Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

It’s shaping up to be the sequel I always wanted

I ’m at a presentation of a Catalyst mission and I’ve lost count of how many times the word ‘fluid’ has been used. The movement? Fluid. The combat? Fluid. The mission structure? Fluid. The way the engine can seamlessly transition from the outside world into a building’s interior? Also fluid. It’s subtle hints like this that convey DICE’s intent for its game.

I sympathize with the repetition, because Mirror’s Edge Catalyst isn’t dramatically different from its predecessor. Yes, there’s an open world now, but the basic tenets of what made Mirror’s Edge so good are all present in the demo. It looks gorgeous, just as Mirror’s Edge did. Its freerunning seems responsive and satisfying, just as Mirror’s Edge’s was. When Catalyst was announced, DICE claimed it wasn’t a sequel. Here it looks like the most typical of sequels, improving the first game’s best features and tweaking its worst. In short, it’s Mirror’s Edge but more fluid. It’s pretty much exactly as I was hoping for. Opening the map screen, Faith places a marker to the mission’s starting point.

This activates Runner Vision, which in Mirror’s Edge showed players the optimum route. In Catalyst, it does the same thing, but is applied on-the-fly based on where your waypoint is  set. As in the first game, it’s also optional.

Approaching the looming building of Elysium, Faith passes a ‘Gridleak’—just one of a number of collectibles that will be hidden around the city. Generally, I’m not a fan of hunting down trinkets through a large open world. But Mirror’s Edge is a series about the joy of movement. Done well and the collectibles could be fun mini-challenges that break up the more involved missions and sidequests. Faith reaches the marker, triggering a cutscene. Yes, there are still cutscenes— but now they’re in-engine. It introduces a new character: a swaggering jerk whose impotent, macho smack-talk accompanies Faith throughout the mission. Catalyst is a reboot of Faith’s origin. Once again, it’s about the figures on the edge of a dystopian society—the ‘runners’ who deliver secretive documents and the sense of competition between them. You’ll see much more of life as a runner in Catalyst, where Faith will operate as a cat burglar, data courier or spy.

Moving on up
Infiltrating the building, Faith shows off her new and improved moveset. With enough momentum, she can again chain between wallrunning, sliding and clambering around with ease. Additional skills are part of an upgrade system that lives in Faith’s glove. In the demo, she has a Mag Rope. It’s basically a grappling hook-style device that lets her swing between large gaps. For Catalyst, the combat has also been incorporated into the flow of movement so that it’s less stop-and-start. A UI element shows the location of any surrounding enemies that might block your way. It’s a matter of finding the gaps in their positioning and taking out anybody who gets too close.

In the demo, this is all performed flawlessly. It will no doubt be more clumsy in the hands of someone less skilled but DICE has tweaked the difficulty to remove some of the frustrations of a poor performance. “I wouldn’t say it’s easier, because it’s not easy,” says senior producer Sara Jansson after the demo. “It’s still a skill-based game. But we’ve worked on different systems that help you if you’re slightly off timing. If you jump a little bit too early into a wall run or jump you’ll get help to still make it, depending on how much momentum you have.” Get it right, and you’ll keep more of your momentum. “If you’re a skilled player, you’ll just be a lot more fluid.”

Phil Savage