Mirror's Edge

Mirror's Edge is an action-adventure platform game where the player must control the protagonist, Faith Connors, from a first-person perspective and navigate a city. To progress through the game and its storyline, the player needs to complete a series of levels that involve performing a linear sequence of acrobatic maneuvers. These include jumping between rooftops, running across walls, climbing pipes, walking along ledges, sliding down zip lines, and getting past opponents controlled by the game's artificial intelligence. The visibility of Faith's arms and legs is used to convey her movement and interactions with the environment.

Her momentum is an important aspect of the gameplay, as preserving it through multiple obstacles allows the player to run faster, jump farther and climb higher. To help players chain moves seamlessly, the game employs a navigation system, called Runner Vision, which turns certain objects to a bold red color as Faith approaches them, allowing the player to instantly recognize paths and escape routes.

Mirror's Edge is set in a near-future city where life is comfortable and crime is almost non-existent. The city's state of bliss is achieved by an oppressive regime that controls the media and its citizens. An underground crew of parkour couriers, called Runners, operate independently from the city's security and surveillance measures, delivering private goods and sensitive information. At the same time, a new candidate, Robert Pope, is challenging the incumbent Mayor Callaghan on a platform of deregulation.

The game follows the story of Faith Connors, a 24-year-old Runner who lost her mother when campaigning against the city shifting from its vibrant atmosphere to its current regime 18 years before the game's events. Faith was trained by former Runner Mercury "Merc", who now provides her with intelligence and radio support. Faith's twin sister, Kate, is a disciplined police officer who has a lot of affection for Faith but is also committed to protecting the city.

Mirror's Edge was developed by the Swedish company DICE as part of an effort to create something fresh and interesting, anticipating a need to diversify away from the successful Battlefield franchise the studio was known for. The game was conceived in July 2006, when the studio decided to create a first-person game that would not be like a traditional first-person shooter, a genre that was considered very crowded at the time. Because first-person shooters typically focus on weapons and technology, DICE wanted Mirror's Edge to focus on the player character and their physicality. The opening chase scene of Casino Royale and the way Jason Bourne fights and runs in the Bourne film series were major inspirations for the game.

Originally, the development team experimented with the player being able to drive vehicles, but the idea was ultimately dropped because they felt it would break the flow of the game. The game's protagonist emerged from a sketch illustrating an athletic female hacker, who art director Johannes Söderqvist felt suited the game very well. He explained that he was interested in a strong female character that would appeal to both women and men, and who became a hero not because of high-tech weapons, but because of her physical abilities.

Mirror's Edge received "generally favorable reviews" from critics, according to the review aggregator website Metacritic. The Windows version was considered superior to its console counterparts due to its more accurate controls and extra graphical features such as PhysX effects. Game Informer described Mirror's Edge as an inspiring and "genre-defining" game, while Computer and Video Games called it "an extraordinary and special game", stating that it takes fatigued first-person mechanics into a new and daring direction. Other reviewers were not as positive towards the game.

Eurogamer considered Mirror's Edge a very divisive game, with both gaping flaws and moments of brilliance. Edge felt that the game lacks depth because it forces the player to follow a predefined path, thus failing to capture anything that made parkour popular, while GameRevolution found the game to be very frustrating and unforgiving.

Although Mirror's Edge received satisfactory reviews upon release, the game has since grown in esteem and developed a passionate fanbase, reaching cult classic status. In a retrospective analysis, Eurogamer considered Mirror's Edge a brave and bold game, stating that no other game at the time tried to expand the potential of first-person action in so many directions. The publication also remarked that, when the game was first released, many people "didn't really 'get' it" because it uses the same template as that of first-person shooters. Game Informer stated that, while the game is not perfect, it "perfectly balanced innovation and entertainment", and described it as a "more grounded and plausible" platformer than the likes of Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia, mainly because it took the genre into a new perspective. Kotaku editor Luke Plunkett went so far as to call the game a masterpiece, stating that its unique architecture, colors, characters, perspective, acrobatics, and music give the game a timeless quality.

Publications have further recognized the game's influence on later first-person action games, including Titanfall 2, the Dying Light series, Ghostrunner, Neon White, and the cancelled Perfect Dark reboot. According to Leah Isobel from TheGamer, "Mirror's Edge inspired a generation of designers to look at platforming a little differently, bringing a breathless edge to the familiar run-and-jump gameplay loop" while introducing "visceral parkour mechanics a decade before Ghostrunner and Titanfall 2 would do the same." The game's moderate success led DICE to develop and release Mirror's Edge Catalyst, a reboot that explores a new origin story for Faith, in 2016.