Mirror’s Edge is a wonderful game. It’s unique, visually stunning, and at moments provides some of the best gameplay on any gaming system this year. If you want to read paragraphs of flowery prose singing its praises there are plenty of other websites out there that will satiate that need.
To the point, its more interesting to discuss the game’s flaws. And Mirror’s Edge is by no means a perfect game. And one of the most interesting failures of the game is how badly the story is delivered to the player. Mirror’s Edge’s strengths lie in its gameplay and its story is not exactly Philip K. Dick levels of sci-fi dystopian intrigue, but the game’s weak story is made even worse by the poor execution.
Games have generally always had a hard time figuring out effective methods of delivering narrative to the players. As game stories have gotten lengthier and more involved (if not better scripted and more interesting) games have had a tough time figuring out how to insert these relevant plot points into the thick of the game. Cutscenes delivering these necessary narratives inbetween portions of the game have long been the preferred method of delivery.
But starting with older games like System Shock and Half-Life continued on in recent games like Bioshock and Portal games have gotten more ambitious in attempting to tell the story during the midst of gameplay — or even better — through the gameplay itself. Whether they be audio logs left behind that can be listened to fill in exposition or actually making the player execute certain plot important actions games have gotten more sophisticated in providing this (warning! bullshit marketing term ahead) immersive experience.
Portal in particular seems to be one of the more recent high watermarks in this mode. The story of you and GLaDOS is not one filled with a ton of action. In fact, most of the actual story has occurred in the past with the sad history of Apeture Science. Yet through its clever techniques of constant narration and chatter from GLaDOS and punctuated by some memorable environmental storytelling, the telling of the story of Portal is particularly compelling. Combine that with some clever writing and plenty of raves have been written about the narrative elements of Portal in the past year.
Unfortunately, Mirror’s Edge seems to ignore these methods for the standard cutscene-gameplay-cutscene-gameplay method. The cutscenes themselves are of relative poor quality, the 2d Flash animated sequences contrast far too greatly with the rest of the game and the animation itself isn’t anything to write home about. Mirror’s Edge in particular is disappointing because outside of these sequences there’s nary a moment where you’re not viewing the world from your character Faith’s eyes. The game has a few moments where events will occur within the actual game world, but even these are strictly camera controlled, as if the developers (or EA) feared that players might shift their attention elsewhere.
It’s a complaint that hopefully will be rectified in any upcoming sequels to Mirror’s Edge. Until then, gamers will need to be satisfied solely with the (mostly excellent) gameplay of Mirror’s Edge and have to get their narrative chops elsewhere.
(Full apologies for my inability to resist puns in titles)
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