Mirror's Edge - Plot Grievances

 *Contains major spoilers.*

So, I just finished quickly replaying Mirror's Edge, and I thought to do the game justice, I would briefly go over why exactly the story creates such a frustrating experience for me.

There were two main things that annoyed me:

A: Overuse of animated cutscenes. They muddle the plot considerably.
B: Important plot points left hanging in mid air.

Plot Irritant 1 - "The Assassin Plotline" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To quickly summarise, the main character, Faith, has a sister, Kate, who is framed by shady forces for killing a mayoral candidate (the "good" candidate who wanted to reverse the evil regime. Blah blah.).

Now, you spend about 3/4 of the game trying to find out who killed him to help out Kate, including multiple levels where you chase an athletic masked figure, who later is revealed to be the assassin.

This assassin turns out to be a close friend of Faith, a fellow Runner named Celeste who became a traitor.

Okay, I'm thinking, the scene is set for some kind of real, concrete resolution of that plot point now, right? Well, it would seem so. You grab Celeste's gun and have an extended martial arts fight at the end of one level. It ends with you pinning her to the floor.

That's when things turn weird. Apparently the developers didn't think this was dramatic enough.

Suddenly the game cuts to an animated cutscene, which abruptly shows Celeste wriggling free and stumbling away. Again. Then Faith magically appears in front of her (?!) apparently being faster now that she's beaten Cel up a bit. Regardless Cel suddenly produces a second handgun from her belt (Wtf? She can just summon guns from air?) and threatens Faith.

Then bad guys arrive and begin shooting at them both (the same bad guys Cel works for...riiight), allowing Faith to grab the gun and kill them in a ridiculous explosion. Then, as the smoke clears, Faith walks off, dropping the gun, and Cel is nowhere to be seen. Faith doesn't comment on this, she just mutters that she's off to save her sister, and the guy on the radio to her says that he "heard all [he] needed to."

And that's all that's mentioned of Cel. Presumably they're keeping her as a villain in the sequel or something, but seriously...3/4 of the game devoted to catching her, then she just vanishes? And in an extremely lame way, with none of the characters being at all interested in finally finishing her off? Sigh. Welcome to Mirror's Edge, where things don't have to make sense!

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Plot Irritant 2 - The Schizophrenic Police Lieutenant

This one's simple. There's a CPF (the original "good" city police) officer named Miller who through the whole game alternates every animated cutscene or two between helping you and being a dick.

In one (pointlessly animated) cutscene, he arranges to meet Faith, and then jams a gun in her face while talking. In another, he is seen talking with a major bad guy. Then, at the end of the game, he shoots two mercs attacking you and suddenly goes massively out of his way to help you.

I guess they did this to keep the player guessing, but it ended up making me so unsure of his character that I just wanted him to help out or die.

Obviously the same writer who worked on Cel finished this part of the plot - we never even get to know what happened to him, we just hear an ambiguous gunshot as he talks mid-sentence over the radio. Then we don't hear from him again.

Another classy cliffhanger bloody annoying ending!

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Plot Irritant 3 - The Absolutely Ludicrous Ending

This is by far the most bemusing part of the game. Kate is to be executed, and the bad guys also want Faith dead.

So naturally, when the last major baddie has Kate at gunpoint, and Faith at his mercy, he kills both of them.

Wait sorry, that would make sense, what am I thinking?!. No, what I meant to say, is he doesn't do anything except talk for ages! Yeah, that's more like it.

Then he bundles Kate onto a chopper (which is going to Loltown or something. It's never explained) and a load of SWAT guys with machineguns run up behind the unarmed Faith.

What happens next? Well, the bad guy says something cheesy like "Sometimes you have to jump Faith." He then starts shooting at Faith from the hovering Chopper, and the 4-5 SWAT guys also begin shooting.

Why he didn't shoot earlier doesn't matter, and neither does the fact that Faith can dodge 5 machineguns at once from about two metres away. She's FAITH!11one!

Anyway, then the "WTF" factor is suddenly dialled to 5000. Faith leaps into the helicopter (which is about 1-2 metres off of the roof) and kicks the big bad out of it to his death. Then the helicopter starts to crash because the SWAT guys' bullets hit it (lol) and so Faith grabs her sister and throws her out (o_0).


Then Faith leaps out of the chopper, which is spinning at about 400 miles per hour, and lands on the roof as it blows up. She then hugs her sister, and the two stare out at the city as the camera zooms out and soft music starts.


Processed all that yet? No, I haven't either!


In the review I mentioned a stupid deus ex machina ("from nowhere") plot resolution. What was that? Well, remember those SWAT guys firing hundreds of bullets seconds ago from the roof? When Faith and Kate hug on the roof as the chopper blows up, they're suddenly gone.


That's right, a whole squad of gun-toting bad guys about to kill the heroines all just cease to exist in the ending moments of the game with no explanation at all. What. The. Crap.


Plot Irritant 4 - What was the point? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------


So the game ends with a logic-defying ending, two major characters with totally unknown fates, and the radio guy who helps you all game (Mercury) dead in a brief animated cutscene.

Mercury was quite possibly the one no-BS, fully-developed character in the game that I rooted for, other than Faith herself. And he gets shot off-screen and dies in a 20 second long piece of abrupt animation.

The last thing he says is "No 'sorrys', Faith. Just don't let them win."


From that quote I assumed the end of the game would have Faith bringing the evil government crashing down, or liberating the city, or some massive event of vengeance. Instead she saves her sister, disappears a SWAT team with magic, and that's about it. Evil empire lives. City doesn't change. Merc is unavenged. Half the cast has vanished.


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So if anyone is actually still reading after this extended rant, I think really my overwhelming feeling is of disappointment. ME is a game that really feels great in places, but it's like somewhere things got cut out or rushed, and the last half or so of the story got thrown together as a result.


Gameplay videos coming soon.