In an interview with DualShockers during Gamescom Sara Jansson, Senior Producer on Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, spoke about how her team at DICE have worked on new technology for the Frostbite engine to produce a city that’s aesthetically sharp and clear-cut without ultimately appearing artificial.
“We have worked really heavily together with Frostbite on a specific reflection technology,” Jansson explained, adding, “we’re kind of the team that has developed it.
“It’s a combination of three different reflection technologies that just makes this very clean world come to life with how everything reflects in the environment.
“For us it was really important to have that, because since the world is so clean, we need to have that to make sure that it actually comes alive. In many other games we can hide stuff with dust or grit or dirt, here everything is so nice and clean and pristine. We invested quite heavily in this feature when it comes to rendering, and in many other features.”
Jansson went on to emphasise how pivotal the technology used for streaming the content is for the game. As Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is a world full of buildings and interactive objects it’s vital that the content can load quicker than the player can explore.
“Also, Mirror’s Edge is quite different from other Frostbite games, since first of all we’re not physics-based, we’re more animation-based, and we’re also not building the game on huge terrains, like Battlefield, we’re actually building buildings, and everything is interactable, because everything is gameplay basically. So I think that the streaming technology of Frostbite was really important because we have this huge vista, which is a city. Everything is made of objects and you need to interact with everything.
“So the streaming technology… Without that we couldn’t be doing this without any loading screens, fluidly moving through the city.
“It’s actually really advanced to build this type of city. I think that the engine was at the start built for huge terrains, not for huge cities with millions of objects with them. That has been kind of a challenge. We worked together with Frostbite on how to do that, so that we could actually build this big city which is all about gameplay.”
Mirror’s Edge‘s striking art direction produced an environment that feels familiar to those who live or work in cities but conjures a futuristic vibe with it’s use of colour and angles; Mirror’s Edge Catalyst‘s development upon this is an exciting prospect.
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst will launch on 26th February, 2016.
Mon Aug 24, 2015 1:04 pm
