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S3 Ep38: Mirror's Edge
70 Plays7 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they gaze into the mirror...and see if the years have tarnished it.
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Transcript
Identifying Runners: The Subtle Signs
00:00:07
Speaker
The newest threat to our city. Running. There are five signs someone you know might be a runner.
00:00:14
Speaker
First, tail-tail scuff marks on their clothes. Second, unexplained scrapes, bruises, or broken bones. Third, unreliable or unexplained absences from work or school. Fourth, calluses on the palm, the knuckle, and the fingertips. And fifth, the most dangerous sign, a fondness for the color red.
Introduction to the Episode and Mirror's Edge
00:00:57
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I am joining Dave as my co-host, as always. Dave. You could ask me how I'm doing and how it's going, but yeah, you can... How's it going tonight? You can also fuck up the intro. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going good, actually. I was like, I'll be witty, you know? Like, at the new location, I'll be witty, but I completely threw myself up.
00:01:24
Speaker
What game are we talking about tonight, Jake? I'm gonna go with Mirror's Edge. I don't know. You can veto that if you'd like, but... I will. That intro was unrelated.
00:01:35
Speaker
We should throw people off on these days. I think we've talked about it. Oh, yeah. Like do something for like a game that we have like planned three weeks in advance. Yeah. We're just have like the Skyrim main theme for every single intro. They're like, wait, what is it today? And we'll have like an obscure title like the 38th episode.
00:01:54
Speaker
you completely sell that it's gonna be a game that people have really requested like they really want and then you just subvert that with some other game out of nowhere like mirrors edge but yeah mirrors edge I mean
00:02:11
Speaker
I think we both played it a long time ago prior to coming into this. Yes.
First-Person Movement and Free Running in Mirror's Edge
00:02:16
Speaker
Also played it again because it has been that long. Yeah. When did this game come out? I have no idea. It's like the stats guy. I'd have to actually know stats for that. It's been many years, I would say, since it came out. But I mean, people can Google furiously if it bothers them that much, really. I'm not putting in the work.
00:02:38
Speaker
But when the game came out, I remember this was pretty big, pretty influential for me because it just felt really good to play. Like it's kind of, it existed in a space that didn't exist to me previously. This free running style, first person action kind of game, but not like, the combat isn't the focus, I would say.
00:03:06
Speaker
I would agree with that. Yeah.
Game Layout: Linear vs Open World in Mirror's Edge
00:03:08
Speaker
But yeah, your typical first person movement is going to be in shooter type games where you go upstairs, go in straight lines and maybe go up or down the level, maybe like a little quick straddle over a small obstacle type thing. But this really allowed people to
00:03:31
Speaker
around the environment and explore like oh I can run up walls yeah I can jump off the wall I can run along walls it's really just a lot with walls that's all the game is like there's it's just walls all the way down yeah along corridor but it is it is nothing like a corridor shooter like even from the from the get-go you've got this open bright white city this like feeling of exploration and speed and
00:03:58
Speaker
most of the game is actually really linear and maybe that's one of the reasons that Catalyst later went into open world because people were like it would be so awesome we could just run around the city that's not what this game is and
00:04:14
Speaker
I don't know if people really liked Kevin. I love your segues, you're like, but that's not what this game is. That's your hard cut from a tangent. You're like, and I'm back.
Meet Faith: The Runner Protagonist
00:04:23
Speaker
So now that we're back, you play as Faith, who is a runner, as you have been warned.
00:04:30
Speaker
And she kind of just runs around, collects packages, delivers messages for kind of working or outside like the or on the fringes of the city and avoiding police and authorities who do not appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. Some cool slang for the for the baddies, the blues. Yeah. This will really upset police officers. It's like we're just going to we're going to like raise that bar even higher after GTA after we call them the blues.
00:05:00
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, as far as the plot was concerned, I didn't really care too much about it around this pass-through. Even when I played through it originally, I realized I was like, this is not about the plot. No, it's really not.
Narrative vs Gameplay: What's More Important?
00:05:21
Speaker
I think it's one of those games where there was initially the cool idea, the concept of
00:05:27
Speaker
Let's give a player more in the ways of ability and movement, interacting with their environment. Yeah. And they're like, okay, how do we facilitate that? We'll put it in a game. Yes. And we will string along character development and plot and other things. Yeah. So that's kind of where they had the trade off, which is fine though, because it is fun to play.
00:05:51
Speaker
Um, even in the tutorial level, I mean, I guess you're kind of, you're kind of locked in the tutorial level. It's like, Hey, do this thing. It's explaining the basic mechanics. If you fail, you die. We're like, I'm one of those jumps between buildings. So you kind of have to get it.
00:06:07
Speaker
I lost my train of thought. That's all right. It's really fun as far as, even in this tutorial, you get the little sample of, hey, you run.
Game Mechanics: Momentum and Speed in Mirror's Edge
00:06:15
Speaker
You build momentum. You kind of have like those speed lines coming in from the side of the monitor. Your arms slowly go behind you as your transition is full Nari to run. And you go and you jump off of the building. You're like, oh, OK. This is what I can do with my momentum. Or maybe you're falling from a height and you hold and shift to like roll and kind of keep your momentum and not just stop, break your shins. Yeah.
00:06:37
Speaker
Um, it's, it's got that feel to it. I agree. I think that it is kind of based. They took the, uh, they're like, Hey, we need to make a game with free running. And then everything else was kind of funneled in there. There's no like triple a Hollywood writer that was like, I have the best plot imaginable. Somebody come up with a game genre to put this and they're like, ah, free running. You know, like, uh, uh, we recently did an episode on portal where the entirety of portal is all
00:07:05
Speaker
Built around the core that is just the mechanic of using the portal gun. Yes
00:07:10
Speaker
They kind of succeeded more, I think, there than with Mirror's Edge as far as incorporating other elements and making it all believable and a cohesive experience. Right. But I think part of Portal's success is around, like, there wasn't much to it, right? There's a lot more in the way of mystery around what the universe is really. Are there other humans and other things like that? They kind of kept it simple, so your brain would do a lot of the work there. Yeah.
00:07:38
Speaker
And it is kind of funny that one of the core themes here is faith and the runners are the rogue element of the city. We're rebelling against the natural city state. And so there's these themes of kind of resistance and revolt. And if you pay attention to the lore in quotes, it's like I think her mom died in one of the protests early on. That was the... Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:08
Speaker
Remember November. I've never heard that true. But what's funny is like EA published this, which I like, I just comfortably slide them in with like the monopoly business and the corporate side of things. So you can almost like take EA and just put them in the, like, oh yeah, they're one of the evil corporations in this game that she's against. It's kind of funny.
Combat and Free Running: A Symbiotic Relationship
00:08:33
Speaker
As far as the gameplay is concerned, though, like there is obviously the free running, which we've mentioned jumping off walls, all the fun things, maintaining your momentum, which feels great. And it's so jarring when you lose that momentum. Yeah. It's like this negative reinforcement. It's like they want you to just run through this at light speed. It lends itself well to speed running.
00:09:00
Speaker
like a lot of games do. I was watching one the other day, and somebody was just doing some glitch where they're jumping off. Buildings are kind of part of the outside scenery. You're like, oh, that's cool in the distance. They're like, no, I'm going to utilize the fuck out of this. I'm like, all right, see you.
00:09:18
Speaker
But it helps a lot. Like I liked going back in the day and replaying levels that I already was familiar with for where to go. Yeah. Like, okay, probably shave off some time by using this route versus this route. Gotcha. Or maybe I don't need to run up that wall. I can just go straight here or something else. Okay. So like once you knew the paths, you actually went back to try to like optimize your time. You did the time trial.
00:09:42
Speaker
But I mean, not exactly. I would just go in for like my own benefit, try and beat my own record. Gotcha. Because there are a lot of times where when I was replaying this for this recording, I would go to plays and like.
00:09:54
Speaker
Where the fuck do I go? Cause like they do kind of sprinkle like, uh, Hey, if something is outlined in red, that's your interactable object. Maybe you're going to jump off that or land on it. Or I was about to say hang glide on it, zip line. That's what it's going for. That's different. Yeah. They, and the, the color scheme I think is one of the key marketing, um,
00:10:19
Speaker
One of the things that stood out the most about the game when watching the trailer, it's like seeing the gameplay. It's like her shoes are red. She has red gloves, I believe. Your shoes are red. Your shoes are red. And the interactable objects or the path forward is oftentimes lit up with this red, which
00:10:41
Speaker
The rest of the city is just like bleached white, basically. It's this neo-futuristic, like, this is what a city should like. Yeah, it's one of those... I mean, what you perceive as like perfect society. Everything is very crisp and clean and very straight-edged. Yeah. Like a mirror.
00:11:01
Speaker
Wait, no, that's not right. Mine usually has like this white powder on it and it's horizontal. What does that mean? There's a scene pretty early when you have to jump on a helicopter. Yes. And you're kind of like running from the police and then you jump on a police helicopter. I don't
Plot Themes: Resistance, Rebellion, and EA's Role
00:11:17
Speaker
know. It doesn't make sense. It shouldn't have worked out, but it does.
00:11:21
Speaker
you, the helicopter pulls up alongside a skyscraper and it's just this perfect sheen, like absolutely, like even more than Charlie Sheen. It is just a perfect sheen and you see Faith just grabbing onto the helicopter like with an arm, cause you know, why not? And eventually- She works out. Yeah, right, she must. So you're describing like for that cutscene, you've grabbed onto the,
00:11:47
Speaker
The leg of the helicopter? It's not the blade. That would also be impressive. But you kind of get like the view from the other side of the building that you jumped off. So you kind of see like the backdrop of that.
00:12:07
Speaker
glass face which kind of acts as a mirror yeah so you get to see yourself holding on to it as like the helicopter's like get the fuck out of here it's kind of like someone designed the scene and they're like and it'll be kind of like uh an analogy for like the mirror's edge and they're like yeah let's just make it a mirror all right but it's not so subtle anymore guys um yeah they have a
00:12:29
Speaker
These like canvas covered. I don't know what they are crates square something like that. There's supposed to be a safe falls and It's a little bit. It'll be red until you land on it at which point it desaturates back to its natural color Yeah, because it's your vision you're under under vision. Yeah, I did have one bug going into this where
00:12:50
Speaker
I dropped on that after jumping from one building to the crate and it's supposed to be a safe fall. It does not matter how far you fall, you can't roll on it. You always like impact. Yeah, like the superhero land, you're like, take my breath.
00:13:03
Speaker
Okay, and then he can go again. Yeah. But I did my little superhero land and then immediately fell over dead. And I was just like, wait, this isn't how this is supposed to work. But yeah, there's some other bugs I'm sure that we'll get through. But not any A-game. No, I don't really know.
00:13:25
Speaker
But there's more to it than just the running.
Combat Strategies: Avoid or Engage?
00:13:28
Speaker
Obviously, we mentioned the police, private security. There's several kind of like set piece sections where you need to fight them. Or if you really know the level, you can oftentimes avoid them. But yeah, first playthrough, you're not going to know where to go. They're going to be in your way. And I feel like the combat in Mirror's Edge actually
00:13:49
Speaker
It's better than it could have been and I think I enjoyed it still. That's a that's a blanket statement Yeah, well, I mean given that they focused on the free running. Yes, they could have just had it so it's like enemies are death avoid all enemies and You could have justified that I think from a game design perspective because you're like if people are playing this game to free run They're not gonna go like jiu-jitsu on this guy's face. You know what I mean? But you can
00:14:20
Speaker
And that is definitely a way to play it. When you were doing the replay through here, did you straight up murder everybody? Did you avoid them? If anybody has listened to any other episodes where I play games, murder fucking spree.
00:14:40
Speaker
I think like the first time you encounter the police, it's really simple to just bolt past them. Yeah. I think like the first or second level. So I did that. There were some areas later on where you need to incapacitate them in some capacity. Yeah. So usually I would like run up, you kind of have like this button you can use every once in a while where it kind of slows everything down. So it gives you time to assess where you're going to go, what you want to do.
00:15:09
Speaker
And if like, then they will shoot at you at range, but if you get close enough, they'll try and like hit you with the butt of their gun because you know, that's better than bullets at a point. And their gun, when they attack, kind of highlight red, which is your cue to right click and kind of intercept that and go into an animation where you kind of hit them in the face and like take their weapon. And then once you have the weapon, you shoot other people. What was the button to slow time?
00:15:39
Speaker
I think it was like F or R? No, it was R. I was definitely pressed it accidentally a couple times. I didn't know about that button at all for this playthrough. If you're not laughing, you're learning. And I was like, all right, challenge mode. I'm going to go through this and not shoot anybody. Yeah, you're telling me about that. And I'm going to fight all of the, there's these Icarus runners that are supposed to chase you down and taze you or beat you up.
00:16:07
Speaker
you know, standard stuff in the city, living in the city. You have to survive. I'll sing it, I'll sing it. But there was a point where I was trying multiple times to try to disarm enemies in a stairwell. And now that you mentioned their slow mo, I actually recall that from when I first played. And I did not know about it for the entirety of this playthrough.
00:16:32
Speaker
Oops. I don't know if it's always an advantage to use it, because there are a lot of times I'd be like, slow motion. And they go with their butt or their gun. And it's not like it gives you a longer window to do the right click and intercept it with the animation. So a lot of times, they swing. And I just kind of throw my arms randomly, like I'm a jockey from Left 4 Dead 2. And then you don't have enough time to do it again before they riddle you with bullets.
00:17:00
Speaker
So it just, eh. And it seems like if you mess up that grab animation, they'll like hit you immediately. It feels like it's going to be a constant hit. I don't know if that happens in slow motion or not, but anytime I screwed up the grab, I immediately got punished with like the butt of the gun to the face. Yeah, you kind of fuck up once and then you're dead. But yeah, the alternative is if you want to actually use some of those guns, you can disarm them, beat the guys up and then pick them up off the ground, and then just shoot everybody else.
00:17:31
Speaker
Oh, I know I told you this already, but I did not know you can pick guns off of the ground. Yeah. So the game does not always tell you each individual thing, like how you can utilize it. It tells you the raw basics and you kind of have to figure out the rest. Um, so there's one section where you're going down like five flights of stairs and there's like 10 cops or private security kind of riddled throughout.
00:17:54
Speaker
And I thought I had to disarm one to get a gun. You can use the gun until it runs out of ammo. Yeah. And then after that, you kind of just chuck the gun because there's no ammo. What's the point? Yeah. So I thought I had to go and like sneak up on another person and like disarm them to take their gun to continue on.
00:18:16
Speaker
And I was pretty frustrated and like doing it over and over again. And then I accidentally picked up one of the guns. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? So I just shot everybody and was done like that. Yeah. There's a, I think you're limited in how long you can carry the guns. Like free running moves, sometimes drop them. If I recall correctly, I don't think you can free run with them. That's my, that's what it was. You have to drop it in order to actually carry a heavy assault rifle. It's like.
00:18:41
Speaker
You're not built or trained to handle that. So you're kind of like, oh, so you can't run with guns. Yeah, it is. It is kind of funny thinking about like, faith is this live, you know, slender character.
00:18:56
Speaker
who's uh running around free running and stuff and then um picturing her with like the full lmg from one of those in-game enemies just running through first person shooter mode is hilarious um but uh yeah the combat the combat's kind of like the second layer well we didn't actually talk too much about the actual combat we just uh disarming and guns yeah that's it no no there's uh
00:19:23
Speaker
You can basically chain some of the other free running moves into combat, so you can slide underneath pipes to maintain momentum at several points in the game, or you can slide and press your attack button to do a kick. Or you could jump over a ledge, or you could jump and press your attack button to do a kick. Jump kicks are fun, and this immediately reminded me back of
00:19:57
Speaker
That sound means it is time for another intermission where we talk about whatever we feel like. I'm doing an intermission dance. Right, Jake? Yeah. Right, Jake? Yeah. Yeah.
Behind the Scenes: New Podcast Setup
00:20:09
Speaker
So a new podcast space. Yeah. So I mentioned it a little bit either before or after this happened. But we are in this nice space in Dave's apartment. Yay. So hopefully there's less banging noises than mine.
00:20:27
Speaker
Fewer? Fewer, yeah. Oh, there's banging. My bad. You guys stop inviting friends over for orgies while we're recording podcasts. We got some foam padding on the walls. Oh, yeah. As we will have posted online. That's the foam. That's the foam.
00:20:44
Speaker
Got a table, got a TV for notes. It's a very large TV. Usually we just use the laptop for notes and then kind of like a tiny little audacity in the corner and then tiny little notes in the corner and now it's just like boom. And also we're gonna kind of decorate this room with a
00:21:04
Speaker
Podcast swag. So if I have any merchandise or feel inspired by any merchandise around a certain game that we've covered I want to try and keep that in this area so we can look back and have fun memories of episodes This was made possible by all of our patreon donations. Mm-hmm We don't have a patreon. No or donation No, this has been a
00:21:31
Speaker
Oh my god, it almost sounds like I'm starting to do like a plug for Give Us Money. Don't actually. Just listen to this if you want to or not. I don't give a shit. This has been like our pet project for fun. And we do invest money in it over time. But because it's a hobby, I don't care. Yeah. I was going to say, it still sounds like you're asking for money. I know. Just keep coming back. Let me rephrase. Do not give us money. Yeah. But reverse psychology, I like it.
00:21:59
Speaker
Like it on Facebook. Just click like. That's it. Yeah. I mean, I don't know why I haven't clicked it already. It's like, maybe you're not in Facebook. Maybe your work has blocked Facebook. That's fine. If it threatens your job, open Facebook and click like on this post. You deserve better. We actually, I feel like we come back to this at the end and we also ask people to like us on Facebook. We should do that. We should do that. This is recorded. Full circle. Yeah.
00:22:28
Speaker
Well, what do you think about this? Is there anything else you want to do with it? I figured at some point we can maybe hook up and play like some smash in between. Yeah. Or like before recordings to talk about not smashing. Someday we'll have a smash episode. They still won't know the game at that point. Yeah, I don't think I will get it, but I want to play it at people's houses. I can understand that, yeah.
00:22:53
Speaker
just write that novelty as far as possible. For me, it's like a two minute walk investment, not a $400 plus investment. That's fair. That is absolutely fair. I think it's also something that we've lost as we are not...
00:23:08
Speaker
Young teens anymore where like your friend has the game so you always go over to his house and play the game like for me it was a Super Nintendo and my friend had x-men. I'm just like yeah, I'm gonna play x-men.
Comparing Free Running: Mirror's Edge vs Other Games
00:23:21
Speaker
Let's go hang out with that guy That was a good friend
00:23:24
Speaker
He's like, hey, what are you gonna do? I don't know, maybe hang out in the basement? What's in, oh my God, a game system. What is this? You've always played this while you're here. All right, real quick, what are you maining in Smash? So I'm trying, I am trying to learn Ridley. I'm really trying. I'm not good. I did way better with Bowser than Ridley, actually, but he's just so aggressive and edgy. It's perfect.
00:23:51
Speaker
He's basically the Reaper of Smash. Wait until you see me play Ganondorf. We're just gonna have like the slowest characters in A and well the rounds will still be over like instantly because we'll just immediately die. Oh well.
00:24:11
Speaker
Dropkick what's the game dive kick not dive? This is the most kicking the other free-running game. We're like kicks are OP or kicks are OP free-running. Oh, yeah What are we gonna compare this not dead by daylight? It's a dying light right dying light. Yeah. Yeah, I always go to dead by daylight first. I have no idea what there's light and So in dying light
00:24:37
Speaker
Um, you can tech into a jump kick, which was just hilarious as far as the momentum when you impact zombies. Yeah. Um, but it's also fun in the same way to like jump over something or get like a huge, like off of a building and you're just like drop kicking a cop. It doesn't have the same impact or thwomp that you would like, but it's still good. Yeah. And it kind of, it breaks through some of the defenses. Like I mentioned that, um,
00:25:06
Speaker
At some point, they're developing this runner program where they'll send their own runners after you. And you're supposed to traditionally run away from them. In my playthrough, I fought all of them, which involved a lot of reloading. But they usually block your attacks. Most cops, police, most of your attacks will get through. And these guys are just like, nope, we're just going to block everything.
00:25:31
Speaker
But they're not so great at blocking jump kicks, and they're not so great at blocking slide kicks. Those tend to break through, and that's kind of the strategy for beating them. But I think the way the game is meant to be played is, obviously you can choose, but maintain your momentum.
The Thrill of the Run: Suspense in Gameplay
00:25:53
Speaker
Take out enemies as you have to, and keep running forward.
00:25:58
Speaker
It is funny to stop at every possible opportunity and fight all of the police, though. You're just like, all right, they put me in a room. I need to reach the exit of the office inside of the room. And there's four snipers throughout this large chamber. I'm taking the snipers out, you know, with my hands. I'm playing the Matrix. I'm not playing Mirror's Edge.
00:26:25
Speaker
It is a fun diversion though, and I think it helps break up the free running segments.
00:26:32
Speaker
The, uh, cause if it's just, it's okay, go from here to here. You're like, but why though? It's usually like people are trying to kill you. So that's kind of like the driving force, whether it's cops, private security, uh, a helicopter, the chain gun that has the shittiest name or like sniper teams. It just adds to the suspense of it. Cause while it is like a really cool world that I want to look around in, it makes you feel like you don't have the time to. Yeah.
00:27:03
Speaker
So one of my favorite levels is when you first get into the sewers, you have to do some like running off walls stuff. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm feeling it. And then it's like, hey, you need to go up there. And you're like, what? You kind of have to like loop around this area where there's like some sniper teams and you see like their tracer laser. You're just jumping from like platform to platform at these like death defying heights. Yeah.
00:27:31
Speaker
And it felt good to have the momentum going. And I know we already talked about the possibility to fall. There's a lot of games where you fall and it's just like, all right, reload. Or you hit some spikes, you die, you bounce off the stage, whatever.
00:27:48
Speaker
They get a sonic there. And this one, it's like, you accelerate as you fall, you see your faith flail wildly, and then there's a deafening crunch at the bottom, everything goes dark, and then you reload. You're like, do you really need the last three seconds of that? I could have just accepted the transition into reload. No, it's surprisingly violent. The impact is needed for the impact. Yeah, yeah.
00:28:16
Speaker
But really it is a lot like running through a movie in a lot of ways. It's like there's a lot of set piece encounters. One where you have to, you're on top of a train and you have to like dodge the classic. Oh yeah. Like dodge stuff that's... Usually it's like Jackie Chan versus somebody else and you have to like... You just like Jackie Chan lays down to the guy's like, what are you doing? And then... Gone. I need to watch more old Jackie Chan movies.
00:28:43
Speaker
and like the train stops in a tunnel and they're like, oh no, there's another train coming and you have to like run midway back up the tunnel through like a side exit.
00:28:54
Speaker
Um, just the whole, all of the, all of the escape tropes, basically. Yeah.
Cinematic Design: Enhancing Player Immersion
00:29:00
Speaker
Like I was saying, it's, it's all this stuff is happening to drive you forward. Kind of like, you know, those disaster movies are like, that thing's coming. It's still coming for an hour and a half. You're like, Jesus fuck, I won't take a break. Yeah. You actually mentioned the, um, the helicopter and the fact like it has the worst aim ever. And it's because the helicopter can't hit you as long as you're moving.
00:29:21
Speaker
it's not a percentage thing as far as i can tell it's just like if you're moving it will not shoot you and in fact the helicopter is just
00:29:31
Speaker
The comparison to the movie is kind of nice because, or I say that because I made it, but so much of the game kind of falls apart if you think about it from gameplay aspects instead of what it's trying to portray. Yeah. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but EA also did Dying Light. I believe so. So I know we talked about with their, some of the sequences toward later game stuff where you're going against the evil nemesis guy. Yeah.
00:30:01
Speaker
You kind of would be like running and like, oh, these guys would pop up and like start shooting from behind you or like explosions would happen to your left and right. I'm like, this is all the convenient timing because assuming you don't stop, you're fine. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's all calculated and the, uh,
00:30:17
Speaker
The helicopter even at one point you're up on this scaffolding and there's this really cool effect, I like it, where the helicopter perforates canvas in front of you because the bolts are missing and it looks cool. Like there's ripples in the canvas and stuff. You could tell like a group of programmers sat down for a month and were like, we're going to get canvas physics ripping perfectly.
00:30:38
Speaker
and you like round the corner and there's a guard up ahead one lone guard on the scaffolding like I guess the police hated him or something and they just left him up here and he like pops out from around the corner and is surprised basically long enough for you to like slide and kick him or hit him or do whatever almost all of your attacks at this point will knock him off the scaffolding to his death
00:31:01
Speaker
This is canon, basically, for the game. This guy was placed here by EA to die. And I mean, it's great, especially in that first playthrough. In the second playthrough, when you're starting to break apart how the levels are constructed, you're like,
00:31:21
Speaker
They did just put him so I could knock him off the ledge, right? Like, that's the reason he's there. I mean, that's why they have the one guy in, like, Dark Souls 3. You're like, hey, remember how to, like, fucking kick people off the edge? Like, goddamn right I do. And that's fine. But I think that the movie approach doesn't lend itself as well as soon as you start, like, dissecting the game.
00:31:46
Speaker
especially when they start breaking up the pace. Like, with puzzles that take time or are obnoxious. Are we at the point where we can start bitching yet? Yeah, I think we're getting there.
00:31:58
Speaker
So some of my complaints with the game, in the same way that I praised it, how, you agree with me on this, how we like when you have the momentum and things are going good. When it's good, it feels good. But if you lose momentum, you're like, that really sucks. Because if you're not sure where to go, or you have to like, oh, I have to open this red valve, which takes five seconds of animation for no reason. You're just sitting here.
00:32:28
Speaker
Whereas when you have like the red doors, like that's obviously something you need to go through. You just, you fucking shoulder it and you keep going through and you have like this impact and it kind of distorts your vision because, you know, you fucking put your shoulder in through your head, stilted down. And then you're like, where am I going? And you're keeping that pace and suspense up. But then things like the valve or usually valves like to turn off, somebody left the, there's like a gas leak here, burning hot gas could kill me if I go through it.
00:32:57
Speaker
or stuff like that, and you're like, why is this needed? Are you just trying to show off a mechanic? Neat. Doors. Cool. I made an animation where you turn valves. We need to get our money out of this animation. Yeah, it's pretty absurd how many red valves you turn. I almost feel like they should actually pay royalty to Valve at this point. It's absolutely crazy.
00:33:20
Speaker
Maybe they have a fondness for the color red. It's very possible. That was one of many issues I discovered on this playthrough. A common issue I had, and this is around the same time that I feel like EA was using elevators in Mass Effect for loading, they do the exact same thing here. And there's nothing less free-running than sitting in an elevator.
00:33:49
Speaker
It also like doesn't even make sense if you're running from the police and you're like, okay, all of the city's hooked up to like CCTV and automation and all this stuff. I'm gonna get in a box. I'm just gonna wait for that to go to the right floor and assume everything works perfectly. It does every time because the elevator is a loading screen, but I could see having like one or two as like an interim where it's like,
00:34:14
Speaker
where you could leverage that for story building purposes. I know on the elevator monitor, it has some stuff like what we read for the intro. And it does break things up, but it's way too many. It's just every single level is like an elevator or another elevator. Okay. They kind of struggled to find out how to slow down.
Pacing and Gameplay: The Balance Challenge
00:34:42
Speaker
I think this is part of the balance problem they had in the game as far as pacing was concerned. They struggled to slow the game down long enough to engage you with storytelling without slowing the game down so much that it actually just
00:34:57
Speaker
disrupts your fun. There's text dialogues. You can read messages on a PDA or a computer or one of those screens, or voicemail you can listen to. These are all things you have to sit here and do, which is the antithesis of moving quickly through the game.
00:35:19
Speaker
Like like we said you can have a balance like you have to you have to at some point slow down You have to catch your breath as a player more than faith. She can like hold her breath forever. Basically. She just runs
00:35:31
Speaker
But I feel like you could almost do that more so with, um, not stealth sections, but maybe there are like patrol routes for the police and you have to kind of like, okay, I'm gonna wait for a good time to just fucking book it past some people. Yeah. Or even like, uh, there's some free running sections where, um, you're not
00:35:50
Speaker
Usually, the more difficult or challenging sections to make it through, as far as acrobatics are concerned, you're not being chased for that. There's a couple where you are and you can screw up, but eventually you'll figure it out. There's a button you can press that shows you the way forward. Literally just flicks your head to it. Can we talk about that? Yeah, we should talk about that. It stops your momentum. It immediately stops you looking over that way.
00:36:15
Speaker
You can't just tap it where it kind of highlights like, hey, vaguely this direction. Also, I was at the bottom of something, and I'm like, I'm actually not sure where to go. Let me press the button. It had me looking through a wall. I literally can't pass through here, but I guess I should be on the other side of it. So it wasn't helpful. I'm just imagining some cameras are just watching Faith as she just instantly flicks her head straight to a wall and just stares at it for a few seconds.
00:36:43
Speaker
like Terminator 2 just like head snaps over like there just like oh this is this is bad um but yeah the the the pacing struggled a bit there um the elevators i could stand the things that bothered me more is there were some puzzles that were just not really puzzles some things you had to free run on where it was
00:37:05
Speaker
The correct solution in placement is really precise, and the controls are not. Yeah, for each. And you need that. If you have a demanding game mechanically for placement, let's say I like Celeste. Yes. There's a lot of really, really tight gaps in that, but the controls are God-like precise. So that doesn't carry momentum is one of the big things.
00:37:31
Speaker
One of the reasons I like Mega Man is because you jump over to the left. As soon as you stop pushing left, you stop. So you have complete control over that, whereas it felt like a mirror's edge. A lot of times I go up on a ledge and it's like, you still have momentum, I guess, and I would just roll off and I would die like 10 times in one spot. I'm like, why does it keep moving me forward? When all I've done is climb up a thing.
00:37:56
Speaker
They also have really finicky grabs, so one common jump in the game is you have to jump to an adjacent wall on a building and there will be a pipe sticking out.
00:38:09
Speaker
And if you do not land right on that pipe, you will not move your arms to this side to grab it. It's almost like Faith is a little T-Rex. Just these two arms in front of her just like, and clamp right in front. If you don't clamp right in front, you just fall and die. And none of it feels good when that happens. You're like, you know exactly what I was trying to do. It's not that I was a bad player. It's just I didn't hit the hitbox.
00:38:33
Speaker
Yeah. It's like you have to like hold the pipe that you're currently on or wherever you're at, look exactly at the pipe and be like, it is now. And then you press space to jump and you kind of automatically go to it. Or if you're me, you're like, oh, I'm on the pipe. I'm looking at the pipe. I'll press space and you just kind of jump up and fall down.
00:38:53
Speaker
What's the difference? I don't actually see a mechanical difference in what I'm doing to get that end result. It's almost a Prince of Persia tier of Faith just deciding to end it all in the middle of her quest.
Technical Challenges: Precision in Control
00:39:07
Speaker
Nope. I'm out. I'm out-y. Good jump to the next pipe. Could jump to the middle of nothing. I choose nothing.
00:39:16
Speaker
But sections like that really wore me down by the end of it. There's a couple really tight jumps where it's like you need to chain a wall run into an adjacent wall run into a jump or something like that. And unless you picked up some of the tech maneuvers you can use, there's a button to turn around.
00:39:40
Speaker
abruptly it's like here you go you have a button to turn around what they don't tell you is if you're on a wall and you hit that button and you hit space to jump you'll like do a wall jump off and that makes some of the free running really easy compared to trying to figure it all out without that
00:39:59
Speaker
but they don't tell you that, and there's not a position where they need to. Hold up, fact check, the tutorial, you literally learned that. I don't know, maybe I didn't do the tutorial. You have to do the tutorial. I may have learned that and then forgot it. Most of the time it's not necessary, but there are a couple trick jumps you can do to just skip whatever the game wants you to do. Because what you can do is run up a wall in front of you,
00:40:27
Speaker
And if there's like a high ledge on that wall you want to grab, you can run up the wall a little bit and that will not get you high enough to grab the ledge, but you can turn, jump off the wall and then immediately turn like to your left and grab the ledge. Cause that's your maximum height, like for a single wall jump. Um, you can kind of cheat basically, but most of the time the game doesn't require that of you. Um, it just, it sucked when there was a puzzle and it took me like,
00:40:57
Speaker
20 attempts to make that it's not because you don't understand what to do. Yeah, it's like I'm doing it It's just it's not happening. Exactly. So at the point it's like kind of like fuzzy mechanics. Okay. Oh Nice, like I told you about the
00:41:14
Speaker
One room, I have to like climb up two things. I have to grab onto some venting. To like the sniper rate you're getting. This is in the room before the sniper, the large vertical. Or is this a different room? It's a fucking room, I don't know. But I have to like shimmy across this vent duct. And then I have to look behind me. Again, I have to like align perfectly for when the game's like,
00:41:37
Speaker
Now's good. And then jump onto a bar and swing off of it. But it's like, oh, you weren't to the left or right enough. Oh, you didn't catch the bar. And I'm like, how is it different every single time? And I know part of that was on me because the game is expecting very specific things. But it shouldn't be that fuzzy. Like, don't auto grab things for me. But if I'm looking at the bar and jumping at the bar, and there's no other way to build momentum,
00:42:06
Speaker
I grab the bar. Yeah. Yeah. There comes, there comes a point. I keep using like a D and D examples here. There comes apart a point where you grab the bar, right? Like you don't need to go through all of the mechanics that people try to like retry 20,000 skill checks. You're just like, for the sake of actually having anything happen, you grab the bar and that doesn't really happen in mirrors edge. There's a couple like poorly queued or QC'd. I don't know exactly. Um, uh, puzzles or like trick jumps you have to do that just,
00:42:36
Speaker
But it took a lot of it out of me, basically. Because you have this internal momentum as well, right? Like, I'm going to beat this game. I'm going to prepare for the podcast. And then it destroys it. But that being said, I don't want to gripe on that too much. It's something I feel like they could have improved, but there's a lot of really cool sections that felt awesome because of the momentum and the mechanics they had there. Jumping from one large crane to another one,
00:43:07
Speaker
And then having your radio operator, he'll call you out on it. It's just, you just, what? It's great. The one level, I think it is also the, the sewers level, but the start of it though, there's giant fucking gaping hole in the ground and it goes down like several hundred feet, but there's various platforms along the way.
00:43:31
Speaker
I think it's like for water or something. The engineers also free run down there. They have like these platforms and like doors, but essentially like your wall running down these platforms and interacting with other things. Or once later on the level, I think you have to go up the other side. Yeah. And it's really fun for both because you're like, wow, this is like a larger than life type feat that I just did.
00:43:57
Speaker
And it's unique geometry, too. The game uses a lot of similar jumps, wall runs, things like that. But then it's like, hey, you're just in a large cistern. Do your thing. And that feels a lot more organic than some other sections, literally, when you encounter the Icarus agents. And it's just a practice free running space. That one was actually cool. I like that. There's a lot of ways you can get through it.
00:44:24
Speaker
But, I mean, if you're out in the city, not everything is a free-running space, right? It's like... But I get that they just did that for gameplay purposes. It's kind of... There's a lot to like about this game. And there's also a lot that I didn't feel... I didn't run into as much the first time or it didn't bother me. But now in my old age, I'm like...
00:44:50
Speaker
Critical or critical more cynical and you're looking at things with an analytical eye because of how many games you've played by now Yeah, like in the early days of games. You're like, I didn't know this was a fucking option And you're like wild and razzled and dazzled then other things come out Successors down the line that kind of improve in certain areas and you're like, well, I like this here I don't like this as much. Yeah, I
00:45:14
Speaker
And I think the things that really, really shine in Mirror's Edge are like the presentation, the clean look and style of the city, the movement whenever you don't have to be really precise, and like the sound design is also something really cool.
Audio Experience: The Sound of Mirror's Edge
00:45:34
Speaker
I didn't really use the gun so I can't speak to whether they
00:45:37
Speaker
compare well with Call of Duty's latest entry. They probably behave like half-life one guns, if that's a crowbar. It behaves like a crowbar, and then I throw crowbars at people.
00:46:02
Speaker
It's really poor because that's, again, not what they focused on, but it is functional. Yeah. I know this is tangential to what we're talking about, but you mentioned throwing co-bars at somebody. And if we ever was ever like a first person shooter in like the half-life type space, where like the first item that you get is a crowbar or like a wrench in Bioshock,
00:46:23
Speaker
You just 100% throw the player off by making it so when they go to attack with it, it's always a throw. You always throw the crowbar and have to go retreat. Or you just don't even get it back. That was your one. Sorry. Why do you throw that? That one of you know. Insta killed the last boss. That's cool. You're just wasteful. It's cool. I understand.
00:46:46
Speaker
But, uh, the, the game does try to like tell you a story. We talked about like the rebelliousness. Uh, where is November? The, uh, is written on one of the walls, um, by one of the runners kind of saying like, Hey, you know, we had these protests, the city one, but you know, we're still resisting. Um, the thing is, I feel like because we haven't really gone into the story and I don't really care that much about it, to be honest, it's
00:47:13
Speaker
It's bad. It's not bad. It's not good. It exists because there had to be a story. Yeah, but I could go on Wikipedia for an hour and generate this from tropes. I think there actually is a trope generator. You can actually just generate a trope. Link me that shit. TV tropes, I believe. Great way to come up with campaign plans. Yeah, they could have just done that for Mirror's Edge.
00:47:41
Speaker
Like every character that you interact with is, as you said, like an exposition dump. Yeah. Where it's like, oh, hey, I'm so-and-so. Here's that window, and they just go on for like 10 minutes. I'm like, what? And the cut scenes are plot relevant, but done in that specific progressive commercial style. When progressive was animated before they sexualized that one character and stopped using that commercial. I don't know what you're talking about. Or how about it's like the new,
00:48:12
Speaker
Carmen Sandiego cartoon on Netflix? I don't know about that one either. I apparently don't know anything. It's like an animated style. Like it wanted to be cel-shaded but then stopped trying very early on. Oh yeah, yeah. I know what you're talking about is the style as it relates to Mirror's Edge. It's kind of cartoony-esque.
00:48:34
Speaker
but it's more edgy. They don't have any borders. They don't have defining lines for anything. Cause usually like in a cell shaded world to keep the colors from bleeding together, you put, um, black borders on everything. That's like the reason games like, um, like anarchy reigns or, uh, what was the, uh, mad world for Nintendo? It was literally a black and white game with shell shading. And you're like, how in the world will anyone be able to make anything out?
00:49:01
Speaker
put borders around everything. It lends you that depth, and it works. Yeah. For some reason, they eschewed, eschewn, eschewed. Ashente? What do you say? Yeah, Ashente. They passed over that option, and everything bleeds together. And it's just, it's the style they went for, but it bothers me. Yeah, because it's not the same style as the rest of the game. Mm-hmm. Because in-game, it's very...
00:49:31
Speaker
What's another game I can compare it to? It's clean. Yeah, it's clean, crisp. And at first, it looks good. It's aged a little bit, but it still looks fine. If you stare at the textures, you're like, meh. But going through the game, I've never felt like, well, that shit. Yeah.
00:49:52
Speaker
But it's not Destiny 2 levels because Destiny 2 is a very modern game. It has access to those shaders and textures. Technology got better. What? So the one thing I wanted to bring up, since we brought up Dying Light, or I brought up Dying Light, so I can make this point, is the plan. What was your thought on the free running in this versus Dying Light?
00:50:20
Speaker
So this is, this one's interesting because like, Dine Like came out well after this game, right? Very true. And I don't know of any other game that really used free running extensively before Mirror's Edge. So it's kind of an unfair comparison, but the entire game of Mirror's Edge is based around the free running. And I feel like at its best, Mirror's Edge is better, but
00:50:48
Speaker
When it's really inconsistent and it's slowing you down a lot, we were talking about how fuzzy the hit detection is, and there's this very linear path. Dying Light gave you a city you can just run around in. And you can move significantly faster, I feel like, in that game, because you can pick your path. And I don't know. It's tough. It is tough.
00:51:16
Speaker
Depends on which game is having a good day, I guess. Yeah, but I will say one of the things with Dying Light is...
00:51:24
Speaker
Mechanically it's a lot easier to free run because it kind of needs to be here in a city full of zombies Yeah, so you can pretty much run at any service match the spacebar and you will ascend. Yeah But it is really cool to run between things if you actually know you're going and maybe vault off some stuff vault off zombies Yeah, but that's meant to be in like a fun run around type way. Mm-hmm
00:51:48
Speaker
and it's not meant to be linear. Whereas Mirror's Edge is like a pre-constructed set of here's places you go. Occasionally it does have diverging paths, but I could not tell you where they are because it's pretty fucking linear. Slightly larger areas. And most of the points where the game gives you a divergent path or a large area,
00:52:12
Speaker
There really is still just one way forward. You just haven't figured out where it is yet. Yes Yeah, they it is quite linear and cinematic but I Don't know like how did you how do you feel having gone back and played this? Like on the magic meter is it is it fully recharged or is it depleted to to nothing? It's depleted a lot. Yeah
00:52:40
Speaker
It will always hold nostalgic value for me because I really enjoyed it when it first came out. I mean, I still had some of those issues back then, but like we said, it was brand new and shiny. Yeah. And nothing else had even ventured to be like, Hey, you can move like this. You're like, what? Yeah. So that was really cool. And when it does feel good, it feels fucking amazing as we've said. Um, cause you can get from point A to point B in ways you never thought possible. And.
00:53:10
Speaker
It appeals to the male power fantasy where you play as a female. Yeah. The dream. It just, it feels good to do those cool things. Yeah. And to live that out. Yeah. Like when I was comparing it to the, the matrix, I feel like that is.
00:53:26
Speaker
That is where it's at, and it's best. You're just like, I am a superhuman blazing through this. Nobody can stop me. I am a human Sonic the Hedgehog, basically. Which I never want to see, so I'm not going to watch that. I'll link it. I'll link it.
The Shard: A Grand Finale in Design and Mechanics
00:53:42
Speaker
I had a couple like ascendant moments where I was just like this is exactly what I played back all those years ago and like the shard is this huge the final level um where the govern the seat of power is basically in the city it looks awesome
00:53:59
Speaker
The music is freaking awesome. It's got this light, this comforting, like almost like a smooth blue tint to everything. It's almost just like government designed. This is this color calms people, right? Yeah. It's the antithesis actually to to faith running through the city, screwing everything up. But it's just it's like a great level. The combat encounters are like challenging.
00:54:29
Speaker
but there's multiple ways you can go about it. It culminates in the server room where you're supposed to like knock out the servers by shooting them. And you can just like Sonic the Hedgehog around the outside edge and all of the enemies there will shoot the servers for you. And it's just like multiple solutions is something the rest of the game doesn't really have.
00:54:50
Speaker
And a lot of times I see games completely fall flat in the last section of gameplay because we ran out of dev resources or whatever. And I feel like the shard is just one of the best areas in the game. But...
00:55:06
Speaker
other stuff just like didn't hold up nearly as well and if I didn't like need to prepare for you know then this recording I don't know if I would have gone back and stuck it out you know yeah I do like when games kind of do the the culmination level like slice being a perfect example for the summit yeah it's like hey you're gonna go back and do all this shit you're like what it's like no all this shit and it's like the
00:55:34
Speaker
culmination of all of your skills and abilities that you've picked up throughout the game. Being put back to the test, it's like, hey, what do you remember? Let's do it. And the music is also motivating you. And the Shard does a good job of that with the music. I can't speak as much to all of the pieces in between. It has my memories a little fuzzy there. There's some nice techno combat tracks, things like that. But I mean, I prefer the
00:56:04
Speaker
The soothing shard music at the end, it's nice. It's a very distinctive track. It's funny, you mentioned Celeste there, and the climbing the mountain moment at the end, the peak, right? You're reaching the peak, which you are in both of these games, getting to the top of the shard.
00:56:18
Speaker
or getting to the peak. And I just think back to my Facebook cover art thing is a very vertically compressed kill la kill screen with her staring up the mountain at the city. Well, up the school already. The school, yeah. And yeah, it's just, it's an awesome way to wrap up your game. Let's just be like, this is the final push. You know where the game is. And here's your goal, go for it.
00:56:50
Speaker
And a great way to wrap up this episode. True. So anything else you want to talk about? Actually, I think I just, I ran out of stuff and I saw the transition. I was like, I'm going to bite on this. Dave, let go. I'm still talking here. That being said, I'm not still talking here. You can find us online as you always can at soapstonepodcast at gmail.com. If you want to send in your thoughts, requests, ideas for new episodes, be back for this one.
00:57:19
Speaker
if you'd like to interact with us on a more personal note but with everyone else on the internet you can also reach us at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast where i have said that we should put a picture of our new podcast setup i'll post it people can look at that and then just to let us know that you've seen it you can like the picture and then we'll know that we have a listener we just need one we just need one
00:57:47
Speaker
That's it. Please, they have my family. That being said, I hope you guys have enjoyed the episode and we will see you in the next one. Season 2, baby!