Games that have aged the best are usually highly stylized - Wind Waker's cell shading still looks pretty dope, while any attempts to accurately represent humans are… oof. But still, weirdly, my “I don’t think a game can look any better” remarks were always targeted at that elusive photorealism goal. I’ve said it plenty of times, I’ve been wrong plenty of times.
But almost 12 years ago, I said “I don’t think a game can look any better than this” about Mirror’s Edge, and here’s the thing:
Mirror’s Edge came out in 2008. The same year as some sincerely great games. Far Cry 2 and Battlefield Bad Company came out that year. But even given these games, you can still tell right?
Like, we’re not even in the same ballpark here! So let's disregard the release year and let’s bring in some real heavy hitters.
I still don’t think it looks as good as Mirror’s Edge. It’s not that Mirror’s Edge somehow time-traveled and stole a bunch of graphics tech from the future and brought it back to 2008. As a comparison, the character models in Mirror’s Edge just don't hold up to the standards set by more modern games. But still – I know all that in my head, but when I’m playing Mirror’s Edge, I still get that feeling: “I don’t think a game can look any better than this.” So what’s going on here?
To get to the heart of this game’s look, we need to talk about architecture. Do you have materials that you deeply care about? Do you like a silk pillowcase, or a marble countertop? Do you prefer cedar over oak, do you like ceramics more than plastic? Let me tell you what Mirror’s Edge cares about.
Mirror’s Edge worships concrete. Mirror’s Edge treats concrete like people treat their children – with adulation, decoration, and just obsessive attention. Mirror’s Edge knows that there’s not just one kind of concrete – the kind that fills a vast underground water runoff is going to be very different than the poured floors of a corporate office, and that’s going to be very different from the maintenance hallways of that same office.
Mirror’s Edge knows that concrete is harsh, and that painted concrete can be even harsher. It knows the vibe. And while concrete may be the game’s favourite child, it’s certainly not alone. Tile gets a lavish treatment, smashed into geometric corporate art or scattered across a barren mall. And through its infatuation with materials, Mirror’s Edge gives its world a staggering level of legitimacy.
Here’s a weird sentence: I could tell you what temperature any of the levels of Mirror’s Edge are. I don’t know how, the game certainly doesn’t provide you with a thermometer. But I just look at this hallway, or this sewer, or this plaza, and I know. And just as important as those materials is the way they interact with the light. I’m going to get a little technical, and get ready to tear me apart (because I don’t know what I’m talking about): There are a couple ways of lighting a scene in a game.
One of those kinds is “dynamic.” In dynamic lighting, the game is actually calculating, on the fly, how light should be falling across a landscape. That means a game can do a lot of cool things with the lighting, if it so chooses, but it also means that a huge chunk of memory is devoted to figuring out how those lights and shadows are supposed to react with the environment. Games are made for systems with finite resources, and so spending all your lunch money on shadows means you can’t afford those sweet polygons to use elsewhere.
So instead of making everything dynamic, Mirror’s Edge uses almost entirely static, pre-baked lights and shadows. The time of day will never change, no matter how long you stand in the level. Shadows will always be in the same place. And “pre-baked” really is an apt term for it – when we watch a cooking show, we’re not seeing the rushed and potentially sloppy results of whatever they made live – we see the perfect cake they made before the show started, baked and frosted to perfection. Mirror’s Edge knows what times of day its levels take place in, it knows what angles you’ll see them from and where you’ll stand in proportion to them. Mirror’s Edge decorates all its levels beforehand, and pulls them out of the oven at the perfect moment. And goddamn, can this game decorate with lights.
Mirror’s Edge is… really white. Blindingly so. Where titles like Dishonored delight in showing their society’s history through architecture, Mirror’s Edge basks in it’s a-historicity. Everything as far as the eye can see is the same aesthetic, same modern facades and same soulless accent colors and the same WHITE. And when the blinding sun and razor-sharp shadows are painted onto these obelisks, there’s a level of artificial hyper-reality that just bleeds through the screen.
One of my favorite things that Mirror’s Edge does is it just blindsides you with its skyline. Again and again, you’ll be running at a thousand miles an hour through a maintenance hallway or a corporate office, smash your way through a door, and suddenly blam, there you are, tiny against this beautiful white void.
Simulating how light bounces around the world is one of the more challenging parts of our race to photorealism. It’s rarely something that we can articulate, but it’s something that we can just feel. Doe’s this forest look great?
But am I mistaking it for a real forest? For a million reasons, of course not. But where games still can’t quite land the organic, Mirror’s Edge embraces the hard lines and uniform surfaces and the sheer cliffs of this future urban landscape. The inherent artificiality of a video game simulation is the perfect compliment to this inherently artificial city.
The world of Mirror’s Edge is a dystopian perfection. Its flawless blue skies and sleek towers of glass belie a corporate corruption and violent police presence that somehow surpasses even our own. The city’s striking architectural unanimity is because of top-down thought control, each building intentionally scrubbed of any reminder of protest or rebellion.
You spend so much time on the rooftops, staring at the skyline, because your existence is illegal. You’re not welcome on the streets. But for fleeting moments while playing Mirror’s Edge, while flying over roofs and through windows, you get to forget that oppression. In the quiet seconds between conflict, we can look out on those gorgeously modelled textures, pitch-perfect lighting, and carefully considered skylines. We can get swept up in that artificial majesty.
I know, of course, that Mirror’s Edge isn’t photorealistic. Its presenting a hyper-reality, a version of real-life that’s elevated far past our everyday experiences. And even though I know about all the rot hiding just out of view, this fantasy still grips me. I just don’t see how games can look any better than