Comments on: Mirror’s Edge – The Emptiness of the Short-distance Runner

By: Jonathan M

Jonathan M — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:25:08 +0000

Actually, since I’ve been getting fitter I have been tempted to try my hand at Parkour. But if I did I wouldn’t wear trousers hanging halfway down my arse and consider myself some kind of revolutionary because of it

It is quite a cool sport though. I’m always very very impressed when I see people doing it.

By: Tu Madre

Tu Madre — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:35:29 +0000

Somebody sounds jealous that they can’t do parkour. Ha ha…just kidding. I personally really liked the game, I think that the focus was on parkour itself and not so much on the story. I’m glad that parkour is becoming more widely known. A few years back no one knew what it was, and now people are alot more interested in it. I thought the gameplay was fun, but I do agree with you on the story and script, both were pretty generic.

By: Jonathan M

Jonathan M — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:41:14 +0000

Daniel,

I think that your take on the game is pretty much what the game is trying to say. Particularly the stuff about the endless city-scape.

The problem is that a lot of this is just posturing. Colourful, attractive posturing certainly, but posturing none-the-less.

Consider, for example, the idea that the Runners are pushing through the lie. Clearly, what is meant by this talk of living on the mirror’s edge is that the world the runners have withdrawn from is a lie. The city is all shiny, there are beautiful tower blocks but in truth, the society is harsh and repressive. The runners have seen through this lie and as a result are marginals, living on the outskirts of that society.

But what values do they actually embody?

We never know what is being transported so we can’t judge them on the basis of that, but we can judge them on the basis of what they do. And what they do is to try and defend one of the people who spends her time chasing them. One of the people who defends the lie that the Runners have broken through. Then, when the Runners get a whiff of a plot to overthrow the society they have rejected, what do they do? they try to undermine those plans.

So in effect, while they reject the lie that is society, they don’t really do anything to undermine it. In fact, they go out of their way to help the defenders of that society and even move to attack the people who WOULD undermine it. Judging the runners by their actions alone, they are conservative counter-revolutionaries. Yes they’ve rejected the lie that is the mainstream of their society but rather than seeking to destroy that lie they’ve effectively created a new lie for themselves… namely that they’re ‘fighting the man’. In truth, they’re not doing anything even close to that.

As for the wide-open city-scape. The problem is that you can’t actually visit this city. There are a few paths towards your goal but there’s always a goal and you’re never allowed to just run off in a random direction. This is the same kind of freedom as the freedom to be a billionaire in our society : Yes, we could all become billionaires in theory but in practice we can’t actually get there so the promise of massive wealth (like the promise of freedom in this game) is largely illusory.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:26:20 +0000

I’d have to disagree with you Johnathan. The rooftops are taken as an alternative to the streets not because they are being chased but rather because they don’t wish to provide the police forces with reason to chase them. I also cannot completely agree with you feelings on the underlying theme. You’re half-right but completely wrong. There is the feeling of a false sense of freedom. However, the runners represent the ability to move through the heavily veiled lie, this pseudo-liberation, to finally achieve the liberty desired. And while it is true you often are set into structured environments with only one destination you choose how you REACH that destination, once again moving past the feelings of claustrophobia, and turning the authorities’ attempts back towards them, giving them the false sense of being in complete control while the Runners reach the objective as they please. And as another note against the enclosed feeling you seem to receive from this game, if you had been looking from an optimistic viewpoint perhaps you would have seen that after you leave that building or that ventilation duct you reach a city that is expansive, where you can see thousands of unique buildings, none of them copied and pasted. After being put into such ‘cramped’ environments, with the beautiful visuals the liberation from the building is almost breath-taking. It’s a city under construction that shows the pinnacle of human achievement, not yet accomplished but well on its way, and perhaps these, “funky” revolutionaries will usher in this new era, with a little helped from ex-cops, reformed from their restricted/restrictive ways.

By: Jonathan M

Jonathan M — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:05:45 +0000

Hi Wollff

The introduction is pretty Manichaean to me. There was a just society, then creeping authoritarianism via CCTV and a crack down by the police. Right there the battle lines are drawn… as the old French slogan used to go : “there is the side of the police and the side of the protesters. We are on the side of the protesters”.

The impression I got was that while the use of helicopters and a shoot-to-kill policy was a departure from the normal order, the runners spend most of their time being chased. Hence the fact that they use the rooftops and are called runners. If they were tolerated presumably they’d just use the bus or whatever.

So, given that Mirror’s Edge’s society is presented in such starkly black and white terms from the beginning, the fact that the runners come in to help a police officer and then try to maintain the status quo makes them counter-revolutionaries. Rather than being on the side of the protestors, they’re fighting to save the police.