It's really pretty simple IMO...
In just about every first-person game I have ever played online. There are significant numbers of people who try to explore the limits of the level. People set up custom games in halo2 where the objective was to escape the playing field and reach inaccessable areas. There is a whole community in counterstrike based on "surfing", where skilled players take advantage of a physics glitch in the source engine to pull off rather amazing stunts in user created obstacle courses. Take this one step further and you get portal which is just one long series of environmental puzzles.
Even in 3-rd person games such as crackdown and assasin's creed. I often had more fun climbing on the outside of the buildings and getting to difficult to reach areas, than i did with the storyline.
THAT is the target market for this game.
Its not targeting 3rd person action fans, and its not targeting the 3rd person platformer fans, nor the 3rd person adventure.
Its targeting the exploration people. The whole game looks like it has been set up to be one giant environmental playground, if you can think of a cool way to get around an obstacle and you are good enough, then you can probably do it.
1st person vs 3rd is just a really stupid argument in this context.
Narbacular Drop, the student project that got the portal team hired by valve was a 3rd person game. But portal is still a brilliant 1st person experience. The team even recycled several of the puzzles from one to the other, and it still worked fine. Its the style of gameplay that matters, more than the viewpoint.
the only gameplay difference between the 3rd person camera of Gears of War, and the 1st person of Halo, Is that the view is set 2 feet back and slightly to the right, They both have the same basic controls. The real difference is that in halo, you are ARE the masterchief, while in gears of war, you CONTROL marcus fenix.
That is the reason that DICE picked 1st person controls. They wanted truly immersive and intuitive environmental puzzle gameplay. That is why there is no HUD (added a reticle only to address motion sick people), and the character sways and bobs when she moves... If you move the camera out like Gears, all of a sudden the player is reduced from the role of the character, to the role of shoulder fairy. One more step and the player is reduced to almost a spectator.
so in response to those of you who just cant stand the first person perspective... SOD OFF!
This game is just one more in a LONG tradition of environmental(aka jumping) puzzles in first person games, which though oft derided as a distraction, have shown that they can comprise a compelling game experience in their own right. (*cough* portal)
This game is NOT trying to make a first person Prince of Persia, its not even inspired by games like prince of persia.
What it is, is a decent attempt at integrating the environmental puzzles of portal, with the flow of CS:S surf maps, and finally the proper interaction between the character and environment a la Chronicles of Riddick:EFBB (we will see how decent, when the game comes out.)
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BTW:
1. Seeing as every element of this game besides its storyline has already been done before, the only real innovation appearing here is if they manage to get all the elements to work together seamlessly which would be a first. Don't try to play the "innovation" card, its a stupid reason to judge a game anyway. Its more important to do a concept WELL than to do it FIRST.
2.Also anyone with half a brain in their head will realize that 1st person player models are probably HARDER to do properly than 3rd person ones. ESPECIALLY if they include interaction with the environment such as grasping as well.
The average 3rd person player model is only slightly more detailed than any other NPC model (50% extra polys perhaps), and is viewed from similar distances. Additionally, because the distance never changes, the modeler doesn't have to add in any level's of detail simplifying the process even more.
The average 1st person player model usually consists of VERY high poly-count and very large textures, BECAUSE the viewing distance is measured in virtual inches.
This is why you see so many "arms and weapons only" first person setups, the low amount of surface showing counters the fact that each tiny bit has to be highly detailed.
The animations have to be spot on as well. People spend a lot of time looking at their body parts in first person (aka real life). if you don't get the movements and timing right, EVERYONE will notice. Same goes for feet, it doesn't help to just tack legs on if your character can still walk on a tiny ledge with one foot walking on the air.
And if you add in the fact that the main character models in mirror's edge will have to interact properly with dozens of different objects at different speeds, and that the baddies appear to be standard footsloggers, the gap in complexity between the models viewed from third person in Mirror's edge (i.e. the soldiers), and the models viewed from the first person (i.e. your running/leaping/wallwalking legs) just grows.
3.additionally, there are two models for the main character, there is the first person model viewed by the player as part of the HUD, usually just arms + weapons or even with legs. Then there is the second model which is the entire body + weapons, which is the one that the player sees in reflections and sometimes when dead. In this day and age, a First person game has to have BOTH models, which is at least as much as a third person character PLUS the extra work for the first person bits.
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