Mirror's Edge Impressions

While the EU PlayStation Day may have been Sony's event, the company was still keen to share the spotlight with other publishers, showcasing some of their upcoming games for the PlayStation 3. EA was on hand to show off a video--allegedly entirely made up of in-game footage--giving media a look at the upcoming game Mirror's Edge, an Orwellian first-person parkour--or free running--game being developed by Digital Illusions.

The demo was light on dialogue and music, instead letting the action speak for itself as the camera soared from building to building. When information is heavily monitored and you need to get an important message through, where do you go? Faith apparently; a woman who makes a living diving, rolling, and balancing across thin pipes hundreds of feet above street level. Details on the game's story are still sketchy, but when a crime goes down and you're wanted for questioning by the government, you do what any smart traceuse would do: You take to the roofs.

Presented from a first-person perspective, the cinematic opened with Faith running, arms akimbo, before jumping on and climbing up a chain-link fence, sliding under a set of low steel pipes and performing a barrel roll as she landed. It's not unlike trying to imagine Assassin's Creed from a totally different point of view. Along the way, she slid down pipes, ran sideways along building walls to bridge gaps, and used what looked like power cables as a makeshift zip line.

The world around her was a high-resolution cityscape made up of office buildings with reflective windows, although as far as we could tell, her character model was not reflected back at any point. Below, at street level, police cars were visible with their lights flashing, perhaps looking for her as she moved between the structures. Faith's hands and feet were visible as she moved and are quite prominent as she reaches to grab a ledge to pull herself up at the tail end of a jump.

The end of the video showed her sliding down an escalator, and while it looked like controlled falling, there was a slight hint of panic in her movements--as you'd expect from a someone on the run. The last scene showed Faith disarming what looked to be some kind of security officer decked out in black. Here, she used her hands to grab his shotgun and wrestle it from his hands, before dispatching him with a swift kick to the back of the head.

It's all still a bit mysterious at this point, and we'll be interested to follow the development of the storyline and gameplay. How well Faith's character movement translates to a control scheme is yet to be seen, but already Mirror's Edge has piqued our interest. We are sure, though, that those afraid of heights or prone to motion sickness are being given due warning.