It’s kind of baffling how Mirror’s Edge came out almost two full decades ago, and there’s hardly a whisper of a game that’s managed to match its art direction. The thing is just too clean, too specific, there’s a purpose to every detail. It feels like the future distilled into digital form, though no one really followed suit in the years since, opting for drab, lifeless realism instead. Except, as it turns out, that’s almost what Mirror’s Edge looked like too.
Over on Design Room, as part of an oral history of the game, some of the game’s original senior devs shared a lovely assortment of details. As it turns out, when Mirror’s Edge was still in development, it was originally going to look more like other Unreal Engine games of the time (brown), with senior producer Owen O’Brien noting how not particularly unique it looked. “But we found that when you were moving very fast through the world, you got simulation sickness very quickly,” O’Brien explained. “discovered that it was lessened if you made the world cleaner and less detailed.”
Art director Johannes Söderqvist also took part in the interview, saying how it was just your generic, run-down New York style rooftops kind of look. “It wasn’t bad; it looked good, actually,” he said. “But there was no style to it, or a fairly generic style.” It was O’Brien who wanted the game to stand out a bit more visually, noting that you couldn’t tell the difference between games like Battlefield, Call of Duty, and Rainbow Six. “I said to the team, ‘I want to look at a screenshot of Mirror’s Edge in a magazine and know it’s our game,'” O’Brien said.
So, Söderqvist worked with his art team to figure out how to get that striking look, drafting up a visual target, ultimately deciding to just strip out all of the colours from the textures, leaving most of the environments as pure white, the occasional block of colour to guide you.
I quite like lighting artist Oscar Carlén’s take on what the world of Mirror’s Edge is ultimately like too because of this decision: “Even though Faith is living in this very dystopian society where everything is controlled and monitored, she has such a hopeful spirit, a bright view of life. I think the lighting does a great job of making you feel that perspective.”
If you haven’t already, do give Design Room’s full piece a read. Great stuff they’re doing over there! And play Mirror’s Edge too, still one of the best to do it.