Η σειρά Mirror’s Edge πέρα από το παρκούρ που είναι και ο πυρήνας του παιχνιδιού, χαρακτηρίζεται και από τον σχεδιασμό των περιβαλλόντων, με την μοντέρνα και καθαρή αισθητική τους. Ωστόσο, σύμφωνα με την παραγωγό του παιχνιδιού, Sara Jansson, αυτή η σχεδιαστική επιλογή είναι επικίνδυνη, καθώς ο κόσμος πολύ εύκολα μπορεί να δώσει την αίσθηση ότι είναι τεχνητός. Γιαυτό το λόγο η DICE αναγκάστηκε να εμπλουτίσει την Frosbite Engine με διάφορα νέα χαρακτηριστικά, όπως ειδική τεχνολογία για αντανακλάσεις, που επετρέψαν στην ομάδα του Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst να αποφύγει τέτοια προβλήματα και ρίσκα.
Παρακάτω ακολουθούν αναλυτικά οι δηλώσεις της Sara.
We have worked really heavily together with Frostbite on a specific reflection technology. […] and we’re probably gonna see in other Frostbite games later as well, but we’re kind of the team that has developed it. It’s a combination of three different reflection technologies that just makes this very clean world come to life with how everything reflects in the environment.
For us it was really important to have that, because since the world is so clean, we need to have that to make sure that it actually comes alive. In many other games we can hide stuff with dust or grit or dirt, here everything is so nice and clean and pristine. We invested quite heavily in this feature when it comes to rendering, and in many other features.
Also, Mirror’s Edge is quite different from other Frostbite games, since first of all we’re not physics-based, we’re more animation-based, and we’re also not building the game on huge terrains, like Battlefield, we’re actually building buildings, and everything is interactable, because everything is gameplay basically. So I think that the streaming technology of Frostbite was really important because we has this huge vista, which is a city. Everthing is made of objects and you need to interact with everything.
So the streaming technology… Without that we couldn’t be doing this without any loading screens, fluidly moving through the city.
It’s actually really advanced to build this type of city. I think that the engine was at the start built for huge terrains, not for huge cities with millions of objects with them. That has been kind of a challenge. We worked together with Frostbite on how to do that, so that we could actually build this big city which is all about gameplay.
