Along the Mirror's Edge

 

Back during the long-awaited gameplay reveal trailer for Perfect Dark, which so soundly leapfrogged my very meagre expectations, there were a great many parallels drawn to what we were looking at. Those of us who were thirsting for another high profile Immersive Sim to drawn our teeth into saw our potential nirvana, Deus Ex fans saw the sequel they never got to Mankind Divided, the handful of people out there still hankering for Perfect Dark Zero's Multiplayer for some incomprehensible reason apparently saw nothing at all and scratched their heads in confusion wondering what all the active stealth gameplay they just saw was about. (I didn't even know anyone remembered that those games had multiplayer.) But there was one distinction I found utterly affronting- I heard someone compare the gameplay to Mirror's Edge.

Now that's not because I think Mirror's Edge is a bad game, nor that I don't see the connection between the first-person wall-running we see presented: they just reminded me that the Mirror's Edge franchise exists! And yes, thanks to 2016's sequel/reboot it is a franchise! And in the spirit of remembering that I actually went out and finally got around to playing that Reboot for the first time, despite how wary I had been about it all those years, to see what it was about those games that still sticks around in people's mind- all the while recalling what it was about the original that still lingers in mine. Because it does hold some place there, strange though it feels to admit it. I suppose that just goes to merit how impressive that little tech demo was.

I came to the original Mirror's Edge years after the fact, trying it out expecting what would amount to little more than a showcase of parkour gameplay across a largely featureless world and story- and whilst that conceptually may hold true- there's a real underground indie game vibe to the original Mirror's Edge I can't help but resonate to. The uncompromising challenge of the later chapters, like a brick wall daring you to crack through, brings the same sort of sensations as Ghostrunner. And that non-typical story about living on the edge and trying to what's best by you and yours in a world that couldn't care less if you lived or died? Why, that's 'Thief' magic straight up! Which, sure, isn't actually 'indie'- but it came from an era before the confines of the 'safety' box were built around the industry dictating how games should play and what stories they should invariably tell.

Mirror's Edge was so simple yet every bit as evocative as the monochrome streaked with red palette would suggest. Some of those later levels, where the you get deeper into the dark heart of the city, deliver some truly arresting, near liminal, environments to scour through. Places pulled from the page of some graphic artist on the verge of going through a midlife crisis and nervous breakdown in the same day. Wrought iron mazes of industry, gleaming blank city faces over a messy, discordant underbelly. Ever sterile. Ever inhuman. Somehow that world managed to get across that existential dread of systemic stifling homogeny and crushingly tyrannical uniformity without voicing a single directed word. Mirror's Edge Catalyst knows no such subtlety. 

Catalyst gives us something of a washed out generic metropolis which loses quite a bit of that stark uniformity of the original. It's designed to feel more 'tangible' as a world, and that philosophy ironically leads to a watering down of everything the original game pointed towards. The battle between conformists and free-running rebels is made the main topic of every interaction, with player's filtering between revolutionary and proto-Watch_Dogs style 'counter culture' activists- only the narrative also attempts to retain the aloof and unassuming Faith Conners as the protagonist leading to a thematic disconnect where Faith kind of feels like she doesn't belong around anyone. Which would itself be a profound theme if Mirror's Edge Catalyst knew what to do with it.

Giving definitive form and shape to a world like this robs the majesty of implication but rewards in the form of an open world which- is fun enough to learn how to free run around. The iconic free running of this franchise is still actually unmatched across the industry and I'll never get sick of pulling off the right moves to keep your momentum going in a particular busy section of a running route. There is something lost of the 'Ghostrunner' style split-second-or-dead gameplay in this new iteration, however. Enemies don't kill nearly as quickly, you have to put more effort into taking one down with their more robust, but equally frustrating, melee combat. There's no commandeering weapons this time around and levels are ever designed specifically to have you fight the enemy or run past them, never both.

Of course Catalyst gives us a more involved main narrative this time around, and whilst the original didn't offer anything spectacular in this department either I at least respected the unique framing device. Catalyst is almost painfully generic stuffed full of inconsequential techno-babble filler quests across a paper thin narrative with twists so utterly readily transparent that not even the characters themselves sound surprised when they occur. When (sorry if you care about spoilers) Faith learns that the only other Asian woman in the entire story, who happens to look exactly like her, happens to be the sister she thought had died years ago her reaction sounds like she already figured that out about around the time the rest of the audience did. And don't get started on the villains plan to, spin the wheel of generic with the 'evil corporation' modifier turned on... control people's mind with nanomachines. How inspired...

In some ways Catalyst serves as a prequel to the original, though in many more ways it's a reboot. Unless we're to believe that Faith's sister is planning to get cosmetic race-change surgery and give up her high-flying CEO job in order to become a beat cop. Attempts to impart an almost mythical significance to Faith's iconic arm tattoo, which she has inked at the end of the game, fall flat when it amounts to being little more than a meaningless drawing her mom did for no reason. Catalyst felt like it was trying to start something, but lacked either the daring or the funding to really go out and give it that shot. Who knows, maybe the EA Mobile Mirror's Edge app contains that missing sauce- but giving that it looks like a cheap knockoff itself- and isn't even in third person- I suspect not. But still, I'll remember the experience for the running- and isn't that all that matters in a franchise like this?