Mirror's Edge Catalyst Trailer Unveils The Open World And Release Date

Electronic Arts and DICE finally unveiled some intense new gameplay for Mirror's Edge Catalyst, the origin story for main protagonist Faith. The gameplay that EA showcased at E3 features some parkour in the brand new open-world as well as a look at some of the fighting mechanics as the game preps for release on February 23rd, 2016 for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

GamesHQ Media plopped up a video from the E3 conference that gives you a look at the game making the leap from the Unreal Engine 3 to the Frostbite 3. Check it out below.

The trailer is mixed in with some of the cinematics, but we learn a little bit about the oppressive corporate regime that Faith and her family lives under. We see that the corporate oppressors have a strong grasp on every single aspect of the people's lives. Nothing is private, nothing is sacred.

Players get to see how Faith joins up with the rebels, masters her parkour skills and excels at dispensing the bad guys with her expert martial arts abilities.

The gameplay is kind of intermingled a lot with the whole cinematic elements but we get to see how Faith moves and the physics of the parkour in Mirror's Edge Catalyst.

It's hard to tell exactly from the video just how well the physics are adjusted to the current generation of hardware. I always thought that the original Mirror's Edge was a smooth, grounded and well designed experience. The early iterations of the Unreal Engine 3 was oftentimes a little iffy when it came to compatibility in some games, as evident with Too Human and APB: Reloaded. But I thought that Mirror's Edge ran great and the visuals had some striking contrasting tones in its contemporary minimalism with its visual aesthetics.

Just because the Frostbite engine is known for rendering some amazing visuals and physics, that doesn't automatically translate into a game perfectly made for parkour. So finally getting to see how well the Frostbite works with Mirror's Edge is a neat feat. Previously, when the game was known as Mirror's Edge 2 the only thing we saw before was some demo footage of Faith attempting to fight and move around on some flat surfaces but this was the first time we saw Faith running up walls, zip-lining across the buildings and using the environments to perform some attack maneuvers.

I do wonder exactly how many martial arts moves are attached to the parkour and platforming, because it was kind of rare to pull off the combos in the first game while hopping off obstacles and running across walls.

As mentioned at the top of the article, Mirror's Edge 2 is set for release on February 23rd, 2016 for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.