The most comprehensive Mirror’s Edge interview

At Games Convention Asia in Singapore, IndianVideoGamer caught up with Tom Farrer, Producer of Mirror’s Edge, one of the most eagerly-awaited titles of the year, for a leisurely chat. Probably everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Mirror’s Edge has been discussed here, including the time trial mode, multiplayer, boss fights, working with the Unreal engine, DLC, sequels, and possible ports to other platforms.

So the game’s got a time trial mode with ghosts?

Yes, the way it works is you run a stretch and as long as you beat a fixed qualifying time, your ghost will be uploaded automatically. It’s also saved locally. Each time trial area has got three star ratings, with three stars being the most difficult to beat. The maximum star rating a player can get in the game is 57 stars, I believe. None of us have actually managed to get there.

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What chance do we have then?

Actually, when we made Rallisport Challenge, the guys actually set their times, took the best times they could get, and they cut a few seconds off them. Those times got beaten in about three days after the game launched. So I think we’ll be alright.

One thing that was very interesting was that I played through the level on the show floor and then someone else played it after me and took a completely different approach to it. There are so many ways you can go through this level.

That’s something I’ve been trying to emphasise when I talk to people. Even in the smaller areas, there are ways in which you can combine moves to pull of some really cool stuff. I like having that ability. Actually, the time trial on that particular level is set on the second half of the level. And just when we thought we had found all the different routes and approaches to go though the level, a few weeks ago someone found another way. It was an approach I would never have thought of.

Hit the jump for the rest of the interview

So what does Mirror’s Edge have in terms of online modes?

The time trail; that’s the only online mode.

No co-op?

No.

That would’ve been cool though?

That would have been really cool. The whole concept of making the game is kind of tricky. We’ve done a lot of new stuff here, so the more things you try to do, the more crap you end up putting out. We looked at some multiplayer stuff and we pretty soon found that the traditional versus multiplayer just didn’t work. It didn’t fit the game and it was really just weird. We had to evaluate how much time we wanted to spend working on all of her first person animations, which is the core of the game, versus having to animate millions of third-person animations for multiplayer. Also, when it comes to melee in a multiplayer environment, all of the stuff that looks really, really good, feels really, really bad, because almost 90 per cent of a melee animation is about the reaction rather than the action itself. So the minute you do a second or two-second long reaction animation, it’s just annoying because you lose control. There are a load of problems that we would need to overcome to get that working, so we decided it was best to focus on getting the game to be good doing what it does. Also, time trial was just the perfect fit, especially with the ghosts so you get to race and compete with your friends. And it’s horribly addictive.

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Visually, the game is quite stunning. But initially when it was announced that you were using Unreal, I thought, ‘Oh, its going to be all brown and grey’.

Yeah, with lots of bloom (laughs).

And then we see the screenshots and videos and it’s so refreshing to see so much white and primary colours. So how did you arrive at that sort of visualisation?

The first thing is we wanted to make something different and we wanted a game that looked clean, rather than dirty. When we started, it still looked really realistic, but we still had the aspiration to work with the brighter colours and cleanliness. The first time we built an art area, it looked really nice, but it didn’t get us very excited; it just looked really nice and too normal. Then we went back and took a much more conceptual and artistic look at it, and its really the kind gameplay that informs where we’ve ended up with the art direction, because the clean world is also perfect for seeing all the opportunities within the environment. I actually remember that when we decided to go with the white, I was talking to Johannes Soderqvist, who’s the art director. We were looking at this concept, and I said, ‘Okay, let’s do that!’ And he was like, ‘This is awesome!’ (laughs). We still have all the textures and the detail, but it’s just all white. If there was some sort of button, it would be interesting to push it and just see if we switched the textures back, what they would look like.

You also have a new lighting engine for this game?

Yes, we’ve been co-developing the integration of the Beast lighting engine from a Swedish company called Illuminate Labs. We’ve been working with them on that and integrating that into Unreal. It’s a great lighting engine; it’s very powerful, and its one of the reasons why the game looks so different. The way it works is, we have this white world and we put blue on the wall. So when the light from the sun hits the blue, it reflects blue light. We can control how all of that works and we can jack it up so we get this beautiful wash of colour that bleeds over the white. Even though we don’t use too many colours – there are about 7 colours in the full game – you get various tones and variations of colour. That’s one of the things that make the game look like it does. We were just so fed up with all the brown.

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Did you ever consider making Mirror’s Edge in third-person?

No, never. The whole point was to do it in first-person. I love Prince of Persia, but that’s been done. We wanted to make something that was new. We just wanted that feeling of catching hold of the edge. Third-person is a different kind of cool. It’s cool to see the move itself, but in first-person it’s like feeling the move. When you jump and you’re about to fall short of the ledge, you think ‘Oh, I’m about to miss’, rather than ‘Oh, my avatar is about to miss’. I’ve been wanting to play a game other than Mirror’s Edge for so long, but I haven’t been able to do so because it’s been so busy. But recently, I played another first-person game, which I won’t mention, and it felt really weird because I’ve been playing Mirror’s Edge for so long. It was strange to go back to a static floating camera. I got used to it after a while, but initially it was so jarring because I didn’t get the feel of the feet and the body.

You guys have done a lot of work to avoid people getting motion sickness while playing the game. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Actually, its not motion sickness; its simulation sickness. Motion sickness is about physical motion. Simulation sickness is the absence of motion but the appearance of it. I get it quite badly myself.

Really? While playing this game?

No. When we started, we knew that simulation sickness could be a problem for us because we wanted to do a lot with the camera. We started looking into it and what causes it, which is pretty interesting but also difficult because it affects different people differently. So we just started pulling together all of the things that would help solve it. The first thing was the reticule. In most first-person games it’s just attached to the centre of the camera. We quickly found out that that wouldn’t work because when we started animating the camera it started moving around and being really annoying and distracting. So now, it’s partly attached to the camera controlled by a focal point in the distance, which kind of steadies it out but allows it to move. But we still need it to be pretty stable in the centre so you can focus your eyes.

You don’t ever look at everything all at once. That’s why you can still get simulation sickness if you’re playing a third-person game, particularly if it doesn’t use a reticule, because the screen is 2D but your brain is trying to process it all at once in 3D. That just f**ks up your head. So the dot just helps you focus your eyes around the screen. A couple of years ago, I was playing a first-person game, which I won’t mention, which had a really narrow field of view; it was something like 40 degrees. That’s really, really tight so you would lose perception of where you are in relation to everything else and that can really make you feel lost, confused and nauseous. So we opened the field of view about as far as we could before it started to bend, which is good because you get a much better sense of peripheral vision and where you are in the world and in relation to everything else. The only problem is technical. The reason a lot of games do it is because the narrower your field of view, the less you have to render and the easier it is to make. That was a problem for us because we had to render a really wide field of view. Luckily our coders are very clever (laughs).

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The biggest thing, however, is the camera control. That’s related to expected outcome and degree of control. So every time your mind expects something to happen, it needs to happen. For instance, if you’re falling from a height and you expect the screen to move or bob and it does, that’s good and the brain is happy and you can continue playing. We learned that there are certain things you can do with the camera that will guarantee to get you sick. Faith’s got a spine, a neck and shoulders and we had to build quite a different first-person rig to get her to do all this stuff. So we worked with her shoulders and saw how it affected her head, and we quickly found that that plane of movement would never ever work. It looked really nice, but it made me feel sick in about 15 seconds. So we changed that and adopted the current plane, which works way better. It’s all about tweaking, testing and balancing it.

We were also worried about the parachute roll and that it would make people sick. Then we thought about ballet dancers; when they do pirouettes, they keep snapping their head back to a certain focal point. So we worked the animation in a way that when you triggered it, she would snap around and end up looking in the same place. So we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that.

So besides the reticule, there’s no HUD?

No. We’re really kind of allergic to having anything on the screen. We really didn’t even want to do any of the loading icons on the screen, but it’s a requirement so we have to do that.

Is the game cutscene-heavy? Are there many cutscenes between missions?

There’s a curscene between every single level and then there usually bits of in-game cutscenes within the levels themselves. In between, we always use 2D animation. The ones in-game are in-engine. All the in-engine cutscenes are in first-person as well, so you’ll never really see Faith in third-person. After you finish one of the chapters in the game, the game can get a bit tiring because you have to concentrate, particularly if you’re being chased a lot. So it’s nice at the end to just be able to sit back and relax and watch a scene.

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The game doesn’t encourage you to engage in combat or use weapons although they are there. That’s new.

I can think of only two encounters in the whole game that you pretty much have to fight.

By fight do you mean using weapons or hand-to-hand?

You never have to shoot. Later on it gets quite hard not to because if you can get a rifle, it’s very powerful. So when you have lots of enemies or powerful enemies, it does make it easier to use a weapon. But you’re just not as cool (laughs).

Will there be a crosshair when you have a gun with you?

We initially just left the reticule on there. But during play-testing, we found that people were having trouble with it. So now when Faith picks up a weapon we’ve added an extra circle around the dot so it feels a bit more like a traditional crosshair. But people play differently. Most of the people at work remove the reticule and leave the crosshair for the gun. And some people turn both off and play with nothing. I play with both, because I like the dots (laughs). But you never have to shoot or use a weapon. But it can be difficult to avoid combat completely, particularly on the first playthrough, because you need to move fast and use movement to find routes to get away from enemies. But we never force you to use a gun to shoot anyone.

Even in this level here, momentum seems very important because if you miss one jump or if you hit a barrier on your way, you lose speed and it makes it harder to get away from the enemy.

We’ve actually made it a little harder in this build. We’ve been working on some of the AI and their behaviour when they’re chasing you. They’re more aggressive.

Next Page: DLC, sequels, boss fights, ports, etc.

This build also has backpacks as hidden collectibles. What do the collectibles unlock?

Yes, every level has got three of these collectibles in various different difficulties to find. Some of them are attached to trophies and achievements and some are attached to back story and things like that. Some of them are really hard to find.

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Do you have any plans for downloadable content once the game is out?

We’re going to do DLC but I can’t really talk about the specifics of it right now.

Will it be like new shoes for Faith or new game modes?

(laughs) I don’t think we’ll be doing new shoes for Faith. I know what it is but I just can’t tell you. But it’s really cool and I’m excited about it

So how soon after the game releases can we expect the DLC? Six months?

No, it will be much sooner than that.

How long is the game at first playthrough?

It really depends. I’ve watched a lot of people play through the game. We’ve got groups of people to play the game just so we can take notes and see where people get stuck so we can fix it. I saw one guy who managed it in 8 hours, which I was pretty impressed with. That went all the way up to 13 hours.

So 8 hours is the fastest you can run through the game at first playthrough?

Within that group of people, generally it was 10 to 13 hours, and this one guy just seemed to “get it” better than anyone else. So he was pretty fast. But we’ve built the levels to be played a lot faster than that. So when you beat the game, you’ll unlock Speed Run, which is full levels clocked and you can upload those times to the leaderboards.

Will these speed runs include enemies?

Yes, that has the combat. It has everything. The times are insane for those. I couldn’t believe the times I saw when we had testers play the game and the routes they found to evade combat and get to an area as fast as possible. I saw one area, a rooftop stretch on level 3 that usually took 10-15 minutes for people to complete on a first playthrough because it was kind of puzzly. One of the testers got through that in just under a minute. Its super fun too because once you know it and you’ve found the routes, its almost like playing another game, because the first time you play it, you’re still figuring out how it works. Later it just becomes this perfectly fluid motion and you can just be unbroken; wall-running, jumping, sliding, rolling, back-flipping and just getting through it perfectly. Its kind of cool as well because that works if you die, it sets you back to a check point and you know the geometry a lot better so you can move through it much faster this time.

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How would dying work in time trials? Would you need to start over if you die?

The time trials are generally short maps. We’ve cut out chunks that we thought were fun to play fast. They’re checkpointed and you need to hit each checkpoint to proceed. So if you die, you’ll just get reset to the last checkpoint. Of course, most people just go back to beginning after one mistake.

Are the environments mostly rooftops and outdoors or does the game play out equally indoors?

It’s kind of hard to say percentage-wise; 50-50 maybe. You’ve probably seen the storm drain level. That level starts out in canals that lead into the entrance of the storm drains before you move down. Then you come back up and the level actually finishes on the rooftops. The bit you’ve seen is just the middle of the level, not the full thing. That’s what we’ve done with each level. We’ve never wanted to work with just one environment. We move through different types of spaces and different heights for each place.

So of course, there will be a sequel to Mirror’s Edge, right?

I would love to. Just make sure everyone goes out and buys it and then we’ll make a sequel. There’s a lot of stuff that we wanted to do but ran out of time for. There’s also stuff that we did that we didn’t use. For instance, we did a lot of systems for Faith’s legs, but ended up not using them because we ran out of time. So we’ve disabled them, which is really frustrating. There were many ways we could get her legs to move and interact with the environment which is very, very cool, but we couldn’t use it so we had to just switch it off.

Are there any boss fights in the game?

We sort of did, but we mostly took them out and replaced them with events that occur throughout the game. We found out when we started testing that boss fights didn’t work so well. They work well if you have to shoot a glowing eye or something fantastic like that, but not when your character is human and so is the other character and you’re both really short (laughs). We’ve put in more like boss environments that make you think ‘How am I going to get all the way up there’.

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Tell us a little about the city and the story.

The way the city is governed is changing. It’s not quite a dictatorship or a place where the government is very mean, it’s more like a nanny state that’s gone a step too far and it’s starting to get worse and Faith and her sister Kate are caught up in that. Her sister, who is a police officer, is framed for murder and there are certain reasons that have motivated that. So as Faith tries to help her sister, she starts to learn about the other things that are going on around that. The cops are after Faith too because she was at the crime scene just before Kate was arrested.

In this level you also come across another runner.

Okay yes, that’s Celeste.

So are there parts of the game where you will have other AI characters with you?

Occasionally you’re going to meet other runners and stuff like that, but there’s no focussed co-op stuff. There are a few chases but there’s no deep interplay between them.

Will the PC version be the same as the console versions?

(Long pause) I don’t know if I can talk about that yet. The obvious difference is the fact that if you run it on a massive gaming rig, its going to run faster and look better. And it does look incredible.

Will the downloadable demo include this same rooftop level?

Yes, it will include the tutorial level since that’s what we built it for – to teach the player different parts of the gameplay. We’re doing some stuff with preorders as well and those guys will be able to unlock time trials and stuff.

And will there be a limited edition?

I’m actually not sure. I’ve been seeing some of the ideas and the box art and stuff like that and it looks pretty cool, but I don’t remember what we’ve decided to do.

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Do you have plans to bring the game to the Wii or handhelds?

Not right now. We’re currently just working on finishing it on the current platforms that we’re working on. If the game does do well and is popular, we may think about where else we want to take it. I think we could do some pretty interesting things with different platforms, but we’re not right now. They’re all different so we couldn’t port it; we’d have to do something else.

Especially on a platform like the DS.

It could be a completely different kind of game; maybe a puzzle game. It would be interesting to look at.

How big is the Mirror’s Edge team at DICE?

Well, we’re sort of ramping down now since we’re almost finished now. People are leaving the team and starting work on other projects. At our largest, we were about 70 or 80 people, not counting outsourcing and stuff like that.

Do you guys borrow from the Battlefield team or do you have the same guys working in both teams?

When we were just getting finished, some of the guys from Battlefield came over to help us out. Basically, everybody will come and help whoever is next out the door. Those guys were cool. I don’t know where we’re at right now because people were literally moving desks when I left to come here. We actually used some of the Battlefield guns in Mirror’s Edge, so we didn’t have to model those again.

Did you guys ever consider using the Frostbite engine in Mirror’s Edge?

We took the decision to use Unreal a long time ago. At that time, the Frostbite guys were working on Battlefield Bad Company and working on that engine. That’s a completely different kind of game from Mirror’s Edge with its big landscapes, destruction and heavily populated urban environments. We could’ve done it, but if the Frostbite team was to work on both games simultaneously, we would have to rework when we would be able to release the game. There would be a considerable delay, I think. We felt doing that would have an overall negative impact. It’s a very cool engine and it’s a shame we couldn’t use it.

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So how does it feel now that the game is a little over a month from release?

It’s weird being close to the end. When you’ve been working on something for so long, it feels strange thinking its going to end soon. I just hope people like it.

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Don’t forget to check out our hands-on impressions of Mirror’s Edge from Games Convention Asia.

Mirror’s Edge Hi-res images

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