She's not very happy, you see.

As these things go, Faith of Mirror's Edge once had quite a lot of gameplay dialogue, but due to the break in "immersion" it caused, it ended up being axed at the last minute, according to writer Rhianna Pratchett.

Personally we'd find it a bit weird hearing Faith speak much more than she does during the gameplay bits, but it is interesting. What about you?

You mentioned in an interview with Newsarama that a lot of the dialogue from Mirror's Edge was cut. Can you tell us more about what happened with that -- the reasoning behind it and, perhaps, how much of the game story was ultimately removed?

Well firstly, it's not uncommon for quite violent things to happen to a game's narrative during the course of a project; usually because of other factors, such as time or budget constraints. I've been on games where characters and even whole levels have been lost on the rough seas of games development.

It was decided right at the end of the project that it was too intrusive for Faith to speak during levels; that it broke the immersion. In all fairness, this is a difficult thing to balance, as you are working with a first-person perspective. As a result of this (and not getting too far into specifics) the majority of Faith's level dialogue was cut along with other bits and pieces. Prior to this point everything had been structured, written and recorded. So you can imagine that -- given how quiet Faith is during levels -- this was no small amount.

From a narrative perspective it wasn't the best time to be reaching for the axe, and I wasn't involved in the process. But like I said, these things happen. I'm still proud of the world we created and I think we all learned a lot of valuable lessons from the project. And if you can walk away with that, then it's no bad thing. Often the complexities of a story and the realities of game design make writing for this medium rather like trying to stuff a jelly into an envelope.

chautemoc via joystiq.com »