The Parkour Was Never the Point: Revisiting Mirror’s Edge 18 Years Later

The rooftops of a near-future city are the best thing about Mirror’s Edge, and the game knows it. DICE built a first-person action-adventure around Faith Connors, a 24-year-old courier who carries sensitive information by hand to dodge a government that controls the media and watches its citizens. She runs. She wall-runs, jumps between rooftops, climbs pipes, slides down zip lines. The story gets in the way of all of it.

Trailer, via EA Mobile Games.

Faith Connors and the Runners

Faith belongs to an underground crew of parkour couriers called Runners, operating outside the city’s surveillance. Her sister Kate is a police officer. When reformist candidate Robert Pope is murdered and Kate is framed, Faith has to clear her name. The trail runs through former Runner Jacknife, Pope’s security chief Travis “Ropeburn” Burfield, and the private security firm Pirandello Kruger.

The plot has pieces — a covert program called Project Icarus, allies who are not what they seem — but the game never lets them breathe. Faith’s mother died 18 years before the events of the game, campaigning against the regime. That is a fact, not a feeling. The story states it and moves on.

Runner Vision and Reaction Time

The movement is where Mirror’s Edge earns its keep. Runner Vision turns certain objects bold red as Faith approaches, so the player sees the path without stopping. Momentum matters: keep it and Faith runs faster, jumps farther, climbs higher. Spend it and the game punishes you.

Weapons are discouraged, and the design is honest about why. Carrying anything heavier than a pistol stops Faith from jumping and grabbing ledges. Guns have finite magazines and get thrown away empty. It is a rare game that makes you worse for picking up a gun.

To progress through the game, the player must control Faith from a first-person perspective and complete a series of levels that involve performing a sequence of acrobatic maneuvers

White Skies, No Green

The art direction holds up better than the writing. Outdoor environments are predominantly white and deliberately lacking in green, with strong primary colors throughout. A custom lighting solution on Unreal Engine 3 gives the city soft shadows and a look nothing else in 2008 had. Chase scenes from Casino Royale and the Bourne films were the inspiration, and the hundreds of first-person animations sell it.

Rhianna Pratchett wrote the game. Solar Fields composed the score. The main theme came from Swedish producers Rami Yacoub and Arnthor Birgisson.

A Short Game That Runs Long

Here is the trouble. Mirror’s Edge is a game about speed that keeps stopping. The levels are linear sequences of acrobatic maneuvers, and when the path is unclear, the momentum that makes the whole thing work dies. The combat exists but the game resents it. The conspiracy plot is delivered in flat exposition between the parts you actually want.

The Numbers

• Release: November 2008 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360); January 2009 (Windows)
• Developer: DICE
• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• Platforms: PlayStation 3, PC, Xbox 360
• Modes: Single player
• Engine: Unreal Engine 3
• Score: 6.9 of 10

Mirror’s Edge is a brilliant mechanic wrapped in a forgettable story, and the mechanic is enough to matter. Runner Vision and the momentum system are the kind of ideas later games could have learned from, though nothing in the record shows they did. A game that stops you every few minutes to explain a conspiracy you do not care about cannot be great. Faith’s city is beautiful, and the running is the point. Everything between the running is the problem.

DICE · Faith Connors · first-person parkour · game review · Mirror's Edge · Unreal Engine 3