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.