The original Mirror’s Edge has become something of a cult classic in recent years, but upon launch, it was met with indifference, landing with a rather dismal thud that no one quite cared about. The reasons were many, but they all boiled down to Mirror’s Edge being a flawed game, a game with a great concept at its nexus, but with very flawed mechanics surrounding that core.
With Catalyst, DICE looks like it will make good on the promise of the original game, while also atoning for everything that they did wrong the first time around. One of these issues that they are looking at tackling this time around is the combat, which was a major point of criticism in the original game.
“We’re going to do the same thing with combat as with movement,” said Sara Jansson, Senior Producer on Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, in an interview with The Examiner. “We’re going to start by teaching you the basics, but as you progress through the game, it’s going to get more and more advanced.”
The combat here won’t devolve into being a regular first person shooter, either- in fact, in keeping with Faith’s agility and mobility, it will depend uniquely on the environment Faith finds herself in.
“[Combat] is so dependent on the environment and is also how many enemies there are, but also the number of different enemy archetypes,” Jansson said, “You will meet different enemy archetypes that will be introduced over the course of the game. In the beginning it’s just melee grunts and then we will have the enforcers that are shooting at you and then there are the heavies,” Jansson detailed, “so it’s really a progression with the combat as well.”
Sounds like they have decided to flesh out combat, while also keeping it in with the game’s overall theme. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst launches this May for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.