Toasty the toaster & the raspberry jam rebellion', not so much.

Which is why Braid and Minecraft did so well, even though they were largely programmed by single individuals instead of large teams. They took risks that the big studios wouldn't take.

True, but for every Braid, there were how many hundreds or thousands of failures? You can't blame the guys writing the huge cheques these days to expect likely success.

That being said, if they were smart, they'd be setting up some skunkworks projects on relatively small budgets....which I'm not aware of.

That's my point--all of the "big innovation" money gets thrown at graphical innovation. I'd love to see game companies innovating in other areas.

You mean like Kinect? That wasn't chump change by any means.

I amend my statement to, "almost all"

Interestingly, the studio that made Mirror's Edge has apparently been hard at work on their own jaw-dropping graphics tech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi2tae2PmmU&feature=fvwkr...

Did you know that Mirror's Edge is built using the current version of Unreal Engine? Tech demos are built to showcase as many features as possible, in a very limited time. In order to show shadows/lighting they are often dark.

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