Red in a Sea of White
How Mirror’s Edge found its identity in simplicity
As triple-A games spend years in development, with budgets ballooning in pursuit of a big hit, it’s hard to imagine Mirror’s Edge being greenlit today unless it had Faith running around an open world completing side missions with RPG-lite skill trees.
Instead, Mirror’s Edge defined itself with simplicity over anything else. All it took was white architecture and splashes of well-placed red paint.
For those who haven’t played it yet (go and play it, please, I really envy you), Mirror’s Edge puts you into the running shoes of Faith, a ‘Runner’, who uses the rooftops to deliver messages and connect the underground in a totalitarian city. It just so happens that the architect of the city couldn’t think of many colours besides white.
In a city where information is heavily monitored, couriers called Runners transport sensitive data. In this seemingly utopian paradise, a crime has been committed, & you are being hunted. You are a Runner called Faith and this innovative first-person action-adventure is your story.
Every mission sends you across skyscrapers, evading security as you leap between high-rises and sprint through tight corridors. The rush of adrenaline as you land a perfect jump that, admittedly, would break my legs looking at it in real life is part of the satisfaction. It never grows old, even after multiple playthroughs—and trust me, I’ve had multiple playthroughs.
But every time you race towards Faith’s objectives, one thing stands out: a bright red obstacle. It leads you. It pulls you in, taking all of your focus like a buoy in an endless sea of white. It draws you in, and it makes it ridiculously easy to stick to the path. While many modern gamers dread the yellow paint trope, breadcrumbing you to the next step in the mission, Mirror’s Edge revelled in it, and despite that, it worked.
Because seeing the red as an obstacle was never right. Instead, it felt like freedom. What other parkour games—and even the weird pseudo-reboot-prequel Mirror’s Edge Catalyst—did wrong was that they treated learning new moves as the progression. The original Mirror’s Edge had you as the progression. You were only ever as good as your skill level, and that made every red object a mini challenge. It showed you where to go, but it didn’t tell you how to get there.
Of course, Mirror’s Edge is linear, but that didn’t matter. The excitement was never limited. Even today, I still get a smile on my face as I run across the crane, barreling as gravity drags me towards planks of wood in the air. It feels vulnerable, and all your faith (pun intended) goes towards your skill level. Perhaps you plummet to your death, the screen fading to black before you hit the concrete far below. Or, perhaps you land with grace, running again as you charge towards the next beacon of red.
What makes that jump so memorable almost two decades later is that the two blinding red surfaces—the one you’re jumping from, and the one you’re jumping toward—aren’t drowned out by your reflection in skyscraper windows. It’s that moment you’re in the air, free, knowing that when you land, you’ll keep moving forward.
I remember as a teenager wishing Mirror’s Edge would expand beyond the white walls that keep it caged. I wanted more, and I needed combat. Looking back, with Catalyst as further evidence, I was sorely mistaken. Mirror’s Edge works so well because it doesn’t go beyond what makes it special, and adding more just makes the focus less clear. Mirror’s Edge never needed more colour.