I kinda have to agree with Roman5 on this one. Sure, we have no context, and I also agree with most of bansama's points, but this is indicative of EA's intentions and we've seen this pattern before. One game does reasonably well on it's niche player base, and instead of doing an "improved*" version of it with a realistic budget they pump up a lot of money and appeal for a wider audience. The result most of the times is a game that the original's player base won't like (betrayal!) while the "wider audience" is spread so thin they don't pay any attention to it. The sequel doesn't meet the publisher's sales expectations and the franchise gets canned. Sure we don't have any true info yet, but by my book the comment is enough to get a fan worried.
Now, the question is of course what we understand by improvement, as I'm sure the game makers (or the publishers, at least) do believe they are improving a game when they push in all that generic stuff. For instance, in this particular game you had to run from enemies, most of the time. Most games let you fight off your enemies, Mirror's edge doesn't. I'm sure a lot of people were annoyed at that, right? "Let me shoot down my enemies if I want to!", they'll say. And tons of people enjoy shooting things in the face, such as the CoD crowd, so publishers cater to it and add shooting segments, more CQC moves, etc... and suddenly you find yourself with an action game with some parkour moves. Not saying it will happen, but it is a clear possibility.
Another thing that many games do, but ME doesn't, is exploration. You were always in a hurry and never had time to explore an area. Finding those stupid drops while running away from the cops was insane. I constantly felt like I would enjoy just moving around and exploring the scenario, but I always had to run. Would it be an improvement to let the player have the time to explore, such as in an open world game? Well, I probably would enjoy it more, yes. But, and it's a big but, I would assume the fans of the original ME liked it because the sense of urgency. That was the biggest thing in ME, IMO. Take it away, and wouldn't the core fans be disappointed?
The thing is, it feels like they try to get all games to appeal to everyone at the same time. ME was a niche game, would it have killed EA to make a sequel using a fraction of the usual AAA budget and appeal to the same niche market as before, but with a better story and controls? Sure, it won't sell 5 million, but the original ME did sell a million or so right? Sure, I probably won't like it (like I didn't particularly like the original), but why not aim for that? This one comment implies this route isn't even considered by the bigshots, which is a valid reason of concern.