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"We call ourselves Runners. We exist on the edge, between the gloss and the reality - The Mirror's Edge. We keep out of trouble, out of sight. And the cops don't bother us. Runners see the City in a different way. We see the flow. Rooftops become pathways and conduits, possibilities, and routes of escape. The flow, is what keeps us running. What keeps us alive."
Faith Connors

Mirror's Edge is a first-person action platform game developed by DICE and published by Electronic Arts for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2008 and Microsoft Windows in 2009. The game utilizes Unreal Engine 3.

The game is set in a big, shiny city in a conformist police-state. You are cast as Faith Connors, an illegal courier or "Runner", whose job it is to hand-deliver messages and data across rooftops and skyways to avoid ubiquitous government monitoring of movement and communications. The story follows Faith in her struggle to free her sister, a police officer who has been framed for the murder of the opposition candidate for Mayor of the city. While running her clients' illegal messages, she gets caught up in a series of events which lead to her being ruthlessly pursued by the totalitarian government herself. Mercury, Faith's trainer and mentor, acts as her guide, helping her outwit, outrun, and overcome the sinister agents out to eliminate her.

While the game is a First-Person Shooter, guns are completely optionalnote . Instead, Faith uses parkour to traverse rooftops and evade enemies. The rooftops turned into large puzzle pieces as players found their way to point B. The game also had an interesting art direction: the city was almost entirely sterile white save for some sparse colors here and there, and items and places that would turn red to point players in the right direction.

An iPhone/iPad prequel was released in 2010. The gameplay was changed to a 2D Canabalt-style platformer, and the plot involves Mayor Callaghan's attempt to turn the public against the police so shenote  can replace them with her private military, something that was only hinted at in the original game.

Succeeded by the Continuity Reboot Mirror's Edge Catalyst in 2016.


This game provides examples of:

  • Aborted Arc: The "runner assassins" are supposed to be a huge deal. However after appearing in one mission they are never seen or mentioned again. Word of God states time constraints during development was the cause.
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The storm-drain level, though it's justified as a storm drain designed to deal with tsunami flooding, possibly modelled on the G-Cans Project located just outside of Saitama, Japan.
  • Action-Based Mission: Usually the best strategy with enemies is just to run away from them, but there are a handful of places (such as the police ambush in the chapter "Heat") in which the player is forced to engage them directly.
  • Action Girl: Faith, but most of the main girls are as well, are capable of fighting security guards and roof-hopping.
  • Air-Vent Passageway: Features prominently throughout the game. Lampshaded on the penultimate level, when a voice overheard when moving noisily through the vents says, "Jesus, the rats are getting huge!". This comment is possibly lampshaded when one takes the below-mentioned Easter Egg into account.
  • All There in the Manual: Little about the city, the Runners, and Faith is explained in the game. More information can be found from the trailers and press coverage about it, and a tie-in comic written by the game's writer Rhianna Pratchett provides some background details.
  • Almost Dead Guy: Faith arrives at Mercury's hideout just in time for him to give her the information she needs before dying in her arms.
  • Ambiguous Time Period: As with it's location, the City of Glass could be chronologically anywhere from the late 90s to late 00s, though no later than the mass adoption of smartphones.
    • One elevator news snippet mentions The Shard being built in 2012. but it's still unknown how many years afterwards the game is set.
  • Anyone Can Die: Among the many casualties, Merc, Jacknife, and possibly Miller stand out.
  • Artificial Stupidity: You can pretty easily shake off Pursuit Cops in the first encounter by sitting on a high spot and watching them run in impractical paths as they try to get you.
  • Art Shift: The Flash-animated cutscenes contrast highly from the playable levels.
  • Ascetic Aesthetic: The minimalist yet believable art direction with creative and ubiquitous use of bold, saturated colors for the City's appearance is certainly among the game's strongest selling points.
  • Back Stab: If you can get Faith behind any Blue - even a Pursuit Cop - your stealth disarm will lay them flat. You still won't get a Pursuit Cop's M26 melee taser, but you will jolt them with it.
  • Badass Pacifist: It's very possible to play Faith as one, and in fact, this is how you get the best times. Don't stop and fight, just outrun everyone.
  • Bag of Spilling: When you die, any guns you picked up along the way will not respawn with you, so if you, for example, attempt to sneak a handgun through an entire level just to see if it's possible to just shoot the final boss, but miscalculate a single jump, well...
  • Balls of Steel: A slide kick in the groin is a very effective method of dispatching armed enemies (disabling them for just enough time for a disarm)... except the heavy troopers who explicitly wear groin protection with their armor and therefore only receive normal damage from such kicks. Also, the groin kicks don't work on the Parkour Killer, an early indication that it's a girl.
  • Benevolent Architecture: The city seems very well supplied with convenient cables and pipes running between rooftops. Especially for a city which seems to consider traçeurs its Public Enemy Number One. On the other hand, almost every building has roof-mounted fences, often electrified or topped with razorwire.
  • Big Bad Friend: The Parkour Assassin turns out to be Faith's best friend Celeste, who realizes the Runners are about to be exterminated, and agrees to help the bad guys to save her own sorry ass.
  • Big Brother Is Watching: Although he's kind of a slacker, given the overall efficiency (or apparent lack thereof) of his police state, it's that he's watching but may or may not care what he sees.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Faith successfully rescues her sister and kills the man responsible for Pope's murder, but the Big Bad is nowhere to be seen, and they are both fugitives wanted for multiple murders. Her best friend has betrayed her, killing her beloved mentor and training the brutal police forces to kill all Runners. However, she was able to shut down the City's Sinister Surveillance, at least temporarily, and that's what Runners do in a sense - enable the Resistance to plan in privacy. This battle has been won, and the war continues..
  • Black Dude Dies First: Inverted. Kreeg is the only runner you meet in-game that isn't dead by the end of it. Unless Celeste survived, that is.
  • Black Helicopter: The CPF, and other city-sponsored fighting forces, like to travel in these. They're usually armed, and their machine gun fire adds an extra element of danger to Roof Hopping.
  • A Bloody Mess: In the first post-tutorial mission, Faith bursts through a door and sees is a splatter of red on the floor that looks like a spray of blood, until she looks closer and notices it's just spilled paint, perhaps hinting at her first combat encounter with police forces that comes right after.
  • Bodyguard Betrayal: Ropeburn sends the Parkour Assassin to kill Pope.
  • Book Ends: The prologue and the final level both end with Faith jumping onto a helicopter.
  • Boring, but Practical: Despite the game's emphasis on melee combat and running, you might find that it's easier and safer to handle attacking cops or PK elites by knocking out one, taking his gun, and using that gun to shoot all the others.
  • Brick Joke: A rather sad one. An office worker from PK decides that their project to eliminate runners, the horrible working conditions, among other controversial things such as "interrogating co-workers", isn't worth it and sends a mail that he's quitting. This is detailed in his personal diary and the rant can be read on his computer. The file containing said rant is found open on his computer when you get to the PK facility. When you go through the depths of the facility, you find a corridor filled with windows leading to interrogation rooms. An office worker is in one of them and he is beaten and bloody.
  • Bullet Time: "Reaction Time". For when precision maneuvering and disarming mooks head-on is a matter of life and death, accept no substitutes. However, it does not slow down bullets.
  • Captain Ersatz: Celeste bears a strong resemblance to Æon Flux's Scaphandra, particularly her appearance in the video game.
  • Cargo Concealment Caper: In the mission "The Boat", Faith sneaks aboard the eponymous boat by hiding in the back of a cargo truck delivering goods to it.
  • Chekhov's Skill: The disarm from behind move you learn in the tutorial from Celeste is what Faith use to defeat her in the fight with her later on.
  • City with No Name: The City's name is never revealed in this game. In Mirror's Edge Catalyst it's revealed to be "the City of Glass".
  • Climactic Elevator Ride: Reaching the final level's objective requires an especially long elevator ride. It shows how high the Shard rises beyond the rest of the city's skyline, where the player has been running for the entire game.
  • Climax Boss: Faith's rooftop chase and kung-fu duel with the Parkour Killer. Hunting down and taking out a Runner gang leader as an attack helicopter stalks Faith in the IOS prequel.
  • Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Faith has been running for so long she instinctively sees useful terrain as bright red, and even if you turn this feature off some elements of the architecture remain easily identifiable thanks to their color schemes (bright red doors and blue walkways).
  • Conveniently Empty Building: The game takes place in the height of summer, so it's not immediately apparent that many of the levels take place during very early morning or late evening when most people would still be sleeping or have finished work several hours ago. The mall is closed for renovation before its "grand re-opening" (though there are commercials in the game claiming it's open 24/7) and many levels take place in construction sites or maintenance areas. However, it's all deliberate, as the complete desolation in the middle of a major city is a large part of the game's dystopian theme.
    • The subway station, like the mall, was closed for renovation.
  • Copy Protection: Those who have pirated the game would see Faith slow down, as if she has second thoughts about jumping, and if she attempts to jump, she'll fall down, thereby preventing the pirates from completing the game.
  • Corrupt Politician: The opening narration tells us that the political elite are corrupt. The ending implies it's not that bad, but there's at least one man out there willing to murder opponents.
  • Courier: The runners' jobs is to deliver physical information so it can't be tracked by The City of Glass' government.
  • Cowboy Cop: To the city police, it seems like the standard procedure to arrest a Runner can be boiled down to "fill the fucker with lead until they stop running. Then Double Tap". Hell, it's not even unusual to have them shoot at you with the heavy artillery before they actually order you to surrender ! Keep in mind that, in a Pacifist Run, Faith actually does nothing but run away from them and won't even carry a weapon, meaning that there is absolutely no reason for them to use deadly force against her. Then again, the city IS a totalitarian state, so abusive police forces are part of the bunch (even if breaking out the attack helicopters and armored SWAT teams for one unarmed woman running around the rooftops still sounds a bit much). However, turns out you're never facing actual cops, but Pirandello-Kruger mercenaries, trying to defend a conspiracy to replace the police with their own private force.
  • Crapsaccharine World: The city seems like a pretty nice place to live for an oppressive police state; it's a clean, sunny place where the people are healthy and the economy seems to be in good shape, which begs the question just what the deal is. Then again, the Cowboy Cop entry may be a good indicator there is indeed something very, very wrong with that place...
  • Cutscene Boss: Faith's "fight" with the minor villain Ropeburn consists of a cutscene and one quick time event before he's shot by one of Faith's Evil Counterparts.
  • Cutscene Power to the Max: Averted. Everything Faith does in the 3D cutscenes can be executed with precisely timed inputs (except the hugs). In the opening, for example, Faith does a wall run, turns, triggers reaction time, then jumps onto the head of a crane. The only thing keeping players from doing it is a shortage of cranes (initially, anyway).
    • An interview with the developers revealed that the intro sequence didn't just use a series of the available animations - it was actually a recording of that section played by one of the devs! The concept was to show players what they would be able to do later in the game.
    • Played straight in one of the animated cut-scenes where Faith is surrounded by several armed Pirandello Krueger mercs. She drops down and she is surrounded by heavily armed mercs and they are all within close quarters. Faith all of the sudden goes Rambo and takes out all of them with melee combat as if she was this one woman army. In the game, you can be surrounded by them, but don't expect to fight out of them like in the cut-scene or expect to do so unscathed.The whole purpose of combat in this game is to fight in order to run away.
  • Damsel in Distress: Kate Connors is wrongfully imprisoned and Faith spends the rest of the game trying to save her.
  • Darkness Equals Death: A black screen is better than seeing the messy results of a long fall.
  • Design Student's Orgasm: After the November Riots crush the spirit of the people, The City grew like a forest.
  • Difficult, but Awesome:
    • Disarm-counters instantly take down an enemy and give you a free weapon, but you need to be in melee rangenote  and have very precise timingnote . Enemy melee attacks do a lot of damage, too, so if you fail to grab once, you might not get a second chance.
    • The Wall-Run Kick spins an enemy around, leaving them vulnerable to disarm attacks. Good luck getting an enemy into position to do that.
    • It's possible, with a lot of practice to become a Parkour Kungfu Master and kick the shit out of cops while looking incredibly badass.
  • Diegetic Interface: In that there is no interface- other than an optional white "crosshair" dot to prevent motion sickness, you have no health bar, ammo counter, Reaction Time meter, or anything. For instance, to find out where you need to go in a level, you press a button and Faith automatically looks right at it.
  • Disney Villain Death: Jacknife is punted out of a helicopter by Faith.
  • Dodge the Bullet: "No one catches a Runner. That's kinda the point."
  • Does Not Like Guns: Faith, and if you never use any of the guns that are dropped, you earn an Achievement/Trophy.
    • To add unto Faith's perception of not liking guns, you get a different radio-report playing in the credits, detailing that most PKs and officers have been hurt and not killed.
    • In the reboot, Faith cannot hold guns period. It is not a option.
  • Do Not Drop Your Weapon: Enemies only drop their guns when they die, and Faith's disarm moves are all one-hit knockouts.
  • Easter Egg: Towards the end of the penultimate chapter ("Kate"), after correctly sniping the convoy's engine, quickly look up and snipe the middle dot on an orange sign showing nine dots. Quickly zoom out, and a giant rat, about the size of a car, will dart down the street. Click here to watch it, if you're curious.
    • A newscrawl in one of the elevator reports on the ongoing war in Sedaristan from Battlefield: Bad Company, another game by DICE.
  • Edge Gravity: While it only appears in a few places, this is one of the many nearly invisible Anti-Frustration Features. Getting too close to an edge and stopping will have Faith lose her balance, quickly regaining it and repositioning herself a little more from the edge.
  • Elevator Escape: Just like the conveniently placed construction equipment. It's as if The City wants to help the Runners in their rebellion.
  • Elevator Snare:
    • This happens while you're chasing Jacknife, resulting in you having to take the other elevator.
    • Happens to your opponents a couple of times, too, with Faith getting the elevator closed just as a hail of bullets strikes the doors.
  • Elite Mook: The Pursuit Cops can do a lot of the same parkour moves Faith can, so outrunning them can be challenging. They also deploy smoke grenades to conceal incoming attacks and won't hesitate to use their tasers on Faith if they're unable to reach her directly. In addition, they're extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat note , making it nigh-suicidal to attack them head-on. In case one is brave enough to do so, the Wall Run Kick becomes crucial to defeating them, allowing Faith to take them out with one of her disarming grabs, and attacks from above are still an instant knockout. Merc will advise you to flee whenever you encounter one.
  • Escape Sequence: As you might guess, a game about running is full of these. On many occasions, you might find that luck, skill, and free use of guns allows you to fight your way past enemies you're supposed to flee from, but that won't fly when they break out the helicopters.
  • Everything Is an iPod in the Future: While all weapons and electronic devices seen on desks in the offices are black, the entire rest of the game world follows the iPod design concept.
  • Evil Counterpart: Two, actually. There's Celeste, the Parkour Assassin pursued by Faith through much of the game, and Jacknife, the retired Runner who takes responsibility for the entire evil plot in the final showdown, despite being just The Dragon to the (never seen) Big Bad.
  • Executive Suite Fight: Averted, Faith makes her way, and avoids the police, through several office buildings throughout the game.
  • Exploding Barrels: Played straight. Faith is usually unarmed, but her opponents can set them off for extra damage if she is near them. In a cutscene, Faith takes a gun from Celeste and kills a bunch of baddies by exploding a barrel.
  • Facial Markings: Faith has a tattoo round her right eye, making it resemble the "runner's mark" that features prominently in the game.
  • Fall of the House of Cards: In a cutscene near the beginning of the game, Faith is passing time in Merc's lair building a house of cards. When she hears that Kate's in trouble she springs to her feet, knocking the whole thing over.
  • Faux Action Girl: Kate Connors is supposed to be a trained policewoman but she's a Damsel in Distress for most of the game. On top of that, the one opponent she ever faces knocks her out.
  • Female Groin Invincibility: The first hint that the masked Parkour Killer is a woman (if her pain yelps when taking damage don't give it away earlier) is that, during her boss battle, she takes regular damage from crotch kicks that briefly stun every other enemy in the game.
  • First-Person Dying Perspective: Implied with Faith's death via falling from a high height. We see Faith's falling from her POV, however we don't see the final moment, only her view being obscured and a Sickening "Crunch!" sound afterwards.
  • Flipping the Bird: The "Sweet Goodbye" achievement. This is achieved by jumping forward, doing a 180 degree turn while in the air and then pressing the attack button in quick succession. This will make Faith flash a V-sign while falling backwards (this is the equivalent of flipping the bird in Britain, Ireland, and New Zealand).
  • Follow the Plotted Line: Only a few missions actually show you the destination early on. Having lived in the city all her life, as well as being used to rooftop navigation, it's generally assumed that Faith knows her way around the city.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Notice the computer screens when Faith finds the information about Project Icarus. All the runners have their information filled in or marked as "unknown" - except for Celeste, whose info is marked as being "Classified".
    • Also, when Merc says "Who knows who [Jacknife]'s working for now", the elevator Faith's in is showing advertisements for Callaghan, Pirandello Kruger, and both Callaghan and Pirandello Kruger.
    • This one is really subtle, but during New Eden, if you try to use the elevators again once you're in the mall, you get a special error message saying the elevator controls have been siezed by Pirandello-Kruger; the same error screen that appeared on the elevators in Robert Pope's building before it was raided by PK officers. Some players might brush this off, but to attentive players it's an early warning that you're walking into a trap.
  • Fragile Speedster: Faith simply can't take on more than one or two Blues head on before getting shot to hell. This is not a problem since she can frequently zoom right past them. If you compare speed runs on YouTube, you'll find runs where some enemies fail to appear entirely - normally they are set to intercept Faith, but the player is so far ahead that they can only break down the door and yell "Freeze!" at an empty room. Buh-bye!
  • Frame-Up: The event that begins the action. Kate, Faith's sister, is framed for the murder of Pope, the only hope the city has of getting better.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • The heavy presence of cameras is focused on as one of the city's invasions of privacy, but there are no consequences for running right past one and at no point are they treated like something that needs to be avoided.
    • Falling more than a certain distance will kill Faith instantly, except for predetermined cutscenes (also an example of Cutscene Power to the Max).
  • Gender Flip: The original mentions Callaghan as a male exactly once in the entire game. The iOS version mentions her as a female several times.
  • Genericist Government: The City of Glass is implied to have a representative democracy, after all, Pope was preparing for an election, but little else is stated about the government's style and function other than the oppressive/privacy invading stuff.
  • Genre Mashup: FPS + a Platform Game; lots of running and jumping and a pinch of handguns and all from first person perspective.
  • The Ghost: Drake, who is apparently an operator working with Merc and the runners, comes up in conversation several times, but is only seen once as a picture on a computer screen.
  • Goomba Stomp: Just landing on people isn't necessarily deadly, but it can be turned into one of the faster and safer one-hit takedowns in the game... if you can pull it off. Pulling it off also nets the achievement "It's-A Me!".
  • Graffiti of the Resistance: The Runners and other anti-government activists mark their caches with graffiti.
  • Gratuitous Foreign Language: Gratuitous Simplified Chinese and Gratuitous Japanese gibberish on shipping crates.
    • Averted on a particular door that does have the correct Japanese "立入禁止", "Entry Forbidden". Everything else is gibberish, though.
    • While in-game Chinese is correct (here the Traditional variant is used), translation at times seems to be somewhat lazy, with an omnipresent "非請莫入"(basically "no admittance without invitation/authorization") standing in for more detailed notifications, such as "Maintenance area".
    • You will occasionally run into some Korean and Cyrillic characters.
  • Groin Attack: Faith's slide kick maneuver aims for the groin.
  • Guns Akimbo: Miller in his Big Damn Heroes moment with a pair of guns.
  • Hero Killer: The Parkour Killer kills runners; infamous for it.
  • He Who Must Not Be Seen: The Big Bad, Mayor Callaghan, is mentioned but never actually appears in the game.
  • Hired Guns: The "police" that Faith runs from for the entire game are actually private security forces that are assimilating the official police force.
  • Hoist by Their Own Petard: A couple of Faith's disarm moves involve knocking out the offending mook with their own weapon's stock. Most notably, if a disarming grab is performed on a Pursuit Cop, Faith will use their taser to electrocute its wielder.
  • Homage:
    • The part where Faith slides down the sloped edge of a skyscraper to escape an armed helicopter is very reminiscent of Jackie Chan's famous stunt in Who Am I?.
    • Faith scrambling up, along then off a crane doesn't recall a certain scene in a movie perhaps? No? Here's a hint.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Very much averted. Carrying weapons reduces Faith's speed and agility, so while she can disarm enemy mooks and use their guns against them, she must usually discard them immediately; how can you shimmy up a pipe while carrying a 50. caliber sniper rifle?
    • The exception is the pistol and the machine pistol, which are both small enough that Faith can carry them without slowing down a bit. Unfortunately, they also have the smallest ammo clips out of any weapon in the game (except the shotgun, but that's another story entirely).
  • If I Wanted You Dead...: Jacknife says this when Faith accuses him of being the mysterious assassin. He's not, but he did hire the assassin.
  • If You Can Read This: A naive Innocent Bystander is Tempting Fate when he types that he pities the Sinister Surveillance who has to monitor his porn surfing. He offhandedly wondered what they'd do if they learned he was quitting his job; tie him to a chair and beat him bloody? Guess what? That's exactly what they do!
  • Impairment Shot: When Faith takes a bullet, her eyes water and strain from the pain, damaging her peripheral vision. This means the screen's edges flash red and blur.
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy:
    • The entire game is based around the premise that a police state has police who can't reliably hit moving objects, even with fully automatic weapons. Believe it or not, this is Truth in Television. Most people (including a number of experienced cops) sincerely believe that More Dakka will instantly reduce targets to hamburger. Inexperienced and/or overconfident law enforcement officers regularly empty their badge-granted leadspitters at unarmored targets at less than five meters, and don't put a scratch on them because they forget to aim. Burning off too much ammo at once blows accuracy to hell. Also, Police forces that rely too heavily on intimidation never really get enough weapons practice. Add all that up, then order the poor, doomed mooks to hunt down a human hamster. Hilarity Ensues.
    • Averted when playing on Hard difficulty. Can you say Oh, Crap!, Runner? The first shot by any mook almost always misses, but lets them sight in on you. Every shot after that can be expected to hit unless you take cover - real cover. This makes various sequences very difficult due to not being able to disarm or defeat mooks.
    • Played straight in a cutscene, where a whole group of police shoot at Faith and Celeste (neither of whom has any sort of cover) for several seconds without hitting.
    • Enforced in the reboot. As long as Faith is not still, bullets will miss.
    • And really, is it so unrealistic that even cops and mercenaries can rarely hit a trained runner moving both horizontally and vertically with a changing silhouette at a dead sprint?
  • Instant-Win Condition: Booting Jacknife out of his helicopter and rescuing Kate apparently causes all the PK officers on the roof that would've filled the two full of lead right afterwards to vanish into the ether, and the game apparently doesn't care about the hordes of blues swarming the building either as the game ends right there instead of depicting Faith and Kate's escape.
  • Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence:
    • Averted, since the game is mostly played atop skyscrapers, in that while Faith can jump over fences and most other obstacles, falling off the edge means instant death. That last part is Truth in Television, by the way.
    • There are spots where an obviously non-fatal drop will still cause death. Example.
  • It's All Upstairs From Here: The last level is a really long climb.
  • It's Personal: Faith happily zips past the cops, and the police department don't dispatch a small platoon to deal with one runner. That is, until they take her sister.
  • Justified Tutorial: Faith was injured before the events of the game in unspecified circumstances and Merc had to check to see if she was 100%. It's also skippable.
  • Law Enforcement, Inc.: Pirandello/Kruger has basically assimilated the official police force.
  • Kent Brockman News: The poorly disguised propaganda broadcasts that pass for network news throughout the game.
  • Laser Sight:
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Faith is in an elevator, the TV screen on the elevator flashes various messages about the state of the city. One message outlines tips for determining if someone you know is secretly a Runner, and one of the tips is "A fondness for the color red", the dominant color of the game's "Runner Vision".
  • Light Is Not Good: Everything in The City of Glass is perfectly clean and shining white, and there is never a single wisp of cloud on the perfectly blue sky. Yet it all feels very sterile and there's almost no sign of actual life, except for lots of construction sites and hordes of police chasing after you. It makes the entire place actually a bit creepy, or at least unnerving.
  • Living Is More than Surviving: Celeste tells Faith: "Survival is overrated. You need to live a little too." That's why she betrays the Runners.
  • Loves the Sound of Screaming: One of the achievements in the smart phone game is "Scream for Me," where Faith makes the PK mercs...yeah.
  • Made of Iron: Faith can take a sniper bullet in the back while wearing only a tank top, and it will slow her down a little. She also drops a respectable distance through a glass ceiling and lands in the glass, yet is able to get up and keep running like nothing happened.
  • Magnet Hands: Averted. Faith cannot perform delicate maneuvers, or even run quickly when carrying most weapons. She can stuff a single pistol or SMG in her trousers, but that is it.
  • McNinja: The bad guy's master plan turns out to be a scheme to train Blues in Le Parkour as "Pursuit Cops" in order to hunt down Runners at their own game.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Mercury, whose code-name clearly refers to the Ancient Roman messenger of the gods. Also he's frequently referred to as "Merc" which can also be taken as shorthand for "Mercenary", which the Runners are, to a degree.
    • Faith too; she "keeps the faith" regarding her sister's innocence and her own profession. The ending has her literally and figuratively making a leap of Faith.
  • Mentor Occupational Hazard: Mercury, a mentor to many runners, including Faith, is killed near the end game. It's by one of his own pupils, too!.
  • Mission Control: Mercury. "I find the work, chop it up, farm it out. The runners do it. It's a tidy arrangement. Everyone gets paid, and nobody sees a thing." That is, until he meets his untimely demise in the penultimate chapter. Miller then takes the role of directing Faith for most of the Shard chapter until he is presumbably discovered and shot dead off-screen.
  • More Dakka: The machine gun. Extremely deadly when it's in an enemy's hands and extremely satisfying when it's in Faith's.
  • Mysterious Mercenary Pursuer: Inverted with the "white guy". Certainly a mysterious mercenary, but it is you who's chasing him.
  • Never Found the Body: Celeste is not seen after Faith blows up a gas can between them and some incoming Blues after their final showdown. However, it is implied that Faith doesn't think Celeste is dead, but rather does not want to deal with her anymore due to how upset she is.
  • Noodle Incident: At the beginning of the tutorial, Merc mentions that Faith was taken out of action for a while due to an unspecified injury she sustained.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: You'll get one if you fail to shoot the engine of the police truck carrying Faith's sister to jail in Chapter 8. You'll also get one if you lose Jacknife in Chapter 2 or the Parkour Assassin in Chapter 7.
  • Notice This: Faith's "Runner Vision" highlights certain objects along her route in bright red, showing the player which way to go, though it doesn't always show the best route. You can turn it off from the options menu. It is forced off on Hard difficulty, which would be unbearable if it didn't require you to have cleared the game to play on Hard.
  • Not the Fall That Kills You…: Averted. You can roll or crouch to avoid damage from sensible jumps, but more than that and you're going splat, and you get a couple of seconds to meditate on your failure.
  • Offscreen Villainy: Most of the crimes committed by the people in charge of the city don't happen onscreen in the present day.
  • Only a Flesh Wound: Taking too many bullets in succession will kill her, but getting shot "only" once or twice will barely slow Faith down.
  • Only in It for the Money: Face Heel Turning and training Superpowered Mooks pays better than an illegal courier service and the cops don't shoot at you.
  • Pacifist Run: The only person Faith must kill is her Evil Counterpart, which she does automatically by jumping from the roof of the hundred-and-ten-story Shard onto a helicopter, booting him right out the other side in the process. Of course he fires his SMG all the way down and kills the rotors, meaning Faith and Kate are stuck on a falling helicopter... In fact, you earn a special achievement, "Test of Faith", if you complete the game without shooting anyone with a firearm (except the convoy). Funnily enough, the achievement is strictly for not shooting anyone; you can throw Blues into the path of an oncoming train or off skyscrapers and still be considered a pacifist. However, if you don't shoot anyone, then you will have to deal with at least a couple of enemies in other ways, if only because even Faith isn't fast enough to dodge a heavy machine gunner camped right by the door she needs to use.
  • Le Parkour: The entire premise of the game is running and jumping between buildings, cables, etc. Actually, it's an unbelievably over-the-top and virtually suicidal form of parkour.
  • Parkour Assassin: The Pursuit Cops trained by Project Icarus, including Celeste. The Elite Mook of the Blues, these are by and far the most difficult enemy Faith has, mostly for the fact that even their snipers can't do half the things a Runner can - and Pursuit Cops can. Their tendency to attack in groups and ability to block attacks makes a fight mostly unfeasible, but they can be beaten, and if you can get an opening to stealth-disarm one, it's a satisfying sight.
  • The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Faith is supposed to be a courier, but only gets to deliver a single package before getting caught up in the storyline. It's explained in the tutorial that Faith was out of commission for a while due to a Noodle Incident injury and the story begins a bit after she recovers. Her sister is more important than her job.
  • Platform Game: The developer was trying to innovate by making it first-person, though this led to several people, including Yahtzee, complaining that you wouldn't be able to see the character's feet before jumping. The game suffers from the lack of proprioception, the sense that lets you know where all the bits and pieces of your body are at any given moment, which is why you can touch your fingers to your nose with your eyes closed (unless you're drunk). It also suffers from the fact that your brain is constantly comparing the inputs from different senses. So when your eyes tell you you're running along a rooftop and doing flips, but your body tells you you're sitting perfectly still, the result is motion sickness. So it causes problems because of what it doesn't tell you, and because of what it does tell you.
  • Police State: The City of Glass is majorly totalitarian; monitoring everything and cracking down hard on anyone who tries to evade their sight.
  • Post-Cyberpunk:
    • Both the games visuals and plot place it firmly into the post-cyberpunk genre; very clean, very shiny, and also an oppressive police state where the heroes are the ones who can avoid them. At the same time, futuristic weapons or electronics are completely absent. The few times people do use computers, it's to read documents during cutscenes, and the most complex electronic devices the player uses are elevator buttons.
    • Averted in the reboot. Pure Cyberpunk with eye implants, vertibirds, drones, and electronic walls that can scan your ID with a touch.
  • The Precarious Ledge: Faith slows down long enough to creep across ledges on the rooftops, such as during the training sequence whilst following Celeste. These short sections come with Plummet Perspective too.
  • Press X to Not Die: When Ropeburn swings that pipe at you, grab it or he'll smack you one and throw you right off the building!
  • Pretentious Latin Motto: The real reason why Miller takes his sweet time to unlock the last elevator in the last level is to give you time to read the motto on the wall: "Finis Coronat Opus" (Lat. "the end crowns the work", a slightly more pretentious way to say "the end justifies the means").
  • Private Military Contractors: If you look closely, you'll notice the more heavily-armed "Blues" in the game wear black PK uniforms instead of the blue CPF uniforms worn by the city police. Faith herself somehow misses this little detail until a CPF character points it out to her in the very last level. Turns out they're all security forces of Pirandello/Kruger, a PMC that turns out to be one of your main enemies.
  • Punch-Clock Hero: Ropeburn was hired by Pope to protect him from the mayor's lackeys. Unfortunately, he was one of those lackeys.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Celeste still hangs out with the other Runners and hints to them to give up that life, as her other job is training a new unit of mercenaries that will capture or eliminate all Runners in The City of Glass.
  • Racing Ghost: A transparent red one. Some gamers follow it at a reduced pace just to witness the coolness from a third-person perspective.
  • Real Is Brown: Gloriously averted, for once, with brightly colored buildings and clear blue skies. Although green is mostly absent to give a feeling of sterility. Even the plants are white.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: On a large scale, the City is divided between the Totalitarian Utilitarian government (which is associated with the color blue through their police force and Jacknife. The police force are even called "Blues" by runners) and the runners, the defiant, passionate young couriers who evade their control (who specifically associate with red via "runner vision" and their personal effects).
  • Regenerating Health: Any harm sustained by Faith will fully go away in several seconds. As there is no health meter, the game communicates Faith's status through telltale visual feedback: minor injuries will merely desaturate and add a slight vignette to the image, but when the edges of the screen begin flashing red, it's time to seek cover.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Lieutenant Miller recognizes that Kate, his co-worker, is being framed and is willing to work with her sister to clear her name, even if that sister happens to be a Runner.
  • Roaring Rampage of Rescue: The main focus of the game, especially toward the end when Merc is killed and Kate is taken.
  • Roofhopping: Running start, jump off the ledge, cross the gap and roll to a stop. Whoosh! That's how Faith gets around.
  • Samus Is a Girl: The boss of Chapter 7 is Celeste, whose alter ego was presumed male. Hilariously, your first clue is when she doesn't really react to your crotch-kicks. Another giveaway - when you hit her she grunts girlishly, and how many girls have you met so far in the game? Faith, Celeste, and Kate. Two of those are fairly unlikely. A third giveaway — and a pretty clever one at that — when you're escaping the mall and the Parkour Killer waits for Faith to catch up, she does Celeste's idle animation: that restless hop you first see in the tutorial.
  • Scenery Porn: The game's artstyle and primarily rooftop based levels naturally lend themselves well to fantastic views of the expansive skyscraper-dotted cityscape.
  • Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: If Faith gets up in their faces, her opponents will attempt to club the She-Fu master with their weapon rather than shoot her. Then they wonder why she's holding it all of a sudden.
  • Sickening "Crunch!": When Faith jump/falls off a roof; splat!
  • Sinister Surveillance: The specific reason for the existence of Runners is that there are people who don't want the State Sec spying on them so they send physical messages.
  • Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty: Mayor Callaghan did "clean up this town..." By making it into a police state.
  • Sniper Rifle: The fact that Faith can take more than a single shot from a Barrett M82 seems to make her somewhat more than a Fragile Speedster... Which may be why the Blues eventually decide to Zerg Rush her.
  • Soft Glass: In one level, Faith evades the police by jumping onto a glass ceiling, falling right on top of the broken shards, and simply walking it off.
  • Speedy Techno Remake: There are ten remixes of "Still Alive" (no, not that one) available on iTunes, 4 of which come packaged with the original on a separate CD in the PC version.
  • Steam Vent Obstacle:
    • Steam vents are particularly irritating obstacles because they require you to stop and rotate the nearby valve for a couple of seconds. In a game where even braking down is generally not desirable. Almost all of them are seemingly only there to give the game some extra seconds to load the next section of the level.
    • Usually these vents will kill you instantly if you try to just pass through the jet of steam, but there's one in the Pirandello-Kruger level which activates on a timer, yet will only cause mild damage, if it hurts you at all, allowing you to skip waiting for it to turn off.
    • In the iOS version, these kill you faster than getting shot, and appear fairly often in levels that take place indoors.
  • Sunshine Noir: The City is perhaps the most glaringly bright dystopia ever envisioned.
  • Superpowered Mooks: The "Pursuit Cops" who show up in a few of the later levels and try to chase Faith using the same skills she has.
  • Super Window Jump: Runners, like Dashing Swordsmen, learn how to leap through plate glass without being cut.
  • Take Our Word for It: It's a bit difficult to get across how the city's policies affect the average citizen in a video game focusing on an illegal courier. However, given that Faith and many others make a living they must have a sufficient customer base.
  • Tattooed Crook: All the Runners have tattoos of some sort.
  • Technical Pacifist: Toss as many Blues off skyscrapers as you like, but as long as you don't shoot them you will still pass the "Test of Faith".
  • Tempting Fate: The final boss's taunt to Faith: "You can't live on the edge all your life, Faith. Sooner or later, you have to jump." And jump she does.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Shard. This bluish and reflective prism-shaped skyscraper counting over 100 floors and serving as the local government HQ can be seen looming in the distance from practically any point in the City, enforcing the theme of constant surveillance. Each mission takes Faith closer and closer to the Shard, and the final confrontation takes place on its rooftop.
  • Theme Tune: "Still Alive". Not to be confused with that other song.
  • Third-Person Seductress: Averted. This game is played from a first-person perspective, and Faith wears practical clothes for a traçeuse, namely a tank-top, cargo-pants and jika-tabi shoes. Her appearance is only apparent in the cutscenes.
  • Throw-Away Guns: Faith throws away her gun whenever she runs out of ammo, and you cannot reload a gun at all. It's justified, since she can't carry extra bullets and the guns slow her down anyway.
  • Tightrope Walking: Faith can run on thin pipes and planks if need be. This can involve manual balance (not just keeping her upright by wiggling the stick or Sixaxis) such as when Faith had to run on a crane; at these times her survival is dependent on the skill of the player at keeping her feet centered, not just her center of gravity. In-game comments allude to the danger of this trope.
  • Time Trial: One mode of the game is completing a course in the fastest time possible. It goes with somethng different as the place for the Time Trial DLC takes place in some rather abstract levels, specifically designed to have players go through trial and error for the fastest time.
  • Title Drop: In the intro movie: "We call ourselves Runners. We exist on the edge between the gloss and the reality; the Mirror's Edge." In this case, it seems to be not so much shoehorning the phrase in, but explaining it, which is kind of a nice change from the norm.
  • Title In: The beginning of each level has an onscreen caption stating Faith's location within the city and the time it begins.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Faith and Merc really seem to like pizza.
  • Train Escape: Subway trains though quick application of Parkour, both above and below the ground.
  • Training Dummy: Celeste serves as one during the tutorial on hand to hand combat and gun usage.
  • Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Expect a whole lot of hitting the concrete from a great height, or cops busting your head open.
  • Unique Protagonist Asset: Faith has her Le Parkour skills to help her evade enemies and reach locations. Then she meets the "Pursuit Cops" and her asset is no longer unique. It's Run or Die time.
  • Unnecessary Combat Roll: Averted, since Real Life traçeurs use the exact same roll to keep from going ker-splat.
  • Unstoppable Mailman: Faith's job is an illegal courier for physical mail, regardless of how many death-defying jumps she has to make.
  • Use Your Head: During the fight against Celeste, if Faith keeps attacking her for too long, she will block her hands and counter with a headbutt to the face. If Faith's health is low enough, she could even be killed by that counter.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: The game allows you to do a Pacifist Run, and even awards an achievment for doing so.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
    • In the tutorial, you can shoot your best friend. Despite the tutorial saying, "Don't shoot your best friend."
    • You have a few opportunities to throw enemies off of high places, if you're feeling sadistic. The most noticable option for it is when a shotgun-wielding PK comes out from a construction building as you parkour through it, your most likely reaction is to jumpkick him head-on.
    • You try keeping your cool instead of disarming an enemy and using his weapon to utterly slaughter his comrades after you are treated one time too many to the sight of Faith falling dead on her side with the screen blacking out to the sound of "Arrest the suspect !"
  • Video Game Sliding: Sliding under objects comprises an important part of Faith's parkour-inspired move set.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: Mercury assists Faith with intel through a radio; the internet itself is monitored. Until he gets killed. Then Miller takes over during the final level.
  • Walk It Off: It's slightly disconcerting to have survived several bursts of automatic gunfire and recovered, only to corner the guy and get laid out by two consecutive Pistol Whippings.
  • Wall Jump: Faith is practically freaking Spider-Man. Just don't try to Wall Crawl. Show some respect for the laws of physics!
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: During that final confrontation, there are mooks shooting at you. After the confrontation—which does not involve fighting them, or leaving the area on a permanent basis—they are gone. We can assume that the mooks fled the scene when the chopper lost control. You wouldn't like to be on a roof when a chopper loses control and is about to crash into said building.
  • Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The City's location is ambiguous. Clocks throughout the game depict the letters "E.T.", as in "eastern time", which would make you think it's on the East Coast of North America. Not so fast though, because the City's coastline matches Shenzhen Bay near Hong Kong, much of the City's architecture bears a decidedly Asian vibe to it and traffic is on the left side of the road. Then there's two official languages, English and Chinese. All of this adds up to confusing the hell out of anyone trying to figure out where the City is beyond "somewhere in East Asia", and that's probably intentional.
  • White Is Pure: In the game, the City of Glass is represented in white and chrome to reflect its status as a pristine symbol of Conglomerate greatness
  • Wilhelm Scream: Appears in the smart phone prequel. Kick a merc off a building and you'll hear it.
  • A Winner Is You: After clearing the final level and saving Kate (again), they just hug without a word, the camera pans out to show most of the city, and the credits roll. The only epilogue we get is during the credits, in the form of a brief news soundclip suggesting that Faith and Kate have eluded the police once again, which is hardly a surprise given the many daring escapes Faith pulled off in the story.

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