EA's Söderlund discusses Star Wars: Battlefront, Mirror's Edge reboot
EA Games Label vice president Patrick Söderlund revealed new details and insight regarding DICE's upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront and Mirror's Edge games in a recent interview with CVG.
Describing DICE and Star Wars: Battlefront as "a match made in heaven," Söderlund explains that the next Battlefront game was approved at DICE's insistence. "It was almost not happening," Söderlund recalls. "It was just something as boring as resources and availability. The DICE guys Karl Magnus Troedsson and Patrick Bach were talking and I told them we were in dialogues with Disney over this deal and they just looked at me and said, 'Why haven't you spoken to us? What are you doing? We want to make Battlefront.'"
"I didn't anticipate them wanting to work on a license – they've always been new IP or their own IP," Söderlund continued. "But they were just like, 'we would kill to make this game' and the whole studio started talking about it like, 'please give us this game'. That's when I called Frank [Gibeau, EA Labels boss] and I realised we had something here. [...] They begged to do it, the opportunity was there and that's exactly why you'll see a game that will be what it needs to be."
Responding to questions about DICE's recently announced Mirror's Edge reboot, Söderlund reveals that the project is the result of extensive prototyping, and notes the game in its current state is "not possible on the current generation."
"I'll be honest with you: we've been looking at Mirror's Edge for many years and had small prototype teams and incubations around what it could be," Söderlund explained. "But it wasn't until Sara Jansson, who is now the producer on it, came to me and called Karl-Magnus Troedsson and said, 'listen, I have an idea for what this could be'. She presented a vision so inspiring that we were like, 'we have to build this now'."
Söderlund notes that the reboot will address gameplay issues players cited in the original Mirror's Edge, and will focus more on story. "What I can say is we're taking more of an action adventure approach on it than maybe before," Söderlund said. "First-person, running predominantly... This will be more of an action adventure game, but true to what the first one was to a large extent."
"[Mirror's Edge] feels old compared to what's out there today, in design approach and everything," Söderlund admits. "There are still some fresh things in the way that it looks and feels – it still looks really good, actually. But it still feels a little bit old school on its game design and compulsion loops. So we have to bring that forward and change that format. I think the story is another part that could've been a lot better. We didn't deliver upon the fantastic world that we created and the story is a big part in a world like that."
