Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst – Review

In all honesty, there has never truly been a video game to force my eyes wide and flood my veins with adrenaline quite the way that Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst does. Sure, the original installment in the series had some edge-of-your-seat moments, but they pale in comparison to the execution of these moments in its sequel…prequel…whatever. Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst is, needless to say, a long time coming since the franchise’s debut eight years ago. Without a shadow of a doubt, the original entry was well deserving of the positive reception it received and definitely stood out as an innovative and ambitious piece of work. However, the development team behind the game decided to take the franchise in a different direction when they’d decided to make a second game. It’s strange to have a reboot, for all intents and purposes, be the second game in a franchise—for example, Tomb Raider saw nine canon installments before being rebooted—which makes Catalyst a little difficult to follow at first until one is able to abandon their knowledge of the previous title.

In Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, we see Faith Connors released from prison—the backstory leading up to the start of Catalyst is told in the official comics series—and teaming up again with The Cabal, the group of runners that Faith considers family, lead by Noah, who took Faith in after her parents and sister were killed in the infamous November riots. As the narrative unfolds, Faith and her friends are on the radar of Kruger Security after Faith steals important data from the KrugerSec CEO, Gabriel Kruger, and now Faith must go up against the most powerful organization in the city and put an end to the abusive conglomerate. The narrative as a whole is certainly inspiring, but is just as well lacking in several aspects and leaves a lot of unanswered questions and loose ends. Naturally, one would expect a continuation in the next installment, but the way the narrative of Catalyst is presented, it is heavily implied that the next game—if there is one—will essentially be a new chapter in Faith’s life. Of course, the unanswered questions could easily be resolved in the official comics series—much like how the Tomb Raider comics series bridged quite a few gaps—but that remains to be seen.

Faith and Noah reunite for the first time in a year.

Within the narrative, the true issue is the secondary and supporting cast of characters and the fact that they’re thrown into the shadows, but the game will still expect players to care about them. Similar to the original Mirror’s Edge, Catalyst suffers from a terribly disappointing completion length that could have easily been expanded by simply providing more insight and involvement in regard to the supporting characters. To be perfectly honest, I am typically the kind of person to get so involved in a video game I’m enjoying that I’ll develop an attachment to a character as long as they’re around for a bit and have some good dialogue moments; however, that doesn’t stop me from highlighting the issue that lies therein. We’re thrown into the world of Faith Connors and are essentially expected to already hold knowledge of the goings on around her. We’ve an interesting cast of supporting members such as Noah, Icarus, Nomad, Birdman, Plastic, Dogen, and Rebecca Thane, and literally all seven of them are there to serve a specific purpose for the sake of the story and have zero involvement when they’ve done their job. In a sense, Catalyst is one of those games that makes it a little hard to keep playing once you’ve finished it, because there’s no more dialogue between characters, no more interactions, and the game world feels devoid of life. I guess that’s what happens when you change writers—no offense Christofer Emgård, but I would have preferred Rhianna Pratchett to return—even though the original Mirror’s Edge was lacking in the supporting characters’ backstory department, the supporting characters were not an important focus like they are in Catalyst.

For the sake of taking the franchise in a different direction, there’s a lot that’s changed between the two games—aside from Faith’s voice, the identity of her sister and the game’s setting—but there are a lot of Easter eggs that pay homage to the original title. For example, the fellow runner, Icarus, which is an obvious play on Project Icarus, the malevolent program that was training anti-runner security personnel. In another example, players may find the word Pirandello written on a building in the city, which in the original game, was one part of the antagonistic organizational collaboration of Pirandello-Kruger, whereas in Catalyst, it is Kruger Security (KrugerSec). There’s also some mention of Callaghan before she became mayor in the previous game.

Faith, running from KrugerSec sentinels in a rendered scene.

On a more important note is the topic of combat. In Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, combat plays a more important factor than in the original game. In Mirror’s Edge, players were able to complete the entire game without firing a gun or throwing a punch, but that is not the case in its successor. In Catalyst, there are specific moments where fighting is required. Faith is not able to use any kind of firearm due to a developer focus on speed, mobility and consistent motion—the “official” in-game reason is because firearms are biometrically programmed—where Faith isn’t slowed down by gunfights. Faith can easily disable KrugerSec personnel on the go without having to stop and fight, which would naturally make her an easier target. What I appreciate the most is that more often than not, players have the choice to keep going, quickly and effectively taking out anyone in their way as they free-run their way to the intended destination if they don’t feel like stopping to involve themselves in true hand-to-hand combat. It may be for the better, though, because a majority of the time, Faith’s fighting is highly repetitive—there are no combinations to execute or anything of that nature, but you can switch it up by changing from light to heavy attacks, using the environment, and putting Faith’s athletic skills to use. Faith’s combat movements are quick, swift, and efficient. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll earn a nice third-person finishing move—I haven’t yet figured out if there’s a way to trigger them intentionally. Either way, combat in Catalyst is done properly and thank God, indeed. Nothing is worse than a game with a heavy focus on something only for its execution to be abysmal. I’m looking at you, Alekhine’s Gun.

Faith delivers a brutal punch to a KrugerSec guard in a rendered scene.

Visually, Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst shines in its attention to detail in some aspects, but you can easily tell where the effort was lost in other areas. In a nutshell, there are plenty of times that the game suffers from slow-loading textures and incomplete rendering. Cutscenes fall out of synchronization frequently and draw distances are terribly uninspiring. Naturally, the characters in cutscenes are well rendered and detailed extensively, but their in-game counterparts are rather depressing and abandoned. There are some instances where the player may spot some “filler characters” that are programmed into the game merely to fill space; there’s a point toward the end of the game where a bunch of corporate employees are running in evacuation and the level of detail is worse than a 1997 video game on PlayStation with animations comparable to Crysis 3 being run on a ten-year-old laptop. It’s a true and unfortunate shame that the amount of effort that went into key characters was not shared among the ‘unimportant’ ones and it really ruins the immersion of the experience. I honestly expected a patch to address some of these issues, but we’ve yet to see any patch, for that matter. To be perfectly honest, the final product of Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst is vastly different than the original game-engine footage we were shown with its original announcement trailer. Of course, that was indeed three years ago, but either DICE and EA changed game engines or we’ve been presented a rather watered-down product by comparison. Nothing new there, though, as that seems to be the trend these days; show us one thing, deliver something else. You can notice some changes in visuals, physics and effects from last year’s gameplay trailer as well.

With a vast, open world to explore, naturally, there is plenty to do in the city both in between missions and after the main narrative has come to an end. Faith can partake in a variety of activities such as collecting data spheres and memory chips to completing package deliveries and dashes, or time trials. It’s a good idea to complete a nice portion of these early on, as players will earn additional experience points to allocate toward unlocking more skills for Faith. There isn’t much in the way of combat after the main missions are over, but fortunately, missions can be replayed, allowing players to revisit their favorite moments with ease or satisfy their hunger for beating down KrugerSec personnel. Just as well, the open world itself is an activity, remaining fully open and explorable even after the end of the game, which can allow players to improve and refine their free-running skills. I learned rather quickly that as fast as I think I am when it comes to seamless and fluid free-running to beat a time trial, there’s always someone faster than me. Note to self: discover more shortcuts.

Faith prepares to fight KrugerSec personnel in pre-release footage.

Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst is a worthy prequel…or rebooted sequel—I’ll just call it a successor—to the original title. It takes a concept and theme that was well-excuted before and builds upon it, taking it to heights I couldn’t have imagined. However, it could improve even more in certain aspects like the narrative’s loose ends and plot-holes as well as character development and expansion—the completion time could have easily been increased by twenty-five percent minimum if proper elements were explored more. Regardless of its shortcomings, the overall sensation was nearly non-stop, edge-of-your-seat action in well created missions and setpieces, and I had a hard time putting the controller down throughout my playthrough. All I can hope for now is another installment to show us what’s next in Faith’s story; hopefully, we won’t have to wait another eight years for the next installment, but if it means that the issues of Catalyst will not be revisited in the third game, I’ll happily wait the two-year-shy decade.