Some new gameplay videos for Mirror’s Edge showed up on Kotaku today, and I have to say they’re encouraging. It’s not an easy thing to build a new type of game, first-person platforming in this case, but I think they’re at least on the right track.

The first time we saw Mirror’s Edge in action, we got a demonstration of the basic mechanics of the game, but it was highly linear. It looked pretty, but the path the game wanted you to take seemed obvious.

In this one, they seem to be indicating that you have room to improvise. Take a look at the first video around the one minute mark. The game is indicating via its red color scheme that you can go off the ramp and into the tarp below. The player takes a different tack, running along the side of the wall and barely making it to a higher rooftop.

This sort of thing is going to be good if they can pull it off. A game that’s thematically about freedom like Mirror’s Edge should have some freedom to the gameplay as well. If you make everyone stick absolutely to the the safe red-tinged “runner vision” paths, you lose on some excitement from simulated danger.

I’m still reserving judgement on the game itself. There’s about a million ways for DICE to get it wrong, but I’m still rooting for them to get it right.

*You could argue I’m snubbing Jumping Flash! as the first platformer played in a first-person perspective, and you would be both correct and a huge pedant. I think this is different enough to qualify as new for the purposes of the argument that DICE has a huge job on their hands.

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