Joss Whedon

That’s the challenge that Mirror’s Edge senior producer Owen O’Brien gave his co-workers at EA DICE, the studio behind the very guns-and-vehicles-driven Battlefield franchise. O’Brien elaborates on how that initial pitch started to shape Mirror’s Edge into what it is today. "If you think about it, what we did was take Battlefield, but [we] went to the opposite extreme," O’Brien says. "Instead of being about big open spaces, it’s now about a focused city. Instead of being about men with vehicles and weapons, it’s now about an unarmed female character out on her own." O’Brien then goes on to discuss how the core free-running/parkour mechanic was established first, and the rest of the game stemmed from that initial concept.

When asked about any particular inspiration for Mirror’s Edge’s fictional city (which he describes as an amalgamation of cities that the developers are fans of), O’Brien freely admits to being heavily influenced by the works of TV/movie writer Joss Whedon (in fact, O’Brien jokes about outright plagiarizing him). He specifically cites Whedon’s director’s commentary in the DVD of Serenity. In the Serenity universe, Whedon said, "The empire isn’t evil — it just thinks it’s right and can’t understand why people wouldn’t want to live by its rules." O’Brien says that at a particular point in the commentary, Whedon noted that "you can’t make other people live by your rules of society, even if your society is better" — and that turn of phrase actually serves as the main catalyst for the concept and feel of the city in ME.

"Even if your society has better health care and cleaner, safer streets, those are just rules. But if people don’t want to live by those rules or be a part of that, they shouldn’t be ostracized or even criminalized. But that is the sort of thing that’s happened in the city," O’Brien says. "Over the years, more and more strict laws have been implemented. They were small things at first, but they eventually became more controlling. Now, it’s not a ’police state.’ People are probably very happy, in fact. They’re just very controlled. [They have] given up personal freedom for a comfortable life. That’s one of the central issues of the game: How much freedom are you willing to give up for a comfortable life? So there are people on the outer edge of the city who have an inherent distrust of technology, which is where the concept of Runners [Runners are sort of like data couriers; the main character, Faith, is a Runner — Ed.] came from."

(...)

Click on the link for more :

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3168631