Mirror's Edge proved that the best magic is based on limitations

[Administrator]

The best thing about Mirror's Edge isn't the parkour, the sense of movement and momentum, or even the sharp, bleached-out world that you're moving through beneath a vast sky of Sega blue. It's the doors: the red doors, each one opened not with a polite survival-horror twist of a creaky handle, but with a squeeze of the right trigger and an almighty slam. Doors you aim for at full pelt, doors you pound through, punch through, the clatter of collision accompanying the blinding whiteness that greets you on the other side, before your eyes have time to adjust and before the game pulls you onwards.
And it's perverse, really, that Mirror's Edge does such lasting service to the humble act of opening a door when the game itself is all about closing them. In a specific sense, at least. Magicians like to talk about closing the doors: it's a part of the secret repertoire that builds successful illusions, every bit as crucial as fake shuffles, palms, and forces. Closing the doors is about shutting down an audience's errant curiosity, answering their questions before they've realised they want to ask them, and directing them away from the things that will ruin the trick. Closing doors is about creating a path for the audience, about leading the audience right past all the things that will make them gasp with delight, while making sure they have the best views of the action. Yes: Mirror's Edge knows a thing or two about closing doors.
All games are illusions to some extent. I've been amazed, over the years, by the sheer number of designers and developers I've encountered who have Thurston prints tacked on the cubicle walls, or who insist on keeping a pack of Bicycle Black Ghost playing cards in a jacket pocket. But Mirror's Edge makes the connection between magic and game design unmissable. Its first level is a case in point: a first-person race along rooftops and through office backways, where each time your eyes drift down you see your feet working away beneath you, and every grab at a ledge is framed by your grasping hands. You're really here, you're really doing this, the game seems to be whispering, and then at the end, a leap onto the skids of a chopper offers a glimpse of yourself in the mirrored windows of a superscraper. Inside and outside at once. Ta-da!
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