Ever since DICE unveiled the much-anticipated Mirror's Edge 2 back at this year's E3, the question “Where is Mirror's Edge 2?” has shifted to “Why'd it take so long to announce a sequel?” According to DICE head honcho Patrick Bach, the developer wasn't ready to pitch a sequel to EA until just recently.
"You need to have a great pitch," Bach told VideoGamer . "The interesting thing is that it's not about EA blocking DICE, it's about DICE not... Imagine this: it's your own money. What do you want to bet on? You want to bet on something that you know will be great. You can't just bet on a name. You need to have like, what's the concept?"
If you look at DICE's history after releasing Mirror's Edge, it's clear the Swedish developer bet on the first-person military shooter franchise that rhymes with “cattle field,” though, to be fair, first-person military shooters tend to make a little more money than parkour platformers.
Bach went on to say that Mirror's Edge 2 only happened because DICE finally had a plan it could use to move the franchise forward and specified that DICE was the game's roadblock—not EA.
“We are the development studio with creative freedom, I would argue,” Bach said. “We would not try to pitch something that we didn't believe in, and that takes time. Sometimes you want something but you don't really believe it will pan out that well.”
We still have no clue when Mirror's Edge 2 actually comes out (or if there will actually be a “2” in the title), though after five years of silence, I suppose we could wait just a little bit longer.
