Mirror’s Edge Catalyst – E3 2015 Announcement Trailer

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst was another highlight of E3 2015 and follows on from the glorious first-person parkour actioner, Mirror’s Edge, released in November 2008, which was a huge amount of fun when I played it originally on the Xbox 360, and as I play more with my PS3 than the Microsoft console these days, I just had to buy it again when it was in the Playstation Store sale for just a few quid recently.

This new game will actually be a prequel, looking into Faith Connors’ past, and will use the newer Frostbite 3 engine.

As Faith heads through the futuristic city – The City of Glass, where this is similar to the first game is that your free-running skills will help you complete missions by avoiding the baddies or even knocking them off of their feet. Ziplines and ledges are there to travel across buildings, and Faith’s “runner vision” can be used to highlight elements of the scenery in red, when getting from A to B. However, in this follow-up, there’ll be more of an open-world, free-roaming environment, meaning there isn’t just one linear path to get to B.

Combat-wise, you won’t be able to kill the enemy with guns this time round – a conscious decision by the developers, which is a good message to promote. They weren’t widely used in the first game anyway, but senior producer Sara Jansson has said that the combat and fighting featured will be an extension to the game’s movement – along with parkour and quick melee-style attacks, rather than something separate. And even if someone does shoot at you, you’ll be invincible against them while you keep your momentum.

I’m not wholly sold on the aspect of switching to a third-person perspective when Faith is performing a finishing move, however. If it’s as it appears in the trailer, here, it does rather take you out of the flow of the game.

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is due for release on PS4 and Xbox One on February 23rd 2016.

Check out the trailer below and click on the packshot for the full-size image:


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