Mirror's Edge
Level Design Challenges & Solutions
Elisabetta Silli - Level Designer - EA DICE
Challenges
• Vertigo and Metrics
•
Streaming content
• The analog nature of Faith’s
movement
Vertigo and Metrics
Challenge:
To convey the feeling of vertigo and enhance the first person body experience, we
pushed all the jumps to the very limit. This led to unclear affordances and very
difficult jumps.
Vertigo and Metrics
Solutions:
• Moving all the non-reachable surfaces further
away from the play area.
• Strategic placement of red objects in the
player path.
• Adding special objects such as ramps at
the edge of buildings.
Streaming content
Challenge:
Every time you exited an area we needed to unload the previous one and load
the next. Between them, we had to create streaming zones big or busy enough
to confine the player until the loading was finished.
Streaming content
Solutions:
• Safe streaming zones with elevators.
• Combining small movement puzzles
with animated objects.
• Movement puzzles.
The analog nature of Faith’s movement
Challenge:
Due to varying player speeds and the ability to string moves together, it was very
hard to predict and restrict where the player could go.
The analog nature of Faith’s movement
Solutions:
• Strategic building and object placement.
• Adding objects like special fences that the
player couldn’t climb or vault over.
• “Non-movement volumes”
The Art of War
Time Trial:
• Transforming weakness to strength.
• Alternative to the multiplayer.
• Added value for the player.
After Shipping...
Takeaways:
• Lock and test metrics early.
• Plan ahead streaming content.
• Fun comes first.