Skip to main content
PC Gamer PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
flag of UK
UK
flag of US
US
flag of Canada
Canada
flag of Australia
Australia
  • Games
  • Hardware
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Guides
  • Video
  • Forum
  • More
    • PC Gaming Show
    • Software
    • Movies & TV
    • Coupons
    • Magazine
    • Newsletter
    • Community guidelines
    • Affiliate links
    • Meet the team
    • About PC Gamer
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$32.49
View
Popular
  • Amazon Prime Day Deals
  • Essential Hardware
  • Microsoft
  • AI
  • PC Gaming Show
Recommended reading
Altair charges a Templar, wrist-blade extended.
Assassin's Creed I wish Ubisoft had ever made the game it promised with Assassin's Creed 1, but instead the series just spiralled into a weird identity crisis
Thief
Action In a world without Dishonored, I've started to wish for a sequel to Thief 2014
The player character kicks a goblin in the chest on the edge of a cliff in Alkahest.
Action After its pre-rendered trailer caused a stir last year, this Dark Messiah-inspired RPG now has a gameplay teaser—but the internet is debating if it's real or not
Spine cover art of a woman with a pistol holding up a shattered SWAT helmet against a dramatic purple background
Third Person Shooter Spine is a gun-fu love letter that wants to make you feel as OP as John Wick
Death Stranding 2 APAS - Sam
Action Death Stranding 2 is too damn easy
Pathologic 3 screenshot
Survival & Crafting Pathologic 3's time travel system will let players 'explore the unknown boldly and without fearing permanent ruin' and that makes me way more inclined to play it
A large face on a view screen
RPG Outer Worlds 2 writes an enormous cheque it will soon have to cash: It's not just New Vegas-inspired, it's Deus Ex-flavoured too
  1. Games
  2. Adventure

What we want from Mirror's Edge 2

Features
By Graham Smith published 31 May 2013

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Set it in a partly open world

Set it in a partly open world

Mirror's Edge stars Faith, a courier who delivers physical documents between people who don't want their communications monitored by the totalitarian government. It was disappointing to play the game and then find that experience instantly take a backseat to a short, scripted singleplayer story.

Bring Faith back and let players experience her life properly in Mirror's Edge 2. Set sections of it in an open world of shimmering skyscrapers, and challenge players to plot their own routes across a landscape of rooftops and vertiginous drops to deliver messages as part of the game's story.

But only sections of it should be open, like hub worlds that connect more constrained missions. Mirror's Edge offered plenty in its scripted areas that's worth bringing back, like the puzzle-platforming atriums that challenged you to scale the innards of some enormous structure.

Page 1 of 4
Page 1 of 4
Add destructible buildings

Add destructible buildings

Freerunning is about gaining a sense of ownership over an environment by traversing it in unexpected ways. (Sometimes it's about running along a small wall while your audience waits for you to reach the next impressive bit). The first game did a great job of that when you were up on the city's rooftops, and a less good job of it when you were inside, trying to quickly maneuver through office space.

How do you build on those ideas, avoid the frustration of coming to a standing-stop when the player makes a mistake, progress the story, and utilise EA DICE's available technology?

By mixing the crashes of Burnout with the military tactics of the Israeli military, obviously.

From this excellent post on BLDGBLOG about Die Hard: the Israeli military navigated an urban conflict zone by moving within buildings, to avoid being hit by snipers or artillery. They "moved horizontally through party walls, and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors," like "a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing."

One of Mirror's Edge's greatest joys was shoulder-barging your way through a door without breaking stride. What better way to express Faith's fight against an always-watching regime than by expanding that with a limited-charge wall-charge ability using Battlefield 4's destructible wall tech? You'd be a tank doing parkour. You'd be the Hulk. You'd be Ant & Dec.

Page 2 of 4
Page 2 of 4
Make it a stealth game

Make it a stealth game

Mirror's Edge's combat was certainly interesting. It was based around close-combat melee. You could only get guns by stealing them from the hands of an enemy. They significantly limited your speed and agility, and when they ran out of ammo, your only option was to toss them on the ground.

Where it fell down was when it mixed that combat with areas where you were trying to parkour your way out: you'd be looking around for your next jump and people would be yelling and shooting at you. Worse, you'd fail at a jump, experience the frustration of losing your momentum, only to have that frustration compounded by being killed.

There needs to be a greater distinction between parkour sections and combat areas. And combat areas need to be thought of as stealth areas, where attacking is a last resort, and happens only after the player has had the opportunity to plan a swift and silent takedown.

I don't think it's feasible to lose guns entirely, but I do think you can turn Faith into Batman: everyone else uses weapons, but she prefers to climb high above and leap down upon their heads.

Page 3 of 4
Page 3 of 4
Don't change too much, please

Don't change too much, please

Mirror's Edge didn't sell as well as EA hoped, which is why five years have elapsed since the original game. I don't care. Mirror's Edge is one of the most interesting and brave games of the past ten years. There are reasons why people have been calling for a sequel all this time. There are reasons why it's the first game I install on every new PC. There are reasons why even its flaws only serve to make its fans more protective of it.

Like so many games, Mirror's Edge is set in a dystopian city, but one that on its surface appears creepily, almost perfectly clean, instead of one that's crumbling into dirt. That's refreshing, and it makes for a world that I want to return to again and again. Let me.

Secondly, Mirror's Edge is about agility and movement and feeling connected with the environment, and its first-person perspective is integral to that. It has its problems, so add a third-person option. Do not make third-person the only option.

Finally, Faith's fumbling with weapons was refreshing. Tossing away a shotgun instead of reloading it felt cool. Yes, the combat needs changing, but the fix isn't to turn her into Dead-Eye Duck.

The truth is, for everything I want to be different in Mirror's Edge 2 - assuming it even exists - I would be happy if they changed nothing, and simply gave me new, quiet rooftops to run across in the sun.

Got your own thoughts? Drop them in the comments.

Page 4 of 4
Page 4 of 4
TOPICS
Electronic Arts
PRODUCTS
Mirror's Edge Mirror's Edge 2
Graham Smith
Read more
Altair charges a Templar, wrist-blade extended.
I wish Ubisoft had ever made the game it promised with Assassin's Creed 1, but instead the series just spiralled into a weird identity crisis
Thief
In a world without Dishonored, I've started to wish for a sequel to Thief 2014
The player character kicks a goblin in the chest on the edge of a cliff in Alkahest.
After its pre-rendered trailer caused a stir last year, this Dark Messiah-inspired RPG now has a gameplay teaser—but the internet is debating if it's real or not
Spine cover art of a woman with a pistol holding up a shattered SWAT helmet against a dramatic purple background
Spine is a gun-fu love letter that wants to make you feel as OP as John Wick
Death Stranding 2 APAS - Sam
Death Stranding 2 is too damn easy
Pathologic 3 screenshot
Pathologic 3's time travel system will let players 'explore the unknown boldly and without fearing permanent ruin' and that makes me way more inclined to play it
Latest in Adventure
peak multiplayer mod
'Hi modders <3': Peak devs know we're using mods to break past the 4-player limit, and they're so cool with it they're even fixing mod-specific bugs
A climber skeleton generated by the Everest mod in Peak.
Peak modder celebrates the grim achievement of generating 10,000 skeletons in a single day with a mod that 'creates a shared experience of failure and discovery' by littering the island with the corpses of your fellow scouts
A woman in a floral dress extends her bare foot to a kneeling man, in a screenshot from Chinese FMV game Revenge on Gold Diggers.
Chinese FMV game about getting 'revenge on gold diggers' plunges the country into online gender tumult
Peak scout posing
Peak re-releases its next update aimed at improving stability and reassures players 'we don't have any issue with sharing video content, including modded stuff'
Poisoned and dying
Peak devs accidentally released a patch that 'made a number of players totally unable to play' so now there's a new public beta Steam branch for everyone to mess around in safely
Dave the Diver
'It's not like we applied for the award ourselves': Dave the Diver director reminds people that 'there's nothing indie' about his game and the controversial indie nomination was out of his control
Latest in Features
Best pink and purple gaming setup goodies this Amazon Prime Day
I've decided black and red gaming rigs are mega boring so let me brighten up your setups with some of the best deals on monochromatic pinks and purple peripherals instead
A cyberpunk city with the PC Gamer logo
This brilliant dark and moody cyberpunk city builder is my kind of cosy game—and for less than $7 you might as well see if it's yours too
Phoenix screenshot
Marvel Rivals' next hero is the complete package, as Phoenix packs enough firepower to cut through any Strategist backline
Marvel Rivals Season 3 quality of life changes: An upper-body shot of Phoenix glowing as she flies forward.
Marvel Rivals' most exciting change in Season 3 is removing the need to grind the game every single day
Three people holding guns
15 hidden gems in the Steam Summer Sale you've still got time to grab
Vault Boy jumping back in surprise as he looks at a malfunctioning monitor.
OLED burn-in anxiety will ruin my sanity long before it ruins my monitor
  1. Nvidia RTX 5090 and XFX RX 9070 graphics cards
    1
    Best graphics cards in 2025: I've tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today's top cards
  2. 2
    Best gaming laptop in 2025: I've put the best of this new generation head-to-head and we have a winner
  3. 3
    Best gaming chair in 2025: I've tested a ton of gaming chairs and these are the seats I'd suggest for any PC gamer
  4. 4
    Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads
  5. 5
    Best graphics card for laptops in 2025: the mobile GPUs I'd want in my next gaming laptop
  1. An NZXT N7 Z890 motherboard on a desk with port covers removed.
    1
    NZXT N7 Z890 review
  2. 2
    NZXT N9 X870E review
  3. 3
    NZXT N9 Z890 review
  4. 4
    Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 review
  5. 5
    Razer Joro & Basilisk Mobile review

PC Gamer is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...