Mirror’s Edge: First-Person, No Guns, All Rebellion

With the incredible amount of hype at E3 for big games coming out in the next year—Little Big Planet, Spore, Resident Evil V, Final Fantasy XIII to name a few—there are bound to be some games slipping under the radar. One such game is Mirror’s Edge, coming from EA DICE, the Swedish development team best known for their Battlefield series. But is this game anything like Battlefield? Nope. Turned off? Keep reading.

It’s still a game from a first-person perspective. But you’re not on a battlefield, you’re not a male soldier/marine/assassin/ninja, and there’s a complete lack of focus on guns and explosions.

Instead, you play as a girl in the future, delivering secret messages, using acrobatics to get through/atop/around the city, disarming and sneaking past enemies, and rebelling against a totalitarian government. New details have emerged from E3, and it seems like EA DICE is trying something new, sexy, and very exciting.

You play as Faith, trying to get by in a stifled dystopia ruled by a government that monitors all communication and movement. The city is futuristic, sleek, clean, and devoid of color. Your parents were killed while protesting the government that’s now captured your sister.

You’re a runner: you deliver messages the old-fashioned way, because it’s the only way to slip past surveillance. You run, slide, shimmy, leap, climb, and negotiate your way across the city. Your goal? Rescue your sister.

Hooked yet?

We’ve seen that games based on dystopias can be amazing (Half-Life 2, Bioshock, Beyond Good and Evil), so history is certainly on this game’s side. Like BG&E, Mirror’s Edge is not an FPS. Senior producer Owen O’Brien says, “This is an action adventure. We’re not positioning this as a shooter - the focus isn’t on the gun, it’s on the person.” In fact, though you can disarm enemies and momentarily equip their guns, it slows Faith down tremendously, and it is possible (and encouraged) to get through the entire game without firing a single bullet.

Mirror seeks to “convey the strain and physical contact with the environment.” The idea is freedom of movement and constant interaction with your environment, using what’s available to you to get through a level. Controls are context-sensitive; the up-button can be used for jumping, climbing, grabbing a clothesline, the down-button for intuitively “down” movements, like sliding or somersaulting. The emphasis on movement and momentum is underscored by certain details. For example the movement of the camera ties into her movements, the camera bobbing up and down as she builds speed.

One of the features that stands out most about Mirror’s Edge is its art direction and emphasis on colors. The city is gleaming, yet washed out in whites. Thus any color immediately draws the player’s attention—the “Runner Vision” element paints escape routes in red, rendering the environment through the eyes and acute awareness of a runner. However, that doesn’t mean this game is in any way linear. The red does not always indicate the best or shortest route, and the player is free to explore. Also, “Runner Vision” becomes less and less visible as one delves deeper into the game, and it can be toggled off entirely.

DICE decided to throw out a Heads Up Display (HUD) completely, meaning there is no interface overlayed in the game for checking health/status/time, etc. Instead, when Faith’s health gets low, the colors of the world desaturate. Meanwhile, there is a single reticule in the center of the screen to help with aiming and to reduce motion sickness.

Mirror’s Edge comes out in late 2008 on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. If paragraphs of raving and tidbits on gameplay weren’t enough to get your fingers itching, there’s an animated story trailer, as well as screenshots and some great gameplay footage below.