What's the future of Mirror's Edge, that flawed but beautiful cult-favorite of a first-person parkour game?
That question is nearly mandatory for any interview with a person of power at Electronic Arts and its development studio DICE, so of course I asked it last week when I was supposed to be interviewing studio manager Karl Magnus about his studio's new Battlefield stuff. (More on that later).
Here's the latest. Warning: it's a Rorschach blot:
"At DICE we are dedicated to making games, not just Battlefield games," Magnus said.
Then he asked me if I wanted a sequel.
Of course, I blurted, but what about you guys? You must get asked this all the time, I suggested.
That's true, he laughed, and added: "We are constantly looking into and trying new things. Mirror's Edge was one of those tries. We're super-proud of the game. It wasn't a big commercial success from that point of view, but we're super-proud of what we managed to do with the first-person movement and these kinds of things. We love the universe and [Mirror's Edge heroine] Faith as a character and so forth. You have to wait and see what the future holds. We're not going to confirm anything now, but we're definitely considering all ways forward for the studio."
Mirror's Edge was released in 2008.
If you're tracking this, EA CEO John Riccitiello told us in late 2009 that a sequel was in development but "at a crossroads".
In mid 2011, EA Games label chief Frank Gibeau told PC Gamer, "We're actively looking at how to bring it back in the right way." (And it's running on the Battlefield 3 graphics engine? The Official PlayStation Magazine rumored that.)
At this point, we're taking bets on which will happen first, Mirror's Edge 2 or Ubisoft's Beyond Good & Evil 2. Hey, at least Mirror's Edge got an iOS spin-off.