Mirror's Edge will always be one of my favorite games. It wasn't perfect, but it had what it needed. Uniqueness, originality, simplicity, beauty, elegance. It's too bad the sequel went the other way, being unoriginal with conflicting game mechanics and doing what every other game out there was doing. There are some issues with Catalyst that didn't need to be there if they simply stayed true to the formula...
Firstly, the original Mirror's Edge was too short, the story was uninteresting and shallow, and arguably the technology was not there to maximize its potential. Catalyst was most likely released too soon, but it had too many additional issues that removed the originality from the game...
- The first red flag for Catalyst was the skill trees. Why? In concept it is not a bad thing... Faith being in jail and being a little rusty and needing to get back into the game makes sense. The issue was that it was implemented like any other game out there. Do X to get Y points to unlock Z. Utterly boring and unoriginal.
- Another issue, and the biggest one for me, was the fetch quests. A game like Mirror's Edge does not need that. It felt like needless filler. Not only that, in the case of Mirror's Edge, it destroys the gameplay. The gameplay is all about flow and smoothness, and to do the fetch quests, you have to constantly stop, grab something, run a bit, stop again... There is no continuity and it is in direct contrast with the main mechanic of the game. Every other game out there has fetch quests, and it is basically a way to try to let you play longer, or give the illusion of having much content. Players don't really waste their time with that anymore. That needs to be scrapped. Or if you HAVE to do something similar, you have to incorporate it in a way where the player needs to do one particularly hard sequence, and then he/she gets rewarded with something. That is satisfying and completely different than going to A, getting to B and returning to A.
- The combat was not great either... It definitely had some great elements. The attacks while running/jumping/sliding were fine and simply superior to the first Mirror's Edge in many cases. The issue was when you were required to stay in a small area or in a room and fight multiple enemies. The combat felt shallow. If there is any improvement that can be made here, I suggest DICE to look into what For Honor does. They do it in 3rd person, but there is little reason a similar mechanic cannot be done for first person. It would make the combat have more depth and more interesting. It's not for everyone though, so, it should be adapted.
- The story was disappointing... And more importantly, sometimes I got the sense that it was trying too hard to appeal too much to a feminist audience. The SJW agenda definitely rubbed off on the game. Faith had multiple comments of jealousy and contempt against other runners, particularly a male one that was better than her, and ultimately, they make it so that the guy runner tells her that she's better and he becomes completely pussywhipped. Get that woke stuff out of the game, and it will be better for it.
- The level design was annoying, because it was advertised as an open world, but in reality, it wasn't. I'll get more into that below, since that is most likely not a choice by the designers, but a necessity to maintain performance of the game.
I think Mirror's Edge was too ahead of its time and that hampered its potential, like I already mentioned. One of the issues the developers mentioned since the first game, was the streaming limit of the hardware at the time. They mentioned that you run so fast through the levels, that the hardware cannot keep up at some point. That's why they needed to add elevators, air ducts, ladders, pipes to crawl up & down or walk on etc. In Catalyst, the same issue became apparent, where the game was not really open world, but was divided in multiple sections... Because once again, the hardware could not stream everything quick enough to make the game open enough. This made it so that you either still ran in the same straight line as always, or you fell off a building... When they announced it was open world, I expected to be able to go down to the street level, jump over cars, enter buildings, run on rooftops... But I think that was not a realistic expectation at the time due to the hardware limits.
But now that the new consoles are coming out, the SSDs should eliminate this issue... This will be the chance for Mirror's Edge to shine like it truly deserves to. I just hope that they are still interested in creating another one, and more importantly, that they will not be hampered by corporate politics to put in shallow mechanics like repetitive fetch quests and skill trees. They have to take inspiration from the original trailers of the first Mirror's Edge... In fact, those little snippets of the trailers are more interesting than the whole story of the game... We see runners exchanging packages
while on the run. They have to focus on that. Running. Keeping the flow. And I see no reason why they can't have you be on the street as well. Imagine how exhilarating it would be to run in the city between people, with cops behind you, even some people trying to stop you, while you jump over cars, climb up a lamp post to jump on a roof or a fire escape to outrun the cops or hide somewhere. The main point is, crowds need to be there and are important. Otherwise you get an empty world like Catalyst.
There's more in those trailers of the original Mirror's Edge that can be used... Make the game about her origin story. The trailers of the first Mirror's Edge gave hints of that, but never materialized it in the game itself. In Catalyst, there really is no origin story. There are snippets of her past, and they show reasons for that later, but those were all about everyone else in the world and why they did what they did, and not about Faith herself. Faith does not really grow in Catalyst, nor do they ever show that she has grown. They need to show the marches, how she lost her parents, how she became who she is now. The whole story needs to be about her, her sacrifices, how she overcame them, and how she got where she is. Her growth needs to be portrayed. If they combine that, and figure out how in the 'present' she is reminded of what she went through in the past, they can easily create a relatable and powerful story that does not conflict with the gameplay.
I seriously hope that they will take another shot at it... Because right now seems like the perfect time to revive the franchise with the new consoles and SSD streaming...