Showing posts with label mirror's edge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mirror's edge. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Mirror's Edge, Player Psychology and the Implied Designer

(screenshot by Dead End Thrills)
Over on Wesley Tack's blog, he's posted some screenshots / comments about how he approached the Mall chapter of Mirror's Edge. Check it out.

(NOTE: I criticize the level a lot in this post. It's not because I dislike Wesley or DICE or the game. It's because I think it represents a popular way of thinking about levels, a way that I dislike. No offense is intended. Let's all be super friends, criticizing each other constructively.)

I think his commentary is most insightful when talking about the development process, like when he moved the highway portion to the upper part to save himself the time of actually building the highway / when he replaces all the BSP to minimize seams. I have to say though, some of his player psychology assumptions don't really strike me as correct. For instance, when he says:
[the mall logo] is visible in almost every section of the level and guides the player in the correct direction at all times
... That wasn't my experience playing at all. I only went that direction because there was nowhere else to go; it wasn't because the narrative told me I was supposed to go to the mall (I was disinterested in the developer-authored story by then) or because I was "guided" by the logo. I never even looked up for long enough to notice the red "Ne" logo there. I was too busy looking for red props to follow, or trying not to die arbitrarily from the gunfire.

And then I ended up at the mall somehow...?