The Next Mirror's Edge Will Need to Change a Few Things

Mirror's Edge was a confusing game, mainly because it had some really good, innovative ideas, but there were a lot of things that just didn't seem to fit together. It was like the developers just found out that it had terminal cancer and had to pour all the ideas they ever had into this one, final creation of theirs. The resulting game was more like an experiment, an unfinished project meant only to see how these ideas would work and how the public would respond to them. And, while interested in the concept, gamers didn't really flocked to buy the title, as sales proved in 2008 when it was launched. But John Riccitiello, EA's CEO, thinks the game has a lot of potential, and that it deserves more attention from developers.

The way he sees Mirror's Edge, the game had a "fascinatingly original world" and "fascinatingly original art direction." But even he saw some of the big flaws of the design and said that, "Sometimes you had a roll going, downhill, slide, jump, slide, jump and then you just got stopped. It sort of got in the way of the fun."

"It was like we couldn't quite decide if we were building Portal or a runner," he added. As if Mirror's Edge comes anything close to Portal. "And I don't think the consumer was ready to switch it up quite that way. You could say it was a sharp and great innovation. I believe that it was. You have to figure out what to do from here if you want it to be a five million seller versus a one-million unit seller." So, while he is convinced that the gamers should get another Mirror's Edge, he thinks that the path the actual game is walking on needs to be rethought.

"You could say: This thing needs to be more traditional. It's first-person game. There's a lot of successful FPS products out there that do really well. We could move in that direction," Riccitiello said. "Or [you could say]: This was never about guns. It was about its stark originality. Maybe we can back away from some of those [older] things? and emphasize the smooth play and puzzles and move it toward, if you will, a Portal." Until the next Mirror's Edge is ready, if we really must, we can have a go at the iPhone spinoff that will hit the App Store in January.