Merc is dead. The last lead he gave me was to look for Kate at the Shard, the gigantic skyscraper that has dominated the skyline in each and every level of the game so far. Without me telling you, you would know that this was the last level of Mirror’s Edge. It just feels right. Not because the plot is reaching a climax, and not because the game has innovated all it can. Simply because you feel ready. If you think back to the way you stumbled and tripped over those first few levels, you realise how far you’ve come. The game has trained you, for this.

This level is about one thing and one thing only – asking yourself if you’ve learnt how to play the game. Every element of the game is pushed and tested here, not for the sake of it but because it makes you feel stronger. It makes you feel accomplished. Mirror’s Edge is a game about skill, and the accumulation of skill. But it’s not a run-and-gun skillset, it’s something fresh, something new. And that’s what makes it something to be savoured. This is a different kind of ability. This is demonstrated particularly aptly in a superb combat sequence near the start of this level. It’s one I’d recommend you attempt without any form of gun, because if you can get through without firing a shot you know you understand this game.

It’s nice particularly in the way it’s laid out – a lot of doors, ducts, leaps and cover, the sort of level that would be a breeze to move through with an MP5 and the gravity gun, but here becomes more of a ballet-based obstacle course. It’s the most elegantly-designed arena in the game, and clearing it of enemies is extremely satisfying, because it reaffirms just how far you’ve come. These are the hard folks – the ones that’ll take your three-punch combo and kick back afterwards. But here you are. Doing it.

And that’s nice, because as I pointed out before, Mirror’s Edge is a game where you develop behind the monitor, rather than Faith developing. She knows it all, there are no scrolls to find or techniques to discover. She’s a Runner. This level is about you becoming a Runner.

As we progress through the shard, we meet the Lieutenant. He’s here to help us, and Kate, by giving Faith assistance over the radio connection. He stays downstairs to hold off the Pirandello Kruger guards who are now swarming the building. This is a level fraught with combat, which at times trips over itself in the way it forces you to engage people. The trick is to really accept this and go into it strong. It’s a level of combat that you’ve not experienced prior to this point; huge-scale fighting that requires speed and concentration. Disarm windows are smaller, you’re under constant gunfire – it’s tense, while also being liberating.

We take a lift up, but get stopped midway. Before long, we’re out and in the lift shaft itself, pushing acrobatics and jumping accuracy to its limits, with several nasty jumps across huge chasms, with no margin for error. Lifts rush past at high speed, adding yet another element to it. And yet – and this really is key, to the entire level – even if this is your first run through Mirror’s Edge, you’ll feel this is within your grasp.

Isn’t that great? Isn’t that what a game ending is about? An intensifying of emotion, rather than skill requirements? Mirror’s Edge has added to your skill set so naturally that by this point you’re used to the jumps, the timings, working out the next route. Not that you won’t die, but you’ll swing through with a grace you might not have had ten runs ago. While all the time, your skill level is intrinsically linked to the strength of the story. The romantic picture painted of the Runners only works if the player chooses to associate themselves with it. This level achieves that by providing the player with the chance to be a superhero. Nothing stupid, or novel. Instead, larger-scale challenges provide the player with a deeper sense of achievement.

Take the next section as a good example – a blend of path-finding acrobatics, whilst under fire from three snipers, all the while leaping between buildings over endless drops. It’s a fast-switching collection of demanding skills, that still manages to feel simple despite being quite easy to get wrong. The core skills have grown. You’re rolling out of jumps like it’s a reflex reaction now, and you’re beginning to see alternative routes even with Runner vision on. You’re becoming better.

Once you’re clear of this section, either by force or by gymnastics, the game space takes you up to a much more daunting encounter with the police. It’s the last big fight of the entire game, locked in a room with several Pirandello Kruger soldiers. You’re going to die. And you’re going to die a lot.

It’s a ludicrously well-contained fight. Stairwells, blind corners, dead spots and the occasional vault, all combining to make a playground that’s simply laid out and immensely stressful. On the one hand, you’re a professional now – even the shorter disarm time of the Pirandello Kruger guards isn’t enough to stop your nimble fingers. But at the same time, you’re still making mistakes, you’re not thinking quick enough, running directly at gun-toting soldiers from a long distance back. You die, you learn, you try again.

I can think of very few game endings that satisfied me. There’s an unwritten rule that the game should follow a ‘learning curve’ that peaks at the final boss battle, but Mirror’s Edge has few events that could be described as boss battles, and it certainly has no final boss. Instead, it does that very admirable thing, by giving you a hero’s ending. You don’t need to prove yourself. You’ve already done that, you got this far. You’re standing on the roof of the Shard, and from here you can see the New Eden mall, the canals you died in so many times, the complex jumps you made at the construction site.

As Jack-knife leaps into the chopper with Kate, you run, leap, slide and leap again. There’s pretty good odds you’ll even get it right the first time around, too. Bullets are flying, you’re getting hit of course, but as you cut through the air into the chopper, you feel like you really finished something. There’s a sense of satisfaction there that can’t be equalled just by beating the crap out of a slightly larger monster. You were given an acting part in a cutscene, rather than just asked to sit back and watch the credits roll.

And I don’t know, but it just feels that in a year full of games that tried to be different but ended up providing more of the same, a game like Mirror’s Edge that brazenly walks out trying to be different, trying to see what gamers will respond to, is really quite important. I’ve had a few months to think over what Mirror’s Edge meant to me, and I still feel the same as I did after first playing it. It’s the quintessential rough gem – a game that stumbles off the beaten path. But for all the overblown, pseudo-nonsense I’ve spouted whilst praising it, Mirror’s Edge does fulfil that other fundamental quality – it’s fun. I had fun playing it. It’s now a mere ten pounds from most games retailers, a price which makes it truly unmissable.

This blog is an attempt to convey, in as strong terms as possible, why that is. Finally – and I do mean finally, as I’ve made so many laboured points over the course of writing The Runner – I just want to say this: the games industry lacks two things currently. The first is a culture of open source material, the sort that allows software in general to flourish and share ideas. Developers are too keen to keep their cards close to their chest, and this prevents innovations really making a difference, because other developers are hesitant to spend time trying to reinvent other people’s technologies.

But that’s another story. The important, second thing that is missing is big developers willing to take financial risks in order to test the water for smaller developers. EA and DICE are big names in the industry, and Mirror’s Edge could well have flopped – indeed, in comparison to some of the releases we’ve seen this year, it did. But it’s been done now, and its performance and its ideas are hugely valuable to developers, be they first-party, third-party or independent. These are the games that mean something, in my opinion, because they aren’t content to make a nest on the mainstream and wait for the money to come in.

Thanks to all those who kept with the blog while it was running. For those who haven’t played Mirror’s Edge yet, perhaps this should be your next port of call.

Happy Running.

It turns out that Celeste has been playing us, working for Icarus all along. She’s the assassin we pinned down last time, and though she temporarily corners us we manage to disarm her and escape, nuking the warehouse in the process. She says she was simply tired of running, that she wanted to be able to live. We don’t get long to think about this however – Kate, Faith’s sister who was arrested on suspicion of murder, is being transferred across the city today. We’re going to break her out.

On my first play through this run, three extremely nice moments occurred, and each one tells us a little bit about what cinema and character association means in a videogame. It’s a short run – we’re going to move across town to a weapons drop, free Kate, and make our way down to her. The only problem is, the Icarus runners are on our tail, and this is a far cry from the early chases where Hollywood bullets lick our heels. These enemies shoot to kill.

It’s extraordinarily easy to die here – the tasers that the Icarus runners have on them completely disable Faith, slowing her to a crawl and giving them time to close the distance – which they inevitably do, turning you into a pile of fleshy mush. However, after a few sections of evading them, a leap between buildings prompts a city cop to emerge from a doorway, and he’s packing. He chances a shot at Faith, misses, and ends up the wrong side of her heel.

The disarm move blends into a one-eighty about turn, and Faith unloads the clip into the two Icarus runners making the leap across to her building. They both fall down. It’s the only way to kill them, and suddenly everything is safe again. It’s an amazingly weight moment. On successive playthroughs, I bypassed the guard and outran the lot; this is by no means an action you have to take. But doing it feels balletic and absolutely right in the context of the game and the character. It’s something you can tell others without knowing if they’ll have seen it. It’s a share-worthy moment.

Once the area’s clear, we leap up and around some construction equipment, finding ourselves finally inside the construction site where the weapon drop is. Slowly stepping into the base of a roofless skyscraper is one of the game’s most beautiful moments. The sudden jolt of realisation – that yes, you are going to have to climb it – is almost as sweet.

The climb is probably the most demanding section of the entire game, requiring a huge array of moves from walljumps to swings, with a myriad of different ways of getting up. It’s a playground; an acrobatic sandbox with a great sense of emptiness. Outside, the citizens muddle on by, but the sheet glass separating you from the rest of the world is like a thick insulation. It’s just you, and the concrete.

A mistimed jump means certain death, with the usual rush of adrenaline that follows such.

But the truth is that completing this task is a landmark moment. The first time you attempt this it might take you five minutes, it might take you the best part of an hour. So hitting the top floor and seeing the ventilation duct, that’s an important moment. That says something about you, and your development towards being Faith herself. It’s not a shareable moment, of course – everyone will hit the top of that skyscraper eventually. But it’s a good personal moment. It’s one to share with yourself. We leap up to the duct and make our way around to the weapons drop.

The vantage point looks straight down the road that Kate’s van will be coming down, any second. Faith grabs the rifle, shoulders it, and takes a peek down the scope. Merc, our guardian angel, tells us to shoot for the engine. A second later, the convoy rounds the corner.

The gunshot meets its target, sends the convoy sprawling across the road. The only thing left to do is make our way downstairs. The next building, it turns out, isn’t as empty as the last.

The problem with the sniping section is that it’s neither a moment to share nor is it a moment that’s personal. It’s entirely scripted, aside from the game, and so cripples a lot of the feelings of surprise or accomplishment that you might otherwise have had. It’s a moment integral to the plot, perhaps, and having Faith take the shot in a cutscene would certainly feel out of place. But it’s the game once again trying too hard to inject drama and variety, when it already has a very good system in place.

The next, and final, room is a great example of this – a spiral staircase with several armed guards, and a collection of platforms and other objects hanging in the central drop. Acrobatics, gunplay, running – they’re all viable approaches and they all feel like the right way, despite being completely separate.

Ultimately, Mirror’s Edge has a lot to teach about the generation of truly inspiring moments, but in order to see this you have to look away from the places where they’re trying. It’s curious, but also underlines just how beautiful the core gameplay is.

We pluck Kate out of the van and tell her to head for Merc while we lead the Blues away. Later that evening, we finally lose our tail and make it back to Merc’s lair.

It appears they found out where Merc was holing up. Kate’s gone, and Merc’s been mortally wounded. Kate’s been taken to the Shard, the mayor’s headquarters, but he doesn’t know why. Finally, the building which has dominated the skyline of Mirror’s Edge for so long is now within reach. Next week, Faith makes her final run.

Faith has made her way to the docks, where a ship belonging to Burfield is sitting. We’re hoping to find some information about Icarus there; maybe even track down the assassin who killed Ropeburn. The docks are entirely fenced off, however, so we’re going to take a ride inside a truck. Every gamer’s play through Mirror’s Edge will vary in style. This is the level where the game starts to get to me. This is the level where I kill.

The truck drops me off inside the tanker, with several armed guards nearby. Gone are the light rent-a-cops with pistols asking you to slow down; for the rest of the game, it’s body armour and assault rifles. Mirror’s Edge was criticised for the way its fight-or-flight mechanic descended into tight combat situations towards the end, but it’s as good a tonal shift as any. I’m not delivering a package here and I’m not running away. I’ve come for something specific. And I’m going to get it.

This is my first kill of the entire run so far. Every time I’ve played Mirror’s Edge, it’s always been this soldier. His friend gets disarmed, and he gets two in the chest. The guns seem oppressively huge, swamping the screen as Faith lumbers along holding them. They slow her to a crawl – cutting out most of her acrobatic abilities and massively reducing her running speed. But there’s a payoff, because they’re frighteningly accurate, and everything in Mirror’s Edge is extremely fragile.

The guns don’t make the game easy, make no mistake. You’re a sitting duck while armed, and since you’ve only got one clip it’s easy to find yourself drawing out enemies as you might in a regular FPS, only to be thrown back into the world of The Runner after firing thirty rounds. Faith won’t pick up ammo, or reload a weapon from other ones fallen on the floor. Once a gun is finished, she stylishly chucks it to one side and resumes her everlasting sprint. After clearing out the first soldiers, backup arrives. And sprint is exactly what I do.

The opening of this level is a series of these encounters – beautifully-designed areas with a variety of gaps and walls for Faith to use to her advantage when faced with large numbers of armed enemies. Whether you gun your way through or fight, you’re going to have to use force. If you don’t, this section quickly becomes frustrating, so learning to overcome it either through martial arts or weaponry is crucial, and sets you up for the final few runs to come. It’s these fights that show you how well Mirror’s Edge can do high-speed combat, even if it’s not what it does best. Sliding under closing doors, disarming people with a flying kick – it all adds to this feeling of power and movement, all feels like it’s coming directly from you. Which, by this part of the game, it almost certainly is.

After passing through this section, and further on through two jumping puzzles which are among the hardest in the game to pull off, you emerge on the deck of the ship. We need to make our way to the other side of the deck, but there’s a sniper waiting to pick us off, so Faith has to pick her route carefully using cover and avoiding the laser trail showing the sniper’s line of sight. This is extremely frustrating at times, as the sniper will use explosive barrels to try and push you out of hiding, and if he lands a shot on you it’ll knock you down to walking pace again.

By the time I reach the end of this section, I always feel energetic and angry. The sniper is irritating, preventing progress from the very first step outside, and as you move closer to the hiding spot you begin to prepare yourself for taking him out. It’s anger. It’s a desire to kill for once. Instead of the sniper, though, you’re intercepted by something quite different.

It’s the assassin that we saw running from Ropeburn, who we chased through the New Eden Mall. There’s no way you can be holding a gun right now – the acrobatics put paid to that – so you’re stuck with hand-to-hand. In contrast to the earlier gunplay, this is part-celebration, part-test of your knowledge of blocks, disarms and fighting. The rogue runner is extremely powerful, the setting is beautiful, and you’re probably still pissed off from a half dozen quickloads. It’s a frantic encounter.

Once you land a disarm on your opponent, they’ll make a break for it, leaving you on your back. The ensuing chase is a fluid one – always making you feel like you’re one step behind (indeed, fall too far back and it is possible to fail) and yet hitting the balance between cinema and challenge. It’s certainly not simple, but it’s easy enough that you’re likely to succeed and feel good about yourself. Being able to run the entire course in one go makes you connect with Faith far more strongly than a thousand hours of exposition would.

When you finally pin down the fugitive runner, another fight breaks out. Hand-to-hand with guards and police lasts for just a few punches, at which point they’ll either go flying or you’ll be shot dead. This fight stands out in Mirror’s Edge, because it works on an entirely different level. If you don’t disarm, you can’t win. So the punching and kicking become part of a toolkit, rather than a button to hammer. Your opponent has special moves, including a stun and a knockback, and getting caught by these too many times can spell the end of your run.

It’s this ending fight, rather than the encounters earlier, that show the promise of the combat in Mirror’s Edge. The sequel need not contain any more need or opportunity to duke it out with the police or the special forces. But a few focused, elegant fights with strong characters that match Faith can really add something to the immersion, to the feeling of being The Runner. This fight can last for a few seconds, or it can go on for several minutes. Eventually, though, you have to be better. Once you’re better, you’re allowed to win.

Apologies for the lack of update last week – life got in the way, as life often does. Hopefully the last two (or three) segments will be on time. Thanks for continuing to read along!

For all the praise and worship I give Mirror’s Edge, it is just a game at its base. This episode is a good reminder of how that affects the game, both positively and negatively. We’re finally going to get a good look at what Pirandello Kruger, the private security firm with ties to Ropeburn, are up to. On our way, we’ll meet two of the game’s key facets – combat, and platforming.

The infiltration of Pirandello Kruger has several sections, moving more and more towards the centre of their operation and shutting down Faith’s freedom of movement. Mirror’s Edge is classified as a “first-person action adventure” which puts it in a pretty rare club, as well as being a choice that drew a lot of criticism from some gamers who found the proximity to the action to be confusing. Nevertheless, DICE persevered in the name of immersion, hoping that seeing the world of running and leaping through the eyes of Faith would provide more of a visceral experience. They were right, I think.

Pirandello Kruger’s borders are patrolled by a host of soldiers. For a runner like Faith, finding the fastest route through the complex is key. When we talked about momentum and stopping, I said the combat was a problem for Mirror’s Edge because it disrupts the flow of the game, the flow of running. It’s a problem that runs throughout the game – I can spend time taking out a sniper and using their rifle, but it’s time I shouldn’t really have. Instead, I dispatch the sniper and make a leap for it.

“Tacked-on” is a favourite reviewer word; god knows I’ve used it. The combat isn’t quite tacked-on in Mirror’s Edge, but it does feel unwelcome. It’s a temptation that sits in on the action, for the sake of tradition. Guards drop their weapons, and you can pick them up. The game does its best to limit this with some beautifully apt mechanics – Faith doesn’t carry ammo, so when the clip’s empty you’ll just ditch the gun. Similarly, Faith is much slower when carrying anything heavier than a pistol, and some acrobatics become impossible. So there’s a penalty. But nevertheless, you’re still left with the choice of guns blazing, in a game that’s all about being weak.

Once we’re inside, there’s more guards to contend with. This level is a good example of the full spectrum of combat in Mirror’s Edge. Here’s, Faith is shut into a series of walkways – the emphasis is pushed even further towards evasion over confrontation, because the long approaches mean that charging a soldier down is met with a sharp put-down. I manage to disable one of the patrols before dashing through the offices into the storage.

When I’m leaping between buildings, shimmying up drainpipes and tumbling down the slopes rooves of skyscrapers, it’s hard to think of the word ‘platformer’. ‘Action adventure’ is obviously just a grown-up euphemism for it, but even that doesn’t sit right. The rooftop freerunning vibe seems completely at odds to what the word platformer conjures up in my mind. But when we’re inside, Mirror’s Edge has a tendency to lose it. And suddenly, the label seems more appropriate.

There’s still a certain elegance to parts of it – the next episode in particular features a few beautiful platforming challenges. But rooms like the warehouse come off as very simple platforming sections. Crates and shelves – solve. They’re a rarity, but they stand out against the very natural pace and flow of the open air levels. This continues into the next section, where I’m tasked with descending a deep shaft in several small stages.

This is slightly more taxing, but every fall and broken bone and quickload and repeat of it all begins to grind down. This is Mirror’s Edge at its worst, it’s the Mirror’s Edge that a lot of people remember. Because if you can’t do a section, unlike many other games, things do tend to slip into a cycle. It’s a symptom of being a skill-based game – creativity can’t help you solve this tricky jump.

This episode is where the combat and the platforming show through the strongest. It doesn’t leave a great taste in the mouth.

After making it to the bottom, we’re into the main complex. It’s bright, beautiful, clean and there’s a bit more space. It’s all back into the usual Mirror’s Edge feel. We’re here to find out the truth behind Project Icarus.

Project Icarus, it turns out, is designed to shut down the runner network for good, by training and turning a series of runners loyal to Pirandello to hunt down people like Faith. Her discovery of this is broken up by something else – two Icarus runners themselves.

This is more familiar. It’s time to run.

It’s an abstract collection of blocks, walkways and leaps. Just basic platforming, a lazy reveal of what’s humming underneath the crisp white veneer. Not that we notice, because the Icarus runners are frighteningly fast. But once we break out of the Pirandello building, we’re in more familiar territory. We’re back in our comfort zone.

There are valid criticisms to be made of Mirror’s Edge, but it’s important to realise them in context. It fails at the things that, broadly, it doesn’t need – the fiddly puzzle-based jumping, the need to engage soldiers in combat. It fails at them because of a hesitance to leave them behind – once we hit the rooftops, it’s a rush of fresh air and we’re in the open again. Pathways and obstacles and running and movement.

It’s not an excuse, but it helps to realise what Mirror’s Edge is evolving from, in order to appreciate what it is.

When Rhianna Pratchett gave an interview to Gamasutra and explained that she was brought in to write a story long after the game was designed, many people were surprised. I think there are two very good reasons for this. The first one, which many picked up on, is that this way of working seems counterintuitive. The second very good reason is that this meant that the game designers did almost as much writing as Pratchett herself. Because the world itself speaks as loudly as its narrative does.

One of its major themes is the notion of freedom, governmental control and personality. Faith tells us that the city we run in was once normal – it had a crime rate, it had lowlifes, it had slums. During a period of civil unrest, a variety of social reform laws were passed and a powerful police force installed to keep the rules enforced. What we see in Mirror’s Edge is the aftermath – not a ragtag rebellion, but a more realistic sense of pure, simple acceptance. No-one cares.

Faith does, however, which is why she’s going to take Ropeburn’s place at a meeting today in the New Eden Mall, still under construction. Whoever killed Pope is going to be there. Faith talks things over with Celeste before moving on.

The commentary on the power of government is barely hidden in the narrative, but it comes through in a lot of the game content too. The only people you ever meet in-game, besides the occasional brush with a fellow runner, are police; armed soldiers looking to kill you. The default position is one where you are in constant conflict with those in authority, and that acts as a powerful partner to what’s spoken in the cutscenes.

Faith sneaks past a police convoy and nips across some railway tracks. The New Eden Mall is due to open in a day or so, making it an ideally deserted meeting place. Once we pass the train tracks, I can make my way up to open ground, the lead-up to New Eden.

It’s along this route, in amidst several ambushes by riot police, that we meet another of the game’s key themes.

The vast, empty, single-colour buildings are only ever broken up for one reason – to bark slogans at you. Commercialism is something that often goes hand-in-hand with commentary on modern governments, and everything from the lifts to the subway stations are pleading with you to buy, hire and rent. They’re perfectly pitched too, leaving a sickly taste in the mouth after reading them without appearing too overtly ‘commercial’.

The concept of Mirror’s Edge can sound trite to some – you’re a noble freerunner, leaping across a white, faceless city in order to fight back against a corrupt government and the forces of capitalism. But it never feels that aggressive when it’s being played. Yes, you are ultimately trying to unravel the political conspiracy that killed Robert Pope. But as for the subtexts, the social comment and so forth, it’s really left as an exercise to the player. You may not even notice it for the first few missions. And this may make it even more thought-provoking when you do.

Then there’s the colour pallette. I spoke much earlier on about how colour is used in Mirror’s Edge to direct the player, but the impact of colour is made by the blank canvas onto which it’s placed. The whiteness of the city seems normal from the outside, but once we venture inside it becomes too pervasive. It’s all part of the veneer the game tries to give the city. It’s not just clean – it’s too clean. As if it wants to repel you from every surface that you touch.

These themes work together, and they’re designed to work together. It’s not merely a case of Pratchett brushing her narrative on top of the finished game; the game itself was designed to speak and to communicate without the need for the story.

I run into a good example of this just outside the mall. A flock of birds scurries away into the air as I approach – when inside, down in basements and corridors, rats will scarper to and fro. Outside, the birds flock and fly above the city. They’re subtle visual cues, but unlike the colour they’re designed to be conscious ones. You’re watching, and you know what you’re being shown.

The mall swiftly turns into an ambush. The assassin deftly escapes through a squad of police officers, and I’m forced to take to the rafters to get out.

Here the narrative themes of escape, of fleeing, are conveyed in gaming’s most powerful way – through interaction. While Faith is often given the opportunity of combat, in many positions it’s made an impossibility. In the New Eden Mall, the police presence forces me to find another way around. I take to the roof, and make one of the trickiest jumps in the game so far.

If you were going to deconstruct a videogame such as Deus Ex or Planescape you’d probably find a larger number of themes and of layers of meaning than you would in Mirror’s Edge. But Mirror’s Edge is a game with a simple message to give; the beauty is in how it presents it. If anything, it benefitted from the late inclusion of a writer, as the impact of this appears to be that its story has become part of the game itself. The themes of exclusion, of being chased, of the acceptance of oppression; these are all conveyed to the player not just in the cut-scenes and the set pieces, but in the world they play through, the small incidental sights along the way, and the very actions they perform in each level.

It all adds up to that big word – immersion. Because by making you feel part of its agenda, Mirror’s Edge draws you further into the character it wants you to be.

]]> http://bluecasket.sekritforum.com/runner/?feed=rss2&p=205 1 http://bluecasket.sekritforum.com/runner/?p=130 http://bluecasket.sekritforum.com/runner/?p=130#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:50 +0000 The Runner http://bluecasket.sekritforum.com/runner/?p=130 I’m a solitary kind of person, and I think it pays to be that way in a city sometimes. I don’t dislike individuals, but I’m against the idea of people generally. Closing the door to my room shuts away the drone of commuters for good; they don’t figure into my run.

Mirror’s Edge doesn’t have people in it, but it does have individuals. There are fewer than ten speaking parts in the game, and each character is barely fleshed out. In fact, we’ve met all the speaking parts already – Faith’s sister, Kate; the rogue runner, Merc; our fellow runner, Celeste; the ex-colleague Jacknife; the shady Ropeburn and Kate’s superior, Lt. Miller. In a game where everything is pared down to the absolute minimum, the cast is similarly sparse.

In fact, Mirror’s Edge isn’t so much a game about people as it is about their absence. The Runner’s job is necessarily a lonely one – leaping the rooftops where no-one can monitor their movement, hiding in alleys and deserted buildings, seeing no-one but the next messenger in the chain. That loneliness is reflected in the game’s attitude – to level design, to narrative, to its score. While there are plenty of indications that the world is inhabited, the actual citizens are conspicuously absent from every place you run through. If you see someone, the chances are they’re not friendly.

I’m on my way to see someone very unfriendly indeed. From the phone conversation we snooped on in the last run, Ropeburn seems to be involved in the assassination of Robert Pope. He’s meeting someone not far from here, and I need to be there to hear what’s being said. It’s a short leap across the city, but everywhere is powerfully desolate. Advertising slogans bark down on no-one but the player. Building sites, warning signs, lights left on in rooms – everything hints at life going on behind the scenes.

Mirror’s Edge has no multiplayer modes. There is a leaderboard for Time Trials, it’s true. But there’s no co-op, no real-time racing and no deathmatch combat. It would be quite easy to tack these game modes on, quite simple to slot in a capture-the-bag mode that combined acrobatics and combat. It’s the sort of thing you’d see in most games, but not in Mirror’s Edge. It has a perverse but very admirable desire to be a single-player game; and that is exactly what it achieves.

Note that there are many games which are single-player in the strictest sense, but strive to be multi-player – that is, they want to add an extra ‘human’ character alongside you. Half-Life 2 is so intent on providing you with a companion that they spent dozens of hours researching and refining the actions of the people you fight against, particularly your female companion Alyx. Mirror’s Edge shirks every bit of this, leaving you alone in the desolate utopia. No backup, no sidekicks, no uncanny valley. You are alone.

It’s this, I feel, that provides the soporific effect I feel when running through the urban wilderness that Mirror’s Edge provides. The only human outlines I see are enemies, to be dispatched quickly or avoided. Other than that, I am barrelling through white and concrete, below an impossible sky, with the solemn, sharp beauty of the soundtrack accompanying me.

I arrive at Ropeburn’s meeting to find out that the other party is none other than Lt. Miller himself. There’d better be a good explanation for this. Running up to confront the two of them, I find Miller gone and Ropeburn very much still here. He grabs me and throws me down to a lower level of the building. There’s the briefest of gaps to disarm Ropeburn, in what is probably the most frustrating reaction-based moment in the game. But when you get it, there’s a very satisfying set-piece that leaves him hanging over the edge.

He talks. But as I offer him a hand up, an assassin in the next building along takes a shot and removes the old man from the equation. The cops are here. What’s the betting they didn’t see the assassin.

On the run again, I drop down an elevator shaft and make my way towards the subway. It’s deserted, but the feeling of something being present pervades.

It’s a strange and very powerful feeling, akin to dreaming about being in a city. Your brain can’t find the energy to create all of these imaginary people, so instead it just tells you that they were once here – just around the corner perhaps, or just about to arrive. Through the subway station and past some riot police, silhouettes rush past on subway trains, going to a place that you’ll never see.

It’s time for me to ride the subway too. Fittingly, I won’t be down with the rest of the travellers.

Multiplayer gaming, particularly when played with people you know well, is a very sociable experience. I’ve been playing a lot of Left4Dead and Team Fortress 2 of late, and the chatter that rings out over headsets and the gentle competition makes the experience of playing Mirror’s Edge even more contrasting. It’s powerfully fresh; it sends my mind back to my earliest days of gaming, to games like Manic Miner which were desolate and lonely simply because that was how things were – sometimes for technical reasons, sometimes for lack of ideas.

Now we’re connected to millions of gamers and thousands of communities through the web, games that consciously decide to make you feel alone really stand out. Again, I don’t mean experiences like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which most certainly do not aim to make you feel alone despite not having real humans playing the main campaign with you. But games such as Introversion’s, like Tale of Tales‘, and like Mirror’s Edge – they isolate the player in order to heighten awareness of the game itself. I’ve noticed this because every time I play through Mirror’s Edge, I’m captivated by the visuals, no matter how fast I run through. It was effortless to take these screenshots, because you are made so aware of your surroundings.

The city itself is the only main character besides Faith. It sounds like game design for pseuds, but it’s true. It’s just you and the road.

]]> http://bluecasket.sekritforum.com/runner/?feed=rss2&p=130 3 http://bluecasket.sekritforum.com/runner/?p=37 http://bluecasket.sekritforum.com/runner/?p=37#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:00:05 +0000 The Runner http://sekritforum.com/storybook/mirror/?p=37 I spent the day sat behind a desk answering email and trying desperately not to fix bugs in software. I’m spending the night leaping tall buildings in a bound, a roll and a bodyslam. Jim Rossignol posits in his book, This Gaming Life, that games are good because they relieve the quintessential human disease – boredom.

Jim doesn’t know the half of it.

I’m here to follow Jack-knife’s lead and look for Ropeburn, the retired wrestler who knows something about Pope’s murder. His office isn’t far from here, and it might give me something to use.

There are a lot of things games can do to relieve boredom in the player; to excite them, to set their pulse or their mind racing and to take them beyond their desk, chair and monitor. Games like Call of Duty 4 thrust you into a world that is intricately balanced, a set of dominoes waiting to topple as you run past them. You don’t get to push most of them, but that’s not the point – they’re still crashing all around you, and that’s the sensation that sets you off. But I think there’s something more powerful at work here, something that’s unique to gaming.

UK games magazine Edge reviewed Mirror’s Edge, and in their closing remarks they make a comment which seemed rather strange: “‬The flight-not-fight ethic … ‬hides an inconvenient truth:‭ ‬it’s more enjoyable when taken at your own pace”. What I think the reviewer means here is that it’s satisfying to take time to assess the obstacles ahead and plan a route, and this is partly true. The first stages of this level see me leaping through rooftops unhindered by the police, a case of just running and jumping. It’s peaceful. But it’s not Mirror’s Edge.

In a film, immersion is a force that flows one-way. It’s sent like a radio signal out from the projection screen onto the audience, through the sound and images being thrown up there. In gaming, I believe, it’s a two-way process. A game cannot immerse you on its own. You have to be willing. We’ll talk about this more later. For now, we’ve found Ropeburn’s office. Pretty simple. He has a chat on the phone with someone, and then leaves in a huff.

We’ve got our lead on Ropeburn – he’s meeting a friend who seems to know something about what happened, and he admits to framing Kate over the phone. He’ll get his comeuppance in time. For now, we need a route out. The office opens onto a large-plan atrium. There’s an exit on the roof, but by the time we’re halfway up there the Blues arrive.

Whilst it would undeniably be nice to take this section at my own pace, the fact remains that I am not an acrobat, or a free-runner here – I’m breaking the law, I’m wanted by the police, I have a role to play in the world. The game does a lot of fill-in for my brain here, it removes a lot of the need for imagination and improvisation. But just as books can’t show me the visual reality of the world, games cannot – indeed, should not – show me the actions of the main character, because it’s my job. I am The Runner.

So I run.

This is one of the greatest, simplest truths about games – they offer you a role in the story they’re presenting you. It sounds obvious – it is obvious, and it’s been noted by journalists and gamers for years. But what we tend not to appreciate is what that role entails. Like any role, we’re given a script, a cast of supporting actors, a setting. But we are still an actor, we still have to play the role ourselves. We bring to the game our own imagination, we have to agree to at least try to suspend our disbelief, and to pretend to be the person we’re being offered.

I’m not advocating lazy design. Mirror’s Edge demands of you that you play it with heart. You have to play it like a Runner, you have to play it like Faith. If you don’t, you’ll be left feeling how the Edge reviewer felt. Empty. Panicked. Overworked. Feeling like you need time to breathe or think. You don’t; you just need to try harder to be part of the game.

I say this because a truly exhilarating moment is coming up. But it’s one that is reduced to boredom and mediocrity unless you believe in the game.

The police are closing in on Faith, so she needs a quick way out. Merc whispers that there might be exit through the construction site up ahead. There are choppers dropping off armed police all over the shop, though, so the route there isn’t easy. It’s a fight to the top through scaffolding, with a long drop if I make a mistake.

I don’t have to run through this. It’s designed as a series of pockets of action, with breathing space in between. But I don’t stop.

It’s not out of impatience, or frustration, it’s because I’m a Runner. This is what I am supposed to do.

I reach the top of the crane. The city is huge, bright and wonderful all around me. Gunfire is licking off the metal, and if I stand still for too long to admire the view it’s going to start hitting me. But I’m not standing around. I’m running.

If you calculate that jump, if you think about it or pause even for an instant, almost all of the excitement is taken away. Doing it on instinct, you’re rewarded with an adrenaline hit, and a sense of heroism. The game wants to make you the hero. It’s its only purpose, really. But it can only do that if you’re willing to play the role of a hero, and to play that role the way the game expects you to.

It’s one of a selection of astoundingly well-judged moments in the game. All it asks you to do is all games have ever asked you to do – play along with them.

I’m looking to find a man named Jack-knife. He used to be a Runner, but he got a better offer so now he spends his time leaping around rooftops for someone else. He should be able to help me find out a little about what happened to Pope, the dead politician. If you’ve decided to play this game, this will be the first level you swear at.

To get to Jack-knife I’m going to take to the canals. The waterways, which run underneath the city through a vast system of pipes and tunnels, can be entered by running down a long channel. As I leap down into it, a helicopter veers over, and a guard opens fire on me.

This is not the playful helicopter I ran with a few episodes back. This one is happy to shoot you if you don’t get moving, and so I immediately start pounding concrete to get to the other end. Ultimately, though, it’s still a long, narrow corridor with only one exit and little cover. I get shot. I fall over. I try again.

Mirror’s Edge tries to be your friend, and the best friend it can be at that. And it is a good friend – it doesn’t let you get lost, it doesn’t overwhelm you with backstory, it doesn’t overburden you with a clunky control system. It will, however, get you killed a lot.

The trick, for those playing along at home, is to take breaks during your run to hide behind pillars and alcoves. They’re few and far between, but it’s just about possible if you’re quick. I only know this because a friend of mine has started running Mirror’s Edge too, and when I told him about how I find this section of the game, he explained his technique.

So is this a case of poor design, or does the problem exist on the other side of the monitor? It’s both. But we’ll come to that later. We’ve still got to find this guy.

The gutter-like canal leads us to some maintenance access ducts, which in turn lead us to a resevoir-like structure. As Faith carefully makes her way down to the bottom, Mirror’s Edge presents a series of walljumps of increasing difficulty and complexity. But it’s only a small step each time, enabling even first-time players to breeze through without much thought. This is where the game shines. You’re learning how it works, and you barely even have to think about it. It just happens. It flows along with your natural progression through the level. It feels great.

Passing through the underground systems and climbing out of an identical reservoir into the daylight again, I’m presented with something a bit different to what I saw coming down. Five shotgun-toting policemen. Worse still, my exit is blocked off by barbed-wire fencing, meaning I’ll need extra height to make it over the barrier – I can’t just run and vault over. I have to do that thing that I’m not supposed to do on a Run. I have to stop.

Mirror’s Edge is such a special product in what it aspires to be. It’s astoundingly unique, it tries so hard to do away with the things that many games include out of nothing more than a sense of duty. Guns have no ammo – once the clip’s been fired, you have to throw it away. There’s no on-screen HUD; not for health, not for waypoints, not for anything. But every now and again, something slips in. Something that they felt the game needed, to make sure players still felt at home. Stopping is one of them.

Because there aren’t many games solely focused on movement. But Mirror’s Edge is so close to one, that when you’re forced to stand still and consider your surroundings it’s like coming down off an adrenaline high. You don’t merely come back down to where you were before, you actually crash a bit lower. The frustration that kicks in is almost immediate. Why do I have to stop? I’m running.

It’s why hiding from the helicopter, as well as trying to ambush the policemen I now find myself faced with, is intrinsically less fun than, navigating the aqueduct. Because although the dangers of death were the same, the solutions to the former involve stopping and waiting, while the solution to aqueduct jumps involves running and moving. Running and moving is what Mirror’s Edge is all about. Remember when I said the game’s major resource was Momentum? Asking you to stop is the equivalent of cleaning you out.

I bluff my way through, knocking a few guards out and then vaulting three trucks to get over the fence. I get some buckshot in my back on the way out, but it’s worth it. I’ve found Jack-knife.

This is your reward for everything that’s gone before. A reminder for why you played this far, why you were playing the game in the first place. Jack-knife runs off, and it’s up to you to chase him. Fall behind, and it’s game over – but as I said before, the punishment here is bearable, because the solution is just to be faster. Be better. The answers lie in the Running, not in the waiting. And so you’ll try, and try, and try again until you know every hop, skip and leap necessary to nail the bastard down.

And you’ll feel satisfied. Not cheated, not challenged, not even triumphant. You don’t feel any animosity towards the game, any more than you’d feel animosity towards your gym equipment. It just asked you to be faster. And you did.

Frustration in games is a funny thing. You’d think it was all down to the design of the game, and not doing stupid things that feel unfair. But really, it’s about staying true to the philosophy of the game. Frustrating games aren’t badly put together, they just aren’t telling the player what’s expected of them clearly enough. Mirror’s Edge tells you to run. Yes, it’ll let you down sometimes. But you’ll forgive it, each and every time it lets you off your leash and lets you breathe.

In screenshots, Mirror’s Edge tends to look very white. In actual fact, colour is a huge player in every aspect of the game. It’s not just the Runner Vision, which we saw on my last run, highlighting the best path through a level in bright red. Greens, oranges, blues and purples are all used in their own places, all feeding the player information about the game world, as well as adding to the sensory experience. This is why I run with the lights around me switched off. Mirror’s Edge likes colour.

Overnight, Faith tunes into the police band at her boss’ shack. Her sister, Kate, is a police officer and she’s just been called out to the office of a prominent politician. Soon after, shots are heard in the building, and the police are called for.

Unless I can get there first.

This is Faith hitting the ground and balling into a roll. You can see her gloves and shoes, which you’ve probably spotted in previous shots, are highlighted in red. Red is Faith’s colour, it’s the colour of the entire game. The menus, the box art, the Vision – the red stands out against the marble white buildings and piercing blue skies; it’s a good colour, it shouts and demands alertness.

A few kicked in doors and narrowly made jumps later, and I’m in a lift, bearing the cool green paint that generally indicates safety. Faith often seeks refuge in basements and maintenance systems, and they’re mostly in a reassuring lime tint. Some call them shameless loading screens. Others see them as time to take a breather.

Colour’s a great tool in a visual art form like gaming, particularly in one as fast-paced and demanding of concentration as Mirror’s Edge. For one thing, it’s a subconscious trigger, one that you can read without having to think about it too much, without having to lose focus on the run. You veer towards the red almost naturally, just as the green relaxes you, slows you down. In some ways, it’s a Pavlovian process that happens over time; by the end of the game, alternating colours in rooms can allow you to know what’s coming before you round the corner. Danger. Acrobatics. Escape.

Robert Pope, an old friend of your father’s, running for election, is dead. Shot in the head with your sister’s gun, who was knocked unconscious when she arrived on scene. Your sister is essentially on the opposite side of the law to you, but there’s a close relationship between the both of you, and if she’s being framed then Faith will want to intervene. And intervene we will. Note the blues in this room; the colour of the police uniforms and their lights, fading into the green that decorates much of this building. The peace won’t last.

Sure enough, the rest of the boys in blue show up. Faith’s back on her toes again, and we’re back on our run.

Colour also signals transition. From that door above, we break through into blinding sunshine. When the whiteness dies down, we’re faced with an incredible vista. From natural green tones to more vivid sunset shades. The game’s ordering you to make a quick decision. So naturally, you jump.

But the game knows its place; behind you, encouraging you to keep moving without punishing you for stumbling. Later levels are crushingly demanding, but we’re still in the honeymoon period. The helicopter, which swirls overhead, opens up on Faith with its machine gun – but it’ll wait a long time to hit you, preferring instead to just lick at your heels, keeping you moving and making you feel like you’re in control.

The game knows its place.

Another transition. Blue walls give way to orange – a marker, a warning. Bash open the door, and you might find anything.

Orange to red, a harsher warning. Sure enough, those figures in the distance are armed. We dodge right, hop the fence, time another hope over, and dash into the life they arrived in. Gunshot hammers the door, but nothing breaks through. Time for a breather.

When we resume, we’re barrelling out of the building again, past television screens, through walkways and even down to ground level itself. We’re on the street with traffic for the first time, fighting our way through the subway system to get to an escape. The police own this place.

And so we pass hurriedly through it.

Colour isn’t something that’s applied to Mirror’s Edge by an artist. Colour’s part of the design itself, as much as the layout of the pipes and balance beams are, and as much as the combat and puzzle design is. Colour directs, it informs and it frames the story. In a game where you’re often running to fast to make out your surroundings, the colour speaks to the player in ways that complicated architecture or visual cues cannot. There’s no lava level here, no enemy flags flying. So instead, they flash lights at you. Danger. Safety. Escape.

Let’s talk about narrative. Mirror’s Edge doesn’t need one, but it’s there all the same. My name is Faith, I’m a woman living in a city of the future, where people are kept under careful watch by an oppressive government. A subculture forms, one specialising in the transfer of information. It needs people, people who are fast and willing to being risky. They run along rooftops and crawl through ventilation ducts, ferrying parcels to and fro. It’s a romantic idea. It’s also entirely secondary to everything I am about to play through.

Rooftops are where you’re free in Mirror’s Edge. There’s an expanse of skyline in all directions, and though your path is almost entirely linear, you still feel this glorious sense of air and escape. When you leap, there’s a real rush. You’re really moving.

I’m delivering a package to Celeste, who will take it further on to its destination. It doesn’t matter what’s in the package, or who sent it, or where it’s going to. The game doesn’t care, and neither do I. All I care is about the pipes, the sliding, the next jump. My boss Merc, a man blessed with a good voice actor but a poor name, chatters to me about hurrying up, watching my back and so on. But there’s no-one about to see. No NPCs with their own routines and alliances, no submissions or faction standings. Just pipes and doors. And then gunmen.

The first time you meet an armed guard in Mirror’s Edge, you have to run. This is symbolic of my relationship with most of them for the entire game – if you can avoid combat, do.  This is partly beacuse of my abysmal understanding of the combat training given in the previous level; it’s too concentrated on timing and finesse, which breaks the flow of the run. But it’s mostly because, before playing Mirror’s Edge, all I heard about it was that it would be great, except for the combat. The combat is bad. The combat is broken. The combat is imbalanced.

They were all wrong, but that’s not a story for now. For now we’re running. Out of the air duct, up the staircases, through the doors, and…

Heart-in-throat moments have to be paced carefully in games. Most can’t even manage to create one, but occasionally you get a game that comes along and seems to be able to create them effortlessly. The problem is that if you pile them on top of each other, it becomes overwhelming. You suffocate under the drama of it all, something that made Call of Duty 4 hard to play after a while. It was just so exhausting.

Mirror’s Edge balances itself. After the slower-paced internal section, winding through corridors and up stairwells, I burst out into the light. There are gunshots behind me, and this feeling of pressure, tension, the need to make a quick decision. All this while I’m still taking in the incredible urban vista that’s just exploded through the doorway at me. As you look around, you’ll eventually see your next move, and you’ll make it. A leap, a slide, a grab. Whatever it is, you always seem to make the decision a second or two before you justify it to yourself. That’s how you know Mirror’s Edge is doing a good job. You’re acting on instinct.

And when instinct fails, Runner Vision catches you.

Spot the way forward. Runner Vision highlights the default path through a level in red. It’s not always the best – experienced runners will know when to deviate – but it’s often the easiest to reach. Runner Vision saves you when you’re in danger and need a way out. We’re near the end now. Runner Vision will get me there.

A scripted sequence kicks in, and I take a breather. Mirror’s Edge isn’t physically exerting, clearly – I’m still glued firmly to my chair – but when you get some downtime, you feel your muscles relax. You’re tensing yourself, as if at any second you might have to sprint from the room and down the road. Every jump and slide that Faith makes is mimicked in my own body with a slight push of my feet against the carpet.

Take a breather.

It doesn’t take long before my pursuers turn up. They’re firing on me, and one of their choppers has found me.

Learning through failure is a common theme in videogames. But being taught to get things right the first time is the sign of a well-designed piece of entertainment.

Mirror’s Edge encourages you to act on instinct. To see the way forward and take a chance on it being the right one. It gives you the opportunity to do something crazy, and you learn to spot these opportunities as the game goes on. Leap off a building onto a helicopter?

Why the hell not.

I first played Mirror’s Edge earlier this year, back in March, and was astounded that it hadn’t made more of an impact. It’s a stupendously beautiful game, which offers a sleek and very rewarding platformer with only the merest of frustrations to get past along the way. It’s fast, it’s visceral and it’s oh so immersive. The lights are off. London is quiet. The colours of Mirror’s Edge are playing around my bedroom.

First, the training. I’ve forgotten almost everything, but I know it’s in the back of my mind. At first, I was atrocious at Mirror’s Edge. Momentum was hard to maintain, the levels made no sense and the combat was to be avoided at all costs. But by the end of the game I was a stylish killer in plimsolls, poetry in motion as if I’d designed the levels myself. This is one of the great miracles of Mirror’s Edge. It knows how to train you.

I miss my second test. Instead of sliding slickly under the railing, I slam hard into it and get chucked back a few metres. Again. This time I’m under, flying away, over the jump, into the roll, up the ramp and to Celeste, my co-runner for this training mission. A little chitchat, and we’re gone – over the chain link fence, then the wall run – timing the jump, it’s all in the timing. You’ll run up the wall, but to get the most out of it you can’t jump at the apex. You’ve got to wait. As soon as we hit the ground we’re into the vault, over the pipes, and then smash into the door.

Doors.

Doors in Mirror’s Edge are what separate the men from the boys. If you’ve got the momentum, and if you time the mouseclick right, you’ll shoulder barge through in the most beautiful fashion, Faith’s body slamming it open with barely a dink to your speed. Get it wrong, and you’ll stop dead in front of it, and give it a half-hearted kick.

Every game to some extent has a primary resource. Mirror’s Edge deals in Momentum. Get up to speed, and doors can either make you or break you. I forget how to slide under pipes. I remember doors.

After that, it all comes back. From then on it’s the reverse wall jump, the shimmy, and the zipline – god, the zipline. The old ways begin to come back, and I’m getting that pulse that craves regularity, uninterrupted runs through open rooftops. I’m back to only thinking about one thing. The running.