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Mirror's Edge VS Catalyst Dark, Dirty, Gritty Rebirth
As a huge, huge fan of the original Mirror's Edge, I noticed a lot of things that went completely against the original's design that I felt were worth pointing out.
The overall design of the city looks just too messy for me, there's a lot going on and not enough space to breathe in the scenery, they went for the same bright color pallete which is nice, but everything just looks cluttered in Catalyst.
In the original Mirror's Edge it had a much more minimalistic design and everything just felt less busy and nicer to look at.
Not to mention for some reason they decided to give Catalyst this gritty look to it in a lot of areas, I guess they tried to give the city more personality but it doesn't feel right for a Mirror's Edge successor, part of what made the first one so unique was seeing such a clean aesthetic that was well complemented with the bright use of colors.
Now with the busy design and the somewhat gritty/dirty look to a lot of the environments I feel that Catalyst doesn't really look all that unique anymore.
I'd go as far as saying that it's starting to look generic.
Not to mention that I think it was a bad idea to make this a sandbox game, the linear levels in the first one were great, trial & error gameplay is what truly made it shine after numerous playthroughs, the way they could've improved it was by adding much more levels, pacing it better, instead of adding a bunch of Ubisoft generic padding to make it feel like you're getting your moneys worth.
Anyway, I made a video comparison so you get a good idea of what I'm talking about.
The overall design of the city looks just too messy for me, there's a lot going on and not enough space to breathe in the scenery, they went for the same bright color pallete which is nice, but everything just looks cluttered in Catalyst.
In the original Mirror's Edge it had a much more minimalistic design and everything just felt less busy and nicer to look at.
Not to mention for some reason they decided to give Catalyst this gritty look to it in a lot of areas, I guess they tried to give the city more personality but it doesn't feel right for a Mirror's Edge successor, part of what made the first one so unique was seeing such a clean aesthetic that was well complemented with the bright use of colors.
Now with the busy design and the somewhat gritty/dirty look to a lot of the environments I feel that Catalyst doesn't really look all that unique anymore.
I'd go as far as saying that it's starting to look generic.
Not to mention that I think it was a bad idea to make this a sandbox game, the linear levels in the first one were great, trial & error gameplay is what truly made it shine after numerous playthroughs, the way they could've improved it was by adding much more levels, pacing it better, instead of adding a bunch of Ubisoft generic padding to make it feel like you're getting your moneys worth.
Anyway, I made a video comparison so you get a good idea of what I'm talking about.
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Comments
I am viewing this from a story perspective rather than a design perspective, because it seems the devs went on a more story-driven world rather than a design-driven world that the original game was.
- The life of the city below. The original game didn't have much in terms of what was outside you running. If you looked to the streets below the city looked dead and abandoned. Almost no one was there.
- Textures. Of course the textures were bad in the game because it's from 2008, but the way they looked was depressing. In certain areas a vibrance is restored, but most areas looked dirty and not very pleasing to the eye. Even the white coloring of the walls of the buildings was slightly toned down to a very, very light gray. Catalyst brang every bit of the missing overall vibrance and created a better game.
- Plus, almost every video clip of the game is set in Downtown, the loCaste and midCaste areas. The View and Anchor are much more beautiful.
- Almost everybody has a problem with the way the open world is designed, and I have a counter-argument. The game's story progression consists of building traversal, and the open world is merely those loading times between each level, instead you play through those loading times, adding a feeling of fluidity. The game seems boring because beta only had so many missions and a **** ton of time to beat them and then run around the city and discover new things, adding a repetitivity that no one liked, but it's not meant to be that way, as long as you actually do mission the game won't be generic, and the trial and error of the first game appears, it just takes more time to get to.
Overall I disagree, but I can see what you see in Catalyst, and all I can say is: It's not your game and it's far too late in the development to change anything. If you don't like it, you don't have to post it and show off your rebellious nature telling the community built around MEC that you hate MEC. Then again, these are MEC forums, not ME.I hope I didn't offend or hurt you personally, I just wanted to state the facts (and please point out something wrong. I'm almost never right and this better not be an exclusion. And heck, arguing is fun.)
ME had a freaking enjoyable style, for sure, and the one for MEC is slightly different for sure. Deal with it. And if you don't like, it's because you like the style of ME, not the game...
I'm not trying to be rebellious or anything, I appreciate your response but I feel it's unfair to title me as a hater for criticizing certain aspects of the game. Games should be built around player feedback and masking my post under ''rebellious'' or ''hater'' doesn't sit right with me. If not for the original ME we wouldn't have Catalyst, so it's fair to bring up the original game on a Catalyst forum.
I just fear the replayability and the focused design of the first game will be lost. Can you actually name an open world game that you've loved replaying numerous times? They're often tiring after just one playthrough.
The style is one thing, hiding gameplay mechanics under RPG-like progression I felt was dumb. Making an originally linear game into an open world in favor of generic side missions is another thing I completely disliked. This game just really didn't need to be open world.