Mirror's Edge: like guns? Go away

I'd like to elaborate on my previous Mirror's Edge article, if I may, having taken in a lot of opinions about the game's non-violent approach since.

Most know about parkour already, but for those that don't, it is described as an "activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body." Mirror's Edge's main character Faith, as a runner, uses parkour, and as you've seen, it comes in quite handy.

Kerry Folan of the Washington Post once described it as comparable to martial arts, but without the violence -- "in the fight-or-flight response, parkour is the flight." Judging from the E3 trailer, this is mostly attestable. As I touched on before, one martial art I think this is particularly comparable to is Aikido. Essentially entirely defense-based (attacks are redirected using the attacker's energy), it has been described as "the martial art of love".

Though guns are usable in Mirror's Edge, it's certainly not a prominent gameplay element -- indeed, the game's senior producer, Owen O'Brien, has said, "this is an action adventure. We're not positioning this as a shooter - the focus isn't on the gun, it's on the person." If you research parkour philosophy, you'll find a strong element there of being in touch with one's body and using that to overcome obstacles (though there are many uses and purposes).

We've seen Faith shoot a gun, but what with armor and all, this seems to give the player the viable option of it being more a stopping force than anything else. And it's kind of discouraged. For example, if you beat the entire game without shooting a single bullet, you unlock an achievement ("Test of Faith"); this also brings an extra challenge to the mix for those who say the game's going to be too short and won't have any replayability (getting to those in a second). More than this, once a gun is emptied, it must be thrown away, and holding one hinders your agility. While in a sense I'd love to see the game without the option for using guns, that wouldn't be very realistic. So, I wholeheartedly applaud DICE. Still, it's an interesting concept...

In a recent GamePro interview, Gears of War series man Cliff Blezinski, talking about the games he's excited about, mentioned Mirror's Edge:

"I think Mirror's Edge will be great, too, but they're showing me too much parkour, I want to see the gunplay. I hope it's not all just running and jumping. As long as there's something chasing me...even Mario had Goombas, you know?"

I really like Gears, but Cliff: you are everything that depresses me about video games. Allow me to elucidate. Over on VE3D last week, with news of the Mirror's Edge demo coming, user Jackal commented, "this game is a neat idea, but no multiplayer and a short linear singleplayer = no buy. at the very least they could have put in a basic level editor or something to keep replayability up". Scar Face replies to him, saying this:

"Yeah I would have liked this game too, if only they'd have taken out all of that silly running and jumping. Maybe make the protagonist a guy, probably some super soldier. And you know what? Why don't we just change the setting to WWII while we're at it? There, now THATS a game I'd buy."

It's deeply sardonic of course, and it illustrates perfectly why Cliff represents what he does to me. Look, I love shooters, but as my colleague Lydia Sung so succintly (hah!) put it: "There's like 100000 other games out there that let you blow shit up."

I just feel like we're at a point where if a game doesn't feature either you constantly trying to kill someone and/or someone constantly trying to kill you, we can't feel comfortable and enjoy ourselves. I guess that's what about 20 years worth of action and shooter games will do to the video gaming portion of the collective unconscious. So, seriously, can we enjoy something truly new?