On the Indefinite Delay of Mirror's Edge 2

While the initial news of Monday morning regarding the cancellation of the sequel to 2008's Mirror's Edge was proven to be hasty and inaccurate, Butler still isn't satisfied with EA's vaguely worded response.  More after the jump!

Mirror's Edge was one of those games where when it was on, it was ON in a manner akin to Donkey Kong, but could never attain its true greatness because of the mountain of shit the designers would make you traverse to get to the parts that were genuinely the best first person platforming I have ever seen.  The fun part about waiting for the sequel was that the complaints about the game, while looming rather large from the gameplay perspective, should have been pretty simple fixes: combat was atrocious and needed a rebalance, a retooling, or possibly just complete exclusion wherein Faith's only alternative is to run.  Indoor environments were oppressive, finicky, and often peppered with those god damned combat sections.  But these are tangible complaints about specific sections wherein a simple, yet colorful chart could be used to illustrate precisely how to fix them, and that is what excited me.

"This green line? That's the monies.  My finger up here?

That's where the monies will be when we fix this game."

But lo, did the internet abound with talk of the death of the franchise on Monday morning.  After the story was taken back under control, EA stated that, while "Mirror's Edge is an important franchise to [them]... DICE studio [The Mirror's Edge devs] is currently producing Battlefield 3.  Nothing further to announce."  Hmmm... Was anyone else put off by the fact that that sounded precisely like what you hear when you're on hold with those robots that keep assuring you that "your time is important to them"?  Now, no one is going to criticize EA for deciding to pursue the franchise that actually did get them money (though we can certainly criticize them for creating DRM that even their employees hate, work days and conditions inspired by third world sweat shops, or for that time back in the early 2000's when they didn't want to have to release sports games clones in a competitive environment and obtained exclusive use of the NFL in interactive media).  I want to criticize EA for the simple crime of not caring.  This is probably also the part where I trust that half of you will skip the rest of my argument and run down to the comments to tell me that they are a business and that not everyone can be so idealistic when the bottom line is what keeps them alive in the first place.  Nonetheless:  

The video games industry is something that used to not be shy of a little creativity.  For god's sake, the most beloved games of all time come across like the hazy recollections of a 5 year-old's dream.  A five year old with an alarming tolerance to LSD.  Mario is a plumber rescuing a princess from turtles of varying degrees of speed, aerial abilities, and possession of pyrokinetic abilities (imbued through flowers or shells) all at the behest of talking mushroom men.  Sonic the Hedgehog (and it is REALLY TOO BAD that they never made ANY Sonic games after "& Knuckles") freed animals from robotic shells while collecting rings and gems, every now and again pausing to marvel at the fact that your average hedgehog is about as exciting in real life as organizing pictures of cats with your grandmother.  Then he attacks a mustachioed man of suspiciously Russian sounding origin in a flying egg.  And to top off my trifecta of classics, Link is not fooling anyone with that spring dress ensemble he calls a tunic.  The point of this meandering series of reminiscences is that these games are all good because there is nothing like them, only shameless imitators who are almost immediately recognized as such and doomed to live under the umbrella label of "kinda like Zelda, but not as good" until the end of their sorry existences.

Though I hear Darksiders still prefers that label to their other 

one.  I don't blame them.  I'd hate to be known as "awful".

Do I think Mirror's Edge gets a place in this pantheon of revolutionaries? Let's be real here.  The characters still have to be likable for a franchise like Mario or Zelda to get where they are (or at least cheap, in Sega's case).  But what it offered was a chance to revolutionize platforming quickly in the first person perspective, something that game designers seem to have been struggling with for over a decade.  Hell, the game was downright part platformer part puzzler, with the solutions to certain navigational conundrums being executed with an over the top Prince of Persia-like grace.  But instead of innovation in a genre that barely exists (how many competent FPPPS games do you know?) DICE Studio will render unto us this 2011 yet another gritty, realistic, squad-based shooter.  My anticipation as to whether or not there will be hills upon which one may make himself king or flags to capture is perhaps rivaled by none.