Originally this was just supposed to be
a post where I talked about the the plot and setting and whatnot, but
for some reason things like that always turn into me just describing
the plot, point by point, with a lot of commentary. Finally I
decided to just go with it, and I'll push some of the stuff that
doesn't fit into such a format into
the next post.
Do you see the problem though? If you
don't, that's ok. Here's a hint: That's basically what I've been
doing with Deus Ex, where I've written more than 14 thousand words
about the training mission without actually getting to the end of the
training mission. Here I did it with a whole game.
Mind you this is nowhere near that
long, but it is long. Anyway, this post will be on the plot of
Mirror's Edge.
-
First off, it might be worth pointing
out that in the comments to the previous post the idea was brought up
that the story wasn't an important part of the game, better skipped,
and it was further suggested that Mirror's Edge is the sort of game
where the sparsest story is the best story. That's a perfectly
legitimate point of view.
Portal, for example, had very little in
the way of any of that stuff. You could look at backstage areas that
had been left open in some places and read the writing on the walls,
and you could look into closed off conference rooms and see some
powerpoint presentations, but for the most part you had the thinnest
coating of story over an excuse to present you with puzzles. In
fact, it could be argued that abguvat unccraf va Cbegny ng nyy. Va
gur raq gur rivy NV vf fgvyy nyvir, naq va gur erivfrq raqvat lbhe
punenpgre vf ab serre guna fur jnf jura fur fgnegrq. Yet Portal is
considered a great game. (And I don't disagree with that, I liked
it.)
Still, I'm very much a story person, so
for me having a solidly told story is its own justification. Not in
all settings of course. There's a reason that the trailers for
Minesweeper: The Movie, and
Tetris: The Movie, are jokes. There's no
call for a story in a game like that. But in something like
Mirror's
Edge, I'm very much interested in story because that's what draws me
in and motivates me. Without a story for me to latch onto, I'll
probably never experience most of the gameplay of a game, no matter
how good it might be.
That's why I'm looking at the story
here.
-
Backstory
Before the game takes place there's a
move toward increased government power in the city (if the city has a
name it's never stated) especially in the area of surveillance. Most
don't notice or care. A non-negligible portion of the people do.
They organize protests, marches, demonstrations, the like. The
police crack down, the demonstrations they crack down on become known
as the November Riots. People die, including the main character's
mother.
As far as the city is concerned that
meant the end of public dissent, those who disagreed were
criminalized, pushed to the edge of society. As far as the main
character is concerned that mean the end of her family, the family
fell apart, she ran away from home.
The city became a safer place for most
of those who weren't on the government's enemy's list. It became
safe and clean. Faith prefers how it was before, “Once the city
used to pulse with energy. Dirty and dangerous, but alive and
wonderful. Now it's something else.”
The failed dissidents of days gone by
weren't particularly interested in identifying themselves by using
the government monitored communications methods (which included but
probably were not limited to, email, phones, and any face to face
meetings anywhere in the vicinity of the ubiquitous surveillance
cameras) which created the market for an extralegal courier service.
With communications physically delivered by hand there was no space
for the government to eavesdrop.
Thus the runners were born.
Faith, the main character, broke into
the home of a runner named Merc (apparently short for Mercury, the
messenger of the gods) and ended up having that be transformed into a
job offer. He trained her as a runner.
Given when Faith ran away, this may
very well have been right around the time the runners started, but we
don't have really have an indication of how long after Faith ran away
that she met Merc.
Faith's sister, Kate, does not run away
from home and eventually becomes a member of the police. The CPF
(City Protection Force).
Merc will eventually retire from
running and take on the role of operator, assigning jobs and
directing runners.
Beyond that it's worth noting that the
corrupt mayor is named Callahan and he owns a construction company,
which might go a way toward explaining why there is so much
construction going on in the city.
-
Prologue: The Edge
The game begins with Faith returning to
work after a fall, so she has to go through a brief training thing to
demonstrate proficiency, which is the explanation for why you have a
training mission.
Then the prologue mission starts with
Faith's first mission back. It starts out simple enough, her job is
to pick up a pack that's already been stashed, take it one leg of the
journey, and hand it off to another runner. The other runner is
named Celeste, or Cel, and is the one who guided Faith through the
training mission.
As Faith picks up the bag she's warned
that the police band is abuzz, a news chopper spotted her and cops
(referred to, informally, as 'blues') are on the way.
While crawling through an air duct Faith
overhears a news report about the upcoming mayoral election. If the
player blows passed she'll hear almost nothing, if the player is
interested then Faith can listen for a bit. In that case you'll learn
that there are four candidates running. The incumbent, Callahan, is
in the lead. Two other candidates are nearly tied in second and
third. The fourth candidate, initially dismissed, is gaining fast.
He's nearly caught up to the one in third place, which given that
second and third place are just about the same place, that means that
he looks to be on his way to running second. He will be important to
this story, his name is Robert Pope.
I like this method of storytelling. It
doesn't slow you down if you're not interested, it doesn't require a
cutscene, it doesn't stop the game, and it fits within the context of
the game world. Aliens vs Predator II (the game, not the movie) made
use of this kind of of storytelling. I thought it worked quite well.
If you were interested in what you were hearing you could linger, if
you weren't it didn't slow you down. A lot of stuff can be learned
from what you overhear while in an air vent or a crawlspace or
whathaveyou.
It seems like a good way to add depth
for those who want it without inconveniencing those who don't.
Another narrative technique that worked
well in AVPII, and various other games as well, was the ability to
look at documents or computers. If you were interested in the story
you could read such things and get a much greater sense of depth. If
you weren't, you just walked right on by. Or, more likely, ran.
Both of these seem suited to a game
like Mirror's Edge where there's not a lot of face to face time. Of
course they're only suited to times when she's in a place where she
can overhear or read, but she's actually in such places more often
than you'd think.
They both see some use, sort of, but
not a lot. I bring them up here in large part because one of my
complaints about the storytelling is that it doesn't establish
things, it just throws you in and expects you to care about things
you never really had a chance to know. Take Pope, for example. If
you chose to stop and listen to the whole news report then you found
out he existed just now. If you didn't you still haven't heard his
name. He's about to have a fateful meeting with Plot, it might feel
a bit more meaningful if you'd had a chance to actually hear a bit
about him first. You really don't.
If the game had had more things like
this before he met Plot, it might seem more meaningful when he does.
Another thing you never really have the
chance to get to know is what being a runner is normally like. In
theory this level, called the prologue, should be your chance to be a
runner before the plot starts. You're doing the job of a runner
after all, you're delivering something from point A to point B.
Except it's not going to be getting to know what being a runner is
like, it's getting to know what being a runner usually isn't
like.
The opening cutscene has Faith say of
runners, “We keep out of trouble, out of sight, and the cops don't
bother us.” Now someone spotted her, which explains why the cops
are coming, but when you come out of the air duct you will find that
the cops open fire. This takes everyone by surprise. This is
unusual, this is atypical. This is strange and outside of the realm
of usual running.
This is the only job you'll actually
have in the whole game. Everything else is outside of Faith's
professional life. And this one example you have of what a job is
like, isn't what a job is like.
I'm going to save what I would have
liked to have instead for the next post, so at the moment just let me
add this: The reason that the cops are suddenly shooty is never
explained. Merc assumes that Faith must have done something to set
them off, but she didn't. Faith's connection to the upcoming plot
will not be known by those who might want to take her out until
later. Right now there's no reason, at least none that you will
learn about in the game, for the police to suddenly be in a shooting
mood.
Faith will manage to pass off the bag,
and will execute a daring escape by grabbing hold of the news chopper
that spotted her in the first place. One could speculate that the
reason for the cops and the news chopper was to get footage of a
runner in a firefight with the police so that the upcoming crackdown
on the runners would have public support, but that would be entirely
speculation because, in spite of promises to look into it, the game
never offers any followup on why this happened.
Once you get back to base the plot
starts.
-
Cutscene: The Listener
Faith is at Merc's house, which is not
really a house but that's not important right now, listening in on
the police chatter. She hears that her sister is going in to take a
statement from Robert Pope, for those counting this is the second
time his name is mentioned, about a break in he had earlier.
Pope, we will find out later, is a
family friend. Which may be why he specifically called Kate.
Faith then hears that there have been
shots fired at the exact place Kate just went to. She runs out the
door shortly after Merc comes in, just as dawn is breaking.
Rewatching this I see that he hadn't actually started asking around
about why the cops were trigger happy yet. He said during the night
that he planned to do that “Tomorrow” and now that tomorrow has
come he's got Plot to distract him.
-
Chapter 1: Flight
Faith is almost at Pope's place before
she tells Merc what she's doing, and all she says is that it's about
her sister. Merc asks around and says that Drake, another former
runner turned operator, said that there was heat at Popes place.
Merc follows that up with, “You know he was running for mayor?
Finally someone who can make a difference in this place.”
For those counting this is the third
time Pope has been mentioned, the second time the fact he was running
for mayor was mentioned, and the first time the fact he was running
for mayor was unmissable. It's also the first time there's been an
indication that he might have become a good mayor if elected.
Also, I can't be the only one who
realized that Pope had very definitely come down with an unfortunate
case of death immediately upon hearing that he was someone who could
have finally made a difference. Up until learning he was a good
candidate anything could have happened with those gunshots. He could
have murdered Kate. He and Kate could both be locked in a firefight
with terrorists that you'd play a decisive role in. Zombie space
squid could be attacking. Any number of things really.
Once we found out he would have been a
good mayor, all hope was lost.
On the other hand, if he hadn't been
killed then stock plots 101 says that he would have turned out to be
evil in the end.
Back to the plot. Faith soon makes it
to the building and to the game's first elevator. The elevators
disguise loading screens and serve as pauses in the gameplay. They
also take forever and leave one with an agonizing need to start
moving and a desire to hit the emergency stop, pull out a crowbar,
and just get the hell out. (Which cannot be done because the
elevators lack an emergency stop button and Faith has no crowbar.)
If you're lucky, the elevators might
have some reading material in them. Never enough to make the ride
seem not-long. In this case you get an editorial from Robert Pope.
For those keeping track this is the fourth time he's mentioned, and
it is completely missable. Sure, you're trapped in an elevator with
it, but you really don't have to read.
It also happens to be the last thing
you'll hear about him before you meet his dead body.
So lets recap the establishing of
Pope's character:
-News report most people probably
didn't hear which says only that he's in fourth place and rising
-Kate, Faith's sister, is going to take
a statement from him.
-“Did you know he was running for
mayor? Finally someone who can make a difference in this place.”
-This editorial you might not notice.
And that's it. I really did like the
game, but I swear this is like a Jerry Jenkins introduction:
Then the authors
suddenly remember that Rayford gets married on page 425 of this book
and here we are on page 312 and so they'd better get on with
introducing his love interest, even if it comes across as kind of
abrupt and out-of-the-blue:
You might be thinking, “That's not so
bad, there's still a hundred and thirteen pages to establish the
relationship.” Oh, how little you know. The mention isn't much of
anything and Ray doesn't even meet her until 16 pages before the
wedding, 16 pages that, as I recall, don't have a lot of her in them.
Pope gets established even less.
If the dead body on the desk is going
to have some impact we need more than a mention that he was running
for mayor and he could make a difference. If we'd been getting
hopeful indications for a longer period then sure, but as is all but
one of the references to his run took place after his death. The one
that didn't was the most missable of the lot. Before he died the
only thing we could be counted on not to miss (assuming we didn't
skip the cutscene and were paying attention) was that Faith's sister
Kate was going to take his statement.
A longer lead up could have given the
impression that Pope actually mattered, because there would have been
opportunities to get a sense that he mattered beyond one person
saying, “Finally someone who can make a difference,” after he's
already dead.
Anyway, the editorial is the only
actual sense of Pope we'll ever get, so I'm going to reproduce it
here in full:
An Editorial by
Mayoral Candidate Robert Pope
We live in a city
of millions. A safe city. A kind city. And yet, not long ago, this
city lay burning in the fires of civil dissent. We've made great
strides in these years since the November Riots. Raised public
security to an admirable standard. We are comfortable in our homes,
have all the information we need filtered, cataloged, purified. We
have been made to believe that the past is the the past, and to
meditate on it too much is to invite it back into our lives. But
this is wrong. We have built our memorials, shed our tears, been
told to forget. We have been told, nothing is wrong now.
And that's it. That's the whole of
Robert Pope. If you bothered to read the annoyingly scrolling
texture in the elevator. It does at least give us an idea of the
population of the city. Millions. At an absolute minimum that means
two million, it probably means more. Which in turn tells us that,
even though the dissidents were a minority, there could be lots of
them.
There's very little to say about Pope.
It feels like they realized, “We're going to base this game around
this guy's assassination, maybe we should mention he exists,” so
they threw in Merc saying he'd be a good mayor, though saying nothing
as to why, and a newsreport saying he was running, and then the
paragraph above.
But saying, “Finally someone who can
make a difference,” doesn't actually give a sense of, “Finally
someone who can make a difference.” For that you need more than
one mention. So we walk into his office knowing almost nothing about
Pope and, as a result, there can be no sense of significance to his
death.
You know even less about Faith's
sister. You've known she existed since the cutscene that sent you
off here, and mentioned she existed one time outside of that. (When
Merc asked what Faith was doing.)
Pope's assassination sets the events of
the game into motion, but the only reason it can do so is because
Faith cares about her sister Kate.
The two things in the room, the dead
Robert Pope and the live Kate drive the entire story. Without Pope
the events can't take place, without Kate Faith has no interest in
getting involved. As such, I think the story would have been a hell
of a lot better if we had reason to care about either, or both, of
these people at this point.
It's actually very easy to get me to
care, I watch bad movies for fun. As such, I will care about these
things without good reason, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't
prefer good reason. It doesn't mean that I forgive bad storytelling
when I can see that it could and should have been better.
The story in this game depends on these
two characters having a sense of significance. They really don't,
and so even if you do care about them it's a very shallow sort of
thing. The same will be true of other things later on. The story
goes through the motions of something, but because it never bothered
to establish a sense of significance earlier that just doesn't really
work.
Anyway, Kate is being framed for Pope's
murder. He called up about a break in he'd suffered earlier, and
also asked about Faith. Which Faith points out is weird because she
hasn't seen him in at least ten years, she didn't even recognize him
when she saw him.
When Kate got there she was knocked
unconscious and her gun was used to murder Pope. She left her radio
in the car and couldn't call it in. Other police are on the way.
We'll learn later that Kate was not specifically targeted, which
ruined my initial theory on why the cops tried to shoot Faith in the
last mission (that they were going after the family.) Kate was
instead framed for the murder because the aim is to discredit the
city's police force so that a certain private security company can
get more power. Thus Kate was framed because she was convenient.
Pope called her in, and once he was in the same room as a cop who
could be framed, he was toast.
Faith initially tries to get Kate to
run, Kate counters it would make her look guilty, Faith
countercounters that given that Kate is being framed the battle on
that front is already lost. Kate asks for help (for Faith has
contacts), Faith initially says no, but then moves in the direction
of yes, notes a scrap left on Pope's desk, steals it, and runs like
hell. Before she does Kate suggests that if Faith finds anything she
should share it with Kate's boss, Miller.
There is a bit more to the
conversation, it touches on the non-freeness of the media early on,
for example. Apparently Faith doesn't follow the Parliament
jester's foist on the somnambulant public news.
Regardless, away Faith runs, with Merc
reminding her that the cops have been unusually shooty. And so sets
off a frenetic scramble to get away from what seems like everything
on earth shooting at Faith, including fire from a helicopter, she
finally makes it into an elevator, doors close bullets dent the
doors, and the elevator starts to move, the first time I played I let
out a breath I didn't realize I was holding in at the same time as
Faith, to which Merc said, “Yeah, you can breathe out,” for it
was that kind of playing. Which is to say it was good.
This was also the first of many times
when I was worried that elevators aren't the most secure options.
Won't the police just stop it, trapping Faith inside, I wondered? I
looked around for a way out, there was none. I think I remember
being told once that about half of elevators have trapdoors in the
ceiling, meaning that half do not. Mirror's Edge tends to have the
ones that do not.
Faith was not trapped in the elevator,
and continued her escape, finally meeting up with Kreeg, another
runner. He works, as near as I can tell, under Drake, but he comes
to the aid of Faith when Merc called him in and he and Faith escape
together.
As they do Merc again promises to try
to find out why the cops are so trigger happy, though at this point
they've got a pretty good excuse, and promises that they'll figure
out a a way to help Kate.
-
Cutscene: Back at Merc's
There's a certain amount of discussion
here between Merc, Faith and Cel about what's going on. They know
that Pope's murder is a contributing factor to the police's
heightened presence and shootiness, but none of them seem to think
it's sufficient to explain the change. Merc speculates that
someone's become extremely jittery for some reason, and then we move
to the piece of evidence Faith stole from the crime scene.
Pope's diary was stolen, I forgot to
mention that before, and Faith thinks the scrap of paper she found
was from it. It's got most of the word “Icarus” and on the next
line, “to the high-,” which Faith interprets as “to the
highest,” written on it.
Merc recaps the story of Icarus,
placing all of the focus on the sun though flying to close to the
water didn't help either, and then suggests that there's someone who
would know what is going on. Faith isn't a big fan of that plan, Cel
has no idea who they're talking about.
Turns out to be a former runner whom
Faith would prefer to avoid forever. His name is Jackknife.
-
Chapter 2: Jackknife
Getting to Jackknife first requires
getting to the old runner training ground where he's hanging out,
then chasing him down.
First the plan was to follow a canal,
but when that didn't work out due to excessive gunfire Merc did the
operator equivalent of a GPS saying, “Recalcuating,” and sent
Faith though the storm drains. Much deeper underground. Anyway, once
Faith reaches Jackknife he runs away, but he's clearly not trying to
get away so much as be an annoying jackass. He'll wait for Faith in
a taunting way at various spots.
It's still possible to lose him if
you're too slow, but if we're looking at this from the perspective of
narrative rather than gameplay, he wants to get caught.
He probably doesn't want to get caught
by having a bar he tried to swing on collapse and leave him briefly
unconscious, but he was planning on having this meeting, so when
Faith catches up to him he explains that he knows what she wants,
does more taunting by saying he heard a cop killed Pope, and then
finally sends her in the direction of a former wrestler, who headed
up Pope's security. Travis Burfeild, stage name Ropeburn.
Jack's description of Rope burn is,
“[...] he's really just a thug who got lucky. And sometimes people
are too ignorant to see their place. Always want to swim in the big
pond... never see the bigger fish.”
This level is, I think, the first time
we see evidence of the partnership between Callahan Construction and
Pirandello Kruger Security. Callahan Construction belongs to the
mayor, Pirandello Kruger (PK) is the private security firm that will
gain power when the scandal of Kate allegedly killing Pope comes to
light.
It's a pretty sound partnership,
Callahan gets rid of his challenger and gets a private army not bound
even by the laws restricting the already totalitarian CPF, PK gets
all of the perks that come with being a state sponsored but
non-governmental military force. Including money that otherwise
would have, presumably, gone to the CPF. But for the moment, the
only signs of a connection we have are the fact that they're working
together on the Eden Estates project.
So this is, sort of, some of the kind
of foreshadowing I'd like to see elsewhere, there are hints of things
to come if you pay attention. But this is something where if they
hadn't set up in advance there'd be no problem, where the lack of
introduction to Kate and Pope makes the driving force behind the
game's plot fall flat to an extent.
-
Cutscene: Miller
Kate told Faith to take anything she
found out to Miller, so Faith goes to see Miller.
Kate hasn't mentioned having a sister,
but Miller either accepts Faith's claim or has figured out on his
own. She tells him about Icarus, though not about Ropeburn. He says
he wont stop her, saying that he owes that much to Kate, but plenty
will try.
The situation on his end is that Kate's
been arrested and he can't get in to see her. Nor can he do anything
to help Faith.
-
Chapter 3: Heat
So Faith breaks into Ropeburn's office.
Overhears him talking on the phone. He just takes orders, something
doesn't look good for the person he's talking to and zir little gang,
Rope burn tells zir to take that up with “them”, he doesn't
expect Faith to last long, none of the runners will, Project Icarus
will be fine, and he sets up a meeting.
He goes to get food. Faith drops into
his office. This is seriously a place where one might want to insert
story. The player character is alone in a bad guy's office with his
computer and his files. There will never be a better time to snoop
around and discover story. Once again, I'm not advising that this be
forced on people, but if you could use the “use” button to use
some of these things and actually read something and thus make the
time alone in his office seem not-wasted that would have been nice.
As is, Faith sees something on the desk
with a PK logo on it, has some moments in the office with nothing to
do, and is then informed that she must have tripped a silent alarm
because the cops are on the way. She runs, they follow, and it works
its way up to a scene where she jumps from one skyscraper to another
in spite of them not being close enough to each other, instead
bridging the gap via the cunning use of cranes.
If Callahan were in the coffee
business, and thus his corruption didn't result in the city being
littered with construction, the runners wouldn't have nearly as many
options available to them. Don't get me wrong, they are proactive,
building wooden extensions to buildings so that one can jump between
them when, unmodified, that would be impossible, but they definitely
benefit from Callahan Construction.
-
Cutscene: Standoff
Faith tells Miller that Ropeburn was
definitely involved in framing Kate, Miller says that Ropeburn is
dangerous, and then pulls a gun on Faith. He apologizes first, but
with private firms muscling in on CPF jurisdiction and just waiting
for the CPF to fuck up, he thinks the only way to stop them from
taking over, and the only way to save Kate, is to give them Faith.
Faith, as you might imagine, disagrees
with this plan of action.
She manages to get Miller's other gun
(he wears two) and then gives it back to him. She says that she's
letting Miller go for Kate's sake, but warns she'll kill him if he
pulls a gun on her again. Then turns her back and walks away,
delivering an insult as she leaves (“And right now, I think I'd be
doing the city a favor.”)
That's not necessarily a wise way to
deal with someone whose problems might be solved by killing you and
trotting your dead body in front of news cameras, but it works in
this case.
-
Chapter 4: Ropeburn
Faith goes to the meeting between
Ropeburn and unknown-person-on-the-phone. As she approaches a
helicopter arrives, it looks like a CPF one. When she gets there
Miller and Ropeburn are talking. Faith assumes the worst.
I, personally, did not. It seemed like
a distinct possibility, of course, but Faith just told Miller that
Ropeburn was behind everything. It makes a certain amount of sense
for him to be talking to Ropeburn. If he found out Ropeburn was
going to an under construction building that would be empty that day,
with no prying eyes, it might have seemed an ideal time for a
meeting.
A news report that Faith hears on the
way indicates that now that Kate being the prime suspect has gone
public confidence in the CPF is going down, while mayor Callahan is
promising to keep the city safe no matter what. In other words, all
of Miller's fears are coming true, he's been told by the only other
person who seems to care that Kate was framed that Ropeburn is
involved, and he might have reason to suspect that those above him
are in on it which makes for a good reason not to waltz into
Ropeburn's office. So it seemed like he definitely might be there
legitimately.
Going back and listening to Ropeburn's
phone call more closely it seems even more like Faith shouldn't jump
to any conclusions here. The way he talks about “blues” (the
term used for cops) in third person but, “your gang” in second
makes it seem like he's talking about two rather different things.
Thus it makes it sound like he's not talking to Miller.
Of course the biggest thing making me
think that Faith was jumping to the wrong conclusion was that she
immediately reached that conclusion but couldn't hear a word that was
being said. That's narrative speak for, “It's not what it looks
like.”
Anyway, she makes it to the roof,
Miller has apparently disappeared but the helicopter has not (which
is weird to say the least.) And Ropeburn takes Faith by surprise and
throws her off the roof onto a somewhat lower roof, which he jumps
down to and tries to throw Faith off of as well.
If you don't hit the disarm key at just
the right time, he will succeed and you'll have to go through that
whole sequence again. If you're bad at hitting keys at just the
right time, as I am, you will hate this sequence with the passion of
ten thousand premillennial dispensationalists. (For all their many
damning failures, those people have passion. Actually, that might be
one of their failures considering how they direct it.)
Especially since I don't like that kind
of thing anyway. I don't play a game so I can watch a forked
cutscene where my ability to hit a certain button at the right moment
determines which fork the cutscene takes.
Regardless, Ropeburn ends up hanging
off the side of a building and is quite willing to talk in order to
get pulled back onto the building. He tells Faith that he hired a
professional to do the killing, and that he's scheduled a meeting
with said professional. He doesn't tell Faith what Miller wanted
instead saying that he'd tell everything once he was pulled up.
Faith agrees, and that's about when Ropeburn is assassinated by
someone in white clothing.
Faith runs away. This involves meeting
your first elevator with a trapdoor, and running through the subways.
Faith meets up with Celeste and moves on to the cutscene with her
name on it.
-
Cutscene: Celeste
Back at Merc's lair Celeste asks Faith
what she's thinking about, Faith tells her about trying to catch up
with Pope's murderer the next day, Celeste says to lay low, it's not
Faith's fight. Faith talks about her parents, how they'd been
friends with Pope, thought the city was worth protecting, tried to
bring about change. Her mother died, she ran away, met Merc, stuff
that I already talked about in the backstory section above.
Cel says that what Faith is doing is
the fastest way to get herself killed, Faith says, “They got my
sister involved Cel. I have to clear her name. I owe her that
much.” As of the end of the game, she will have utterly failed on
that count.
Faith invites Celeste to come with her
the next day, Celeste says she's on a job. They part.
Before they do, Faith says she'll
survive, Celeste responds that survival is overrated. You have to
live.
Celeste will later say to Faith, “I
tried to warn you.” I think you've got to give her credit on that
point because she's dripping with, “I'm evil,” in this scene.
There's foreshadowing and then there's using thermonuclear weapons on
already deceased horses.
Celeste's betrayal would probably feel
more like a betrayal if it weren't for the fact that this scene here,
where she's obviously on the opposing side, weren't the majority of
her pre-reveal characterization.
All that we've had from her before this
is that she led Faith in the training mission, which didn't involve
much of anything that revealed character, that she got a handoff from
Faith, ditto about revealing character, and from the pre-Jackknife
cutscene, that she thinks cops are slow, she's vaguely familiar with
the name Icarus, and she doesn't know (or claims to not know) who
Merc and Faith are talking about when they discuss Jackknife without
using his name.
None of that really establishes
friendship, and as they said in Bite the Bullet, “If it ain't by a
friend, it ain't betrayal.”
-
Chapter 5: New Eden
It's a new mall, not finished yet.
It's called New Eden. I'm told that fish think it contains slimer
slime, but that's not mentioned in the game.
The mall turns out to be an ambush,
warrior in white shows up but does not actually fight Faith, leaving
that to PK people.
I think something with PK's name on it
showed up in an elevator just as you were getting out of it, before
the screen in the elevator switched to error message, but I'm really
not interested in sitting through one of those elevator rides to find
out exactly what it was.
-
Cutscene: Jackknife
Faith faith tracks down Jackknife,
bangs him up against a wall and accuses him of being the reason for
the ambush at the mall. He allays her suspicions by appealing,
basically, to her sense that he's incapable of organizing such a
thing. She dismisses him as insignificant.
On the one hand, I've seen this mistake
so many times, on the other hand this is a no win situation. If
Faith concludes that he isn't involved, that means he is. If she
concludes that he is, that means he isn't.
It's like the thing with Pope. If he's
good then he dies. If he lives then he'll later be revealed to be
evil. No matter what the outcome is bad.
-
Chapter 6: Pirandello Kruger
I think it was the movie where Clint
Eastwood is the master thief who witnesses the president commit a
murder that commented on the difficulty of breaking the security of a
security company. I could be wrong about that though.
Anyway, Pirandello/Kruger is a security
company that I will resume writing incorrectly after this sentence
because the slash just looks silly to me. Faith breaks into said
company.
In this level there is a phone that
says it has a message waiting, use it and you'll hear Ropeburn being
pissed of about the break in. So one would guess that no one has
listened to the messages in a few days. It also has a computer
screen you can read. Not use the computer, there's writing on the
texture on the screen. For that matter there's a note taped to
another computer screen.
All of these things are fairly decent
ways of delivering narrative without breaking up the flow of
gameplay, as I've said. If you're interested you can take a moment
to read, if you're not it inconveniences you not in the least.
They're not implemented the best (reading the computer screen as it
is set up is annoying, for example) but they're there. It would have
been nice if things like this had seen more use because that sort of
thing can really fill out the gameworld, making it seem like a world
exists outside the bounds of the levels, and also reinforce story.
By the time I found the phone you could
use I'd given up on the idea I could use the “use” button on
anything but buttons and valves. I'd tried it on all kinds of
things. Computers, notepads, whathaveyou. I mean, in the game I'm
theoretically trying to figure out who is framing my sister, if I
should have access to such a person's documents, wouldn't I want to
search them? Nothing actually responded to such attempts.
The level actually does a lot to
progress the plot as well.
Faith finally meets Project Icarus. It
turns out it's a program to train and equip a new kind of enforcement
officer, one specifically designed to combat the runners. When Faith
learns of this she tells Merc to put the word out warning everyone
because the plan is to take them all out.
There's a storytelling problem with
that though. When she opens up the files on Project Icarus six
images come up on the main display with various bits of information
displayed elsewhere. Those six images are (this is in no particular
order): Faith, Merc, Celeste, Drake, Kreeg, and the standard Project
Icarus trooper. On seeing this Faith says that they're coming after
all the runners.
Which gives the impression that there
are three runners and two operators in total. The runner network
seems to have a population of five.
This will not do. In the level you'll
find out that anonymous polls have revealed that more than half the
city's population have used illegal methods to transport information
at least once. Doubtless there are methods other than runners, but
that still tells us that even if we take the most conservative
estimate possible for the city's population (two million) the runners
have a potential client base of over a million people. Over a
million people have used the runner's services or similar (even if
something they improvised themselves.)
Faith sees five faces and concludes
that they're coming after all the runners? Five faces that happen to
be the five people in the business whose names we've heard so far?
There isn't a need for an exhaustive
list of all runners in the city, but the names and faces she sees
shouldn't just be the ones the game has mentioned because that gives
the impression of a very small world. The story should suggest that
there's more to it than what we see. There should be names that
we've never heard of. Perhaps even names that Faith has never heard
of.
If there are only going to be five
people, they definitely shouldn't all be people who have already
shown up. Even having the mentioned characters be two of the five
would kind of be pushing it.
Anyway, now that the secret is out the
Icarus-cops have no reason not to chase Faith through the city. So
they chase Faith through the city. She eventually loses them by
jumping on top of a train.
Merc sets off to put the word out of
the coming crackdown. Faith heads off to the harbor because while
she was examining the surveillance in the Project Icarus room she
noticed the warrior in white on a ship. Said assassin basically has
the standard Project Icarus outfit, just in a different color. Also
the standard Icarus-cop carries a tazer, she goes for a more lethal
approach.
-
Cutscene: Race to Harbor:
See the name of the cutscene? That's
literally all that happens. If by “Race” we mean “Run” and
by “to Harbor” we mean, “through generic cityscape in a
direction that presumably leads to the harbor.”
-
Chapter 7: The Boat
Faith saw that the assassin who killed
Ropeburn, and possibly Pope, was on the boat, so she sprinted over as
fast as she could. When she arrived she snuck in by hopping in the
back of a truck.
She eventually made it to the assassin,
had a fight, the assassin ran away, there was another fight.
I don't think it's ever established why
the assassin was on the boat, what the cargo was, or anything like
that. Lot of heavily armed guards though.
Worth noting that the involuntary
noises of pain that the assassin makes when Faith hits her are, well,
female sounding. Certainly such things can be misleading, but it
really seems like Faith should at least consider stopping using male
pronouns after the first fight. Also, if making a game, don't have
the character say, “Damn, lost him,” if the person being chased
is still visible on screen and not that far away.
-
Cutscene: The Assassin
The distraction of a helicopter allows
the assassin to escape again, but Faith cuts her off and soon
discovers that the assassin is Cel.
A couple things, one is that given
Cel's obvious dark side affiliation and attempts to make Faith give
up and do nothing, this isn't much of a surprise. Cel is the one who
Faith told about the meeting at the New Eden Mall, the meeting that
would turn into an ambush. When Cel says she tried to warn Faith
off, she's being honest.
The second is, as I said before, this
doesn't really have much in the way of emotional impact (a term that
calls to mind apocalyptic events producing craters) because you
seriously never got to know Cel. It's not really a sense of betrayal
if you never get a sense of relationship.
Moving on, there is some actual plot
here.
Celeste says that Faith needs to learn
to let go, like she did with her family, and then pulls a gun. They
have a nice conversation. Cel says that the runners are screwed,
Icarus is just the start, and she wants to live, “not just
survive.”
We learn that Pope started threatening
the wrong people, “High up people,” so they had Cel kill him.
She says it was him or her, but I don't think you just get the job of
assassin like that. I think you probably have to work your way up
before they trust you with a critical piece of the plan. Otherwise
how would they know that Cel wouldn't just warn Pope about the orders
and side with him. In other words, “Him or me,” seems like it's
a way to avoid responsibility which can't really be weaseled out of
that easily. It may have been the case, but -even if it was- her
choices doubtless led her to that point.
Of course, avoidance of responsibility
is pretty standard for evil people. Cel has a long way to go before
she reaches, say, the Cullen level.
Cel also reveals that she didn't know
Kate was Faith's sister, and then her allies with big guns show up
and start shooting. It's Faith's turn to make use of a distraction,
she steals Cel's gun and uses it on some barrels of volatile
explodability. Cel escapes from Faith, Faith escapes from the guys
with the big guns.
Merc heard everything and reports (via
Kreeg) that, thanks to the swift justice program, Kate has been
tried, found guilty, and will be taken to jail via convoy in less
than an hour.
There was originally going to be a
prison level (concept art survives) and some speculate that it would
have gone here, largely because the times don't add up. There will
be a convoy, but it won't be in less than an hour. The time is
predawn, the convoy will be at two in the afternoon.
Also, there's a serious oversight here
on the part of the characters. Celeste knows where Merc lives. Her
cover has been blown. She no longer has any reason to not do things
that would compromise her position amoung the runners.
Merc should be packing up and moving
right now. The special runner stopping police force is no longer in
hiding, and the spy who knows where he lives no longer has any reason
not to send them to his home.
This isn't necessarily a plot problem,
sometimes people do stupid things, but it is a serious mistake from
the characters.
-
Chapter 8: Kate
The plan is to use a sniper rifle to
stop the convoy, Drake is sending Kreeg to drop it off in advance for
Faith. Faith just has to get there, use it on the engine, and then
grab Kate. Which is what she does.
Also in this level you find that the
long awaited memorial to the November Riots has been canceled by the
mayor citing security concerns.
-
Cutscene: Kate's rescue
The police van Kate was being
transported in is upside down, Faith breaks her out, there's a hug,
and then Faith gives Kate her earpiece so that Merc can guide Kate
back to her place while Faith leads the cops away.
How is this a bad idea? Let me count
the ways:
-Merc's lair is compromised. Someone
working with the runner-beating team knows exactly where it is.
-Faith is cut off, without her earpiece
she can't be warned of problems or called in to help. If Kate gets
into a bad situation on the way to Merc's, Kate is screwed.
-Kate isn't a runner. Faith's original
plan was for the two of them to run together. This made sense as
Kate probably couldn't do it on her own. Kate is, presumably, a
capable individual, she's a trained cop, but she's not a runner and
there's only so much that one can teach someone via an earpiece while
the learning person is fleeing all police everywhere.
-Merc's lair is compromised.
-“Let's split up” almost never ends
well.
It is a little over six and a half
hours later when Faith returns to Merc's place. As one might expect,
it is now the smoking remains of Merc's place. Kate is not there.
Merc is. Faith finds him under a
couch, prepared to shoot. He's near death and lives long enough to
tell Faith that he heard they were taking Kate to The Shard, a
massive skyscraper that's home base to the mayor. He also tells
Faith not to be sorry, and not to let them win. Then he loses
consciousness and presumably dies.
Faith initially wanted to get him a
doctor, he said it was too late for that. Given that there's no
evidence Faith tried to get a doctor, even if Merc was wrong on that
point he probably still died, and I think we're meant to assume he
was right.
-
Chapter 9: The Shard
Faith breaks in, makes her way through
the building, and reaches a point where she meets up with Miller, who
saves her (shooting two PK guards in the backs in the process) and
gives her an earpiece of his own. He sends her to the roof (Kate is
to be transported via helicopter) promising to hold off those who
might come from behind and contact you once he has a chance.
Remember what I said about feeling like
the police would shut down an elevator while Faith was in it? Yeah,
that's something that did in fact occur to the developers as well.
Fortunately it had a trap door.
Some rerouting is necessary, then
Miller overrides an elevator to Faith's advantage, and finally she
reaches the center of surveillance Miller suggests that causing a
catastrophic failure in those systems will open some doors she needs
to get to the roof.
Then she loses contact with Miller,
there's a gunshot involved, he may or may not be dead.
At the roof Jackknife has Kate, and
talks to Faith for a bit. This is one of the times that a villainous
speech actually makes sense. He's keeping Faith's attention focused
on him so that PK troops can take up positions behind her without her
noticing.
What comes out from this chat are a few
things. One is that the assumption someone like him can't be
involved in anything of significance is something that he's been able
to make good use of. Another is that he knows who the big fish are,
which given that he's operating out of the mayor's building with the
mayor putting into practice all of the changes that these events have
been orchestrated to effect, it's probably not a surprise that Faith
can guess who he's talking about.
Finally he explains exactly why the
runners are being targeted: they're the lines of communication.
Without them the dissidents lack a means of organizing which means
that wiping them out should be much easier.
Faith says that Icarus is only the
beginning in response to this tidbit, Jackknife says he see's it as
the end. The end of the old city. When characters are debating
whether it's the end or the beginning, that means its the end.
Jackknife takes off with Kate in the helicopter but doesn't go very
far because he, along with the troops who snuck in behind Faith,
tries to shoot Faith.
Faith jumps to the helicopter, knocks
Jackknife to his death, as he falls he fires his weapon disabling the
helicopter, it crashes, Kate and Faith make it out first. The troops
have disappeared at this point, the music picks up, and the game
ends.
During the credits a news report
reveals that, in the aftermath of the “terrorist attack” on The
Shard, Pirandello Kruger is stepping up its role in the city's
security, suspicion is being cast on the runners, and Kate and Faith
are on the run.
Pope is dead, Project Icarus is in
operation, the runners are seen as a terrorist threat, Pirandello
Kruger is on the ascent, the CPF is on the decline. The bad guys'
plan appears to be working. Everything is falling into place.
The only thing that isn't going
according to the evil plan is that Faith kind of sort of screwed over
the surveillance systems for the entire city*. Thus they put out a
warning not use email or phones because they can't be sure they're
secure. (Translation: they can't spy on them.)
And that is where the game ends.
Before this post ends, I want to again
point out that I think there should have been more done to establish
the runners. The reason behind the whole plot is that the runners
are an important communications network, and so long as they exist
resistance can use said network to organize. Of this network we see
five runners, one is secretly working for the other side, two are
retired.
It doesn't feel like a significant
communication network. You serve as a courier all of one time. You
never really get a feel for there being anyone out there besides the
small handful that you meet.
It feels like too small of a world, and
if the idea is that the runners are being targeted because they're the
dissidents' lines of communication, you need to feel like they're
meaningful lines of communication. It can't be the case that every
time you hear about someone involved with runners it's always one of
the same five people of which you are one.
Basically, there needs to be a sense of
a world beyond the bounds of the level, and when it comes to runners
there needs to be a sense that those you actually meet are just a
small handful of the actual runner population. There's nothing to
provide that sense. If an operator is mentioned it will be Merc or
Drake. If a runner is mentioned it will be Cel or Kreeg. (Or
Faith.) When files showed up on Project Icarus, out of all the
runners and runner associates in the city, those five were the ones
to come up.
It makes the world seem like a closed
loop, containing only what's on the screen. For it to work as a
story it needs to seem like it extends beyond what you see in all
directions.
-
* Which is also the reason that I don't
think Miller was helping Faith in order to make a bigger scene that
could be used to discredit the runners and convince people that
increased security was necessary. Prior to that there was a
possibility that he was one of the bad guys, but knocking out the
surveillance system would be too great of a loss for them to endure
for what would amount to a publicity stunt.
* * *
