In an interview with the tittering old-timers at Kikizo, EA DICE’s Manuel Llines has revealed that ice-cool first-person platformer Mirror’s Edge is around 12 hours in length.
This discounts replay value, however, which is said to be immense thanks to the multi-levelled, branching path design of each area. "Unlike extremely open world games like Oblivion, we decided to have a focussed game with a focussed storyboard, a focussed experience," Llines commented. "But on the other hand, Faith as a runner is extremely agile, and even just in the [starting] area – and of course bigger areas even more so – they accommodate a number of permutations in how to traverse it. It’s really scary!"
To illustrate said scariness, he pointed out that one of the opening areas can be traversed in 40 minutes or a mere seven, depending on your route and skillfulness.
"That’s 500% [quicker] which is a scarily high number," Llines went on. "Which means that if you’re good at it… You can play the game if you’re not super-skilled, but you can become as good as you want. So I think it’s a long difficulty curve, but the replay is nice because you can complete a level and get the reward, then run back and get a more spectacular time."
Plenty more info through the link, including top anti-SWAT team tips (in essence: kick them in the nuts and steal their guns).
Mirror’s Edge is out on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 11 in North America and November 14 in Europe. The PS3 version will benefit from exclusive downloadable content.