TIL Mirror's Edge (2008) was written by Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of Sir Terry Pratchett
TIL Mirror's Edge (2008) was written by Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of Sir Terry Pratchett
She also wrote some of the tomb raider reboots and was an additional writer on BioShock infinite.
Some of the Overlord series too 🙂
Sir Terry Pratchett was an avid gamer himself and contributed to a few mods for Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim.
Lovely guy, really. So shame his works doesn’t click in non-english languages.
Well at least regardings books, Patrick Couton did such an amazing work at translating them in French, he even received awards for it
Wait… WHAT?!
Honestly, what an amazing person.
Which is such a cool story.
Like Emma had been writing some awesome Morrowind mods for ages - she was involved with a massive project that brought children to the game, wrote some of the pioneering companion mods for that game - and then she got to collaborate with Terry fucking Pratchett on one of the best Oblivion mods ever made.
Cool article, thanks
I'm a big Pratchett fan, and this is something i didn't know (i knew he was gaming, but not the mods part!) - thanks for that!
I’ve seen his books translated into multiple languages and fans of his that read him in those languages. I think with a capable and dedicated translation team you could have a reasonably close translation, though some linguistic jokes would likely be lost. Then again, a single Discworld book has insane joke density, so losing 2-3 isn’t the end of the world.
I played it and enjoyed it, but I don't recall it having much in the way of writing! The plot felt like an excuse to tie the set piece parkour areas together. I mean, moreso than in other games.
Sadly that’s often the way of things in games - writers brought in far too late, when the bulk of the design and development is already done, and being told to ‘just write something that connects these levels together’.
I have a few friends who used to go to game jams, events where you get a bunch of people together, split them up into groups, and give them a set amount of time (usually a day or a weekend) to make a video game.
Most of the people who went to these were programmers of course, and there were a couple in my friend group who were techy people as well, but mostly they were writers, artists, and musicians.
And the groups they ended up in usually handed up doing pretty well. Having the whole team there and involved from the get-go helped them make a pretty polished game, where a lot of the groups that didn't have that ended up with music, writing, or visuals that felt kind of tacked-on as an afterthought.
"They're teaching the cops parkour... we can't have that in this surveillance state distopia."
Yup. It was a parkour game. I don’t remember much of a story either.
There's more story and lore in the comic books. I really enjoy its world.
I still haven't played the sequel as I heard it was disappointing. What a bummer, there was so much potential there.
Fwiw, the second one had some frustrating moments but I still really enjoyed it. Running around the open world is really fun and the moveset is slick as hell.
I'd genuinely love a next gen sequel.
That was such a delightfully pretty game. I remember loving playing that. Might give that another play through next week. Thanks for reminding me. <3 :)
I just recently played through Catalyst and I know it was divisive, but I’m firmly in the “I wish it had another 6 months to cook and it would have been a banger” crowd. The only major issues I had were with unreliable parkour, which I bet they could have resolved. It was so close to being a winner if it weren’t for that.
It was a seriously underrated game, my main complaints were too much clunky combat and not nearly enough indoor areas. It felt like I had to run the same outdoor loops dozens of times for what should be serious missions.
Edit: I really think the combat could've been awesome with some Ratchet & Clank style gadgets. Not the guns, but the things like the bundle of mini-robots that chase and attack enemies, or the sentry device you throw that slows down/freezes enemies. Feels like a good way to keep the asymmetric fighting where they have actual weapons but you need to be strategic.
The reason I quit Catalyst early was the insane loading times. The game just doesn't play right when you're too afraid of making mistakes.
Story-wise the original is perfectly adequate, I'd say even good. You can't put too much story in that kind of game, it's much more about the vibes and unlike say Doom you can't hide lore in the environment either, investigating that would destroy the overall gameplay flow. It's a well-paced game, but the quiet parts aren't still the quiet parts is when the running is easy and straight-forward. Ideally, you never stop, and the points where you have to stop (elevators) are orchestrated to make you feel restless.
As flawed as the original is, it's one of my all time favourites. To me there's a perfect harmony between gameplay, graphics (art direction), music and atmosphere. The soundtrack is easily one of the best game OSTs of all time. The story isn't deep but the characters are interesting and the world has so much potential. On the other hand I love its "cult" status, on the other there was a lot of lost potential for a truly exceptional game franchise.
Catalyst is... not terrible. For me it's just average and it never reaches that real Mirror's Edge atmosphere of the original. It's even worse today because it never got an update for PS4 Pro or PS5, so it looks kinda awful tbh, and I'm usually not too picky with graphics and fps stuff. Finished it once back then and tried replaying it a couple of years ago but dropped after a few hours.
Beautiful game.
She basically ghost wrote his last novel and it wasn't good.
Yeah, but writing was pretty meh.
I still play this a lot... and it is wonderful every time. 😊
Huh, is this the parkour game? I remember seeing it on Steam, but it didn't seem like something I'd be into.
It has some combat, but yes, mostly it's about finding a path from Point A to Point B without dying. That includes running, jumping, climbing, and parkour. It's pretty great.
The combat was kinda required to be shoved into it, despite developers wishes, as I recall. So it's not great. It's not horrible either, it's just clunky in a way that someone who doesn't want to fight might do a poor job of it.
The gist is that you're a courier for illicit things (like information,) and suddenly the government is cracking down.
If you're remotely curious, and you see it on sale, I strongly urge you to give it a shot. Maybe the tutorial level and one or two more. And if you hate it you can always refund it on Steam.
I'm actually not a huge combat person, I like RPGs and exploratory games. But I'm not big on platformers or side-scrollers. I suck at puzzles, so tend to not gravitate towards those types of games unless the story is compelling (I loved Portal, for example, but had to look up walkthroughs after a certain point). The narrative element of it does appeal, I like cyberpunk/dystopian stuff.
Brooooo this game was amazing! The graphics were mindblowing for its time. And even the story was cool! Never played the reboot through.
Let's see what my favorite 2000's game critic had to say about it :D https://youtu.be/MqTreOK5YUQ