I just bought mirrors edge 2008 2 days ago (game is peak) but suddenly it stops working and i can't see it. It's running in the background, but when i try to open/click on it, it usually shows me an black screen before hiding again. Need help, i really wanna finish the game :(

I find it rather disappointing that not a single creepypasta is made about the original ME or MEC

https://reddit.com/link/1h5ipbq/video/rwzyhveudl4e1/player

And I finished the 99% of the game without knowing that you could pick up weapons of fallen enemies too, not just the ones you counter. I feel extremely stupid. But not knowing that, made the game very difficult, especially the last two levels. But it was worth it, what an experience. I have been listening to the song (Still Alive) for years, it's one of my favorite songs, now it just hits differently. I have not seen such good movement in first person since this game, even Dying Light games have movement which feels a bit floaty. Did gaming peak around 2007-2008?

Is anyone able to get a fresh install of ME Catalyst running on their Steam Deck? On run, mine will allow me to adjust the brightness, will begin to load from there, then will switch to the EA app window because the game has likely crashed. Game was purchased on Steam.

SteamOS Version: 3.6.20 Game Build ID: 10351434

So far I have:

• Installed the EA app by adding its installer as a non-Steam game.
• Signed into the EA app both in its standalone form and in the version packed in with the game
• Installed GE-Proton, specifically have tried GE-Proton7-53 and the most recent as of posting: GE-Proton9-20.
• Have tried various other Proton options available from the stock list.
• Deleted Proton files using dev mode in between switching compatibility modes.
• Have attempted to run the game in Desktop Mode to identical results.
• Have attempted to instead run a version acquired from a certain FitnessFemale which will crash during installation.

Thanks in advance!

Steam's going crazy with the discount. But I'm not going to pick up Catalyst, at least for now.

How does the story conclude in the 1st game? Does it leave some questions, which eventually gets answered in the sequel? I don't want to be consumed with curiosity after finishing the game lol

Weirdly I couldn't reply to this using a comment, probably because it is too long lol.

So, basically there have been some posts discussing social commentary in ME1. I did a response midway that. This is a response after reading one of them. Source Link for the post I'm answering to!

While I have already made a post expanding some of your initial themes and points in my first post, I'll try to directly answer your post in detail here because gods, that one is long enough!

-About the form of government: it is neoliberalism at its peak. Milei's Argentina is a great example. What's more surreal in this form of government is Pope standing a chance to win the elections- makes us think maybe the majority of the population is not happy with the current affairs. As people are not happy with 57% poverty in Argentina right now. But electing a candidate in the democracy of the corporations require corporate amounts of money - my theory is that both Pope and the Runners were funded by corporations that Callaghan and their smaller lapdog Pirandello Krueger wanted to topple down, and that's how he got to the elections race (of course these fundings would come at a cost - that's the nature of the democracy of the richest). That's also why Callaghan wanted Pirandello Krueger to take over the police - the police is portrayed as being very human and sensitive people that want in the end to serve people (At least for Kate and Miller).

If people starting revolting again and a firing line was required, Callaghan would be more comfortable hiring mercenaries that could be replaced if refused to do it.

-About the surveillance state: it's meant to be about controlling the masses and putting them in check in Mirror's Edge because, as you said, the writers, even left leaning Rhianna Prachett, have an ideological bias of being apologetic to profit based motives, but in real life is both about control and about profiting with people's data in order to do better marketing that caters for them. Look at the Cambridge Analytica's Scandal in Trump's 2016 election. To this day Trump is more of a product being sold for votes than a man.

The writer's ideology of capitalism apology is portrayed as the Big Brother, 1984 stuff, a book that Isaac Asimov himself has stated is more about spite for URSS than actual scientific/especulative fiction. 1984 portrays the state itself as the villain while ignoring the state is a tool of the dominant class. And in Mirror's Edge the dominant class are the CEOs, much as it is in our world, and therefore the government is a tool of the corporations. That's why I see the political coup of murdering pope as Corporations going for each other throats. Why kill a candidate that has no actual way of winning? Unless he is funded by some corporations and has a shot at winning...

-That doesn't fit exactly in fascism: because there is only the police state angle of it. Aka neoliberalism, which is always supported by a police state.

The government we do have in Mirror's Edge is a corporate dictatorship with white and bland makeup, they disguise themselves in the "there's no crime here" discourse while exporting crime, poverty and police brutality to the ghettos in Old Town (as seen in the comics).

-The civil unrest: is an expression of people losing their hard-earned rights and freedoms. People wanting to control us will appeal to our moral panic over urban violence and promise safety if we sell our freedoms away. "The monitoring, banning, was for the greater good - but good isn't the same as right." And like in our real world, in every country, from UK to Argentina, we have civil unrest fought with the implementation of the police state and government brutality.

-Faith is a token: IMO - yes and no. I'd say that she and the runners begin the stoy as a token, but Rhianna Prachett's excellent and verosimmilar writing takes the prize here: The Runners don't manage to be tokens very long, being the connective tissue of the remnants of popular resistance within the city.

Faith - "Why target us? We're no threat! Jacknife - "Classic rules of warfare - break down the rules of communication."

Pope somehow looked into Pirandello Krueger 's dealings - probably because he might have paid for part of Ropeburn's service by doing lawyerimg jobs for him - and ended up learning about project Icarus. He tried warning Kate and Faith but Celeste was unto him and was forced to kill him. Or maybe killing him was part of Callaghan's plan all along. Either way, it was fortunate that Kate and Faith were in the scene - both CPF and Runners were exactly what PK and Callaghan wanted marginalized and out of the picture.

So Faith and Merc were all about survival, probably did jobs for corps aswell

"as long as you pay and your rep ain't poison" (Merc, in one of the story trailers).

Until Kate got framed. As I said, verisimilitude is a mark of a great writer. At the end of the game, there is no more turning back. Merc is Killed, Faith and Kate are considered terrorists, the surveillance servers are teared down, and Pope is more likely than not turned into a political martyr for his story with the Libertas/November Group. That's the tragedy of Mirror's Edge Catalyst: If the narrative progressed there would be no way to pleasantly remove how political the whole narrative got.

Jacknife "You can't live your life on the edge forever Faith - sooner or later, you'll have to JUMP!"

Jacknife and Celeste wanted to do more than survive and their desire was VERY GENUINE - the noir tragedy of their tale is that they both sided with a outright fascist mercenary corporation in order to do it. If Faith didn't kill them, their chosen path would surely lead to death either way, maybe to silence witnesses.

Celeste "Survival is overrated. You gotta live a little too."

In the first game, Faith was tangled and happened to be the wrong person at the wrong time - true to both noir and sci Fi (blade runner, for instance). In the second game, she was considered the chosen one borne to lead the revolution from day one. If the first Faith lead a revolution, it would be by her own efforts rather than being an Icon

(pretty sure they said "hey Hunger Games made a lot of money, let's do like hunger games so we make a lot of money as well!)

Faith in ME1 Already starts as a capable female protagonist, but her arc is being radicalized by what happens around her and starting to actually care about politics - you know, the thing kicking her door down and threatening to give Kate a death sentence by arresting her. She develops into a much more tridimensional and complex character.

Cue the dialogue where Cel tries to make Faith give up her chase for Pope's killer - maybe to not blow her cover, maybe because she cared about faith. I think it's a bit of both.

Faith "I keep thinking of my folks. They thought this place was worth fighting for."

Ultimately Miller's enlisted as well - everything to save Kate, who they both care for.

"Still Alive" is a song about that. No matter how you try to keep out of politics, politics is the art of living amongst people. Politics will get into your life sooner or later. Even though Faith was trying to be edgy and independent in the end there are things in the City even she has to fight for. Unlike Jacknife, who sold himself because he lost ties to who he used to be. "I don't mess with politics" his own words (he certainly does benefit from genocidal politics though).

In my opinion - and I'll use Black Lives Matter as an example - Kate is much more of a token than Faith is. The whole "changing an structure from inside" with something as corrupt as the police is very disproven in the recent years. The function of the police in a capitalist society is to protect property and privileges (such as racial privileges) at all costs, people's lives come second. There's no entering a baby killing structure to change it from the inside - you are at least considering killing babies to enter.

I think we agree that Kate's belief of police serving the people being confirmed would be a point towards Corporate and capitalist ideology.

-About Nordic "social democracy" - as proved in the battlefields Easter egg in one of the elevators, the city is in a developed portion of a world where proxy wars happens at the other side of. That's also realistic. The little quality of life that developed nations have are not made in spite of the poverty of exploited nations, but because of said exploitation. Of course they will cling to or cater to institutions such as the police, or the democracy of the obscenely rich, or the law, for these institutions benefit them much more than us, their exploited counterparts.

But! And that's where the social commentary part comes in: what I think is revolutionary in ME's setting is looking at these said "evidences of progress" and saying "you know what? life in this rich democracy is also not that great!" and show how much of a corporate controlled dystopia that can become. If you learn to be human and have empathy , it's also not great to be in the shoes of the opressors, and it's a short-lived advantage, for a simple instance of you being fired can make you share the fate of a homeless person in but a few months.

-the vagueness: I agree that all these themes I've been mentioning have been much dumbed down and it requires much heavy digging to get to the point where I see the script as it is, because a lot of the script has been cut down - and I take it it wasn't just for the ambience and solitude this game brings you. Probably the money people got upset with some elements and asked the developers to defang the political message to have the aesthethics of being revolutionary while making these concepts hard to grasp if you are an average person and not some ME and politics addict like I am.

But sometimes art and writing is too good for their message for even the ones that want to do corporate censorship - like Elon Musk, though he doesn't get half the flak for censorship as your average government would - to ban. They know how sometimes the social commentary strikes a chord and that it will sell really well. So they leave it be.

That's how we got movies like Parasite being everywhere.

TL;DR: The elements rooted in reality that ended up being inserted in Mirror's Edge are not there despite the writing lack of quality, it was blurred on purpose by the companies making them and if I can get to them and explain like I just did, it attests the quality of the writing.

This is a response to //u/Jardmund5's post expanding on the social commentary

The mentioned post can be checked here .

I'll preface by saying I haven't finished reading their post yet. I'm gonna read through the whole post and edit this later, but lemme start by elaborating on your opening statement - while I agree it's a pretty tame social commentary (c'mon, corporate games will have their limitations on critiquing corporations lol)

TL DR; I don't think Mirror's Edge is critiquing fascism at face value so much as it is critiquing Neoliberalism, and it's reliance of an police state to enforce it's policies when cutting on social benefits raises public uproar.

The inciding incident that makes the City what it is during the events of the game is protests against state control of individual freedoms - said control is subjected to the whims of corporate control and profit.

To understand why this takes place we have to go way back to the end of WWII. You see, there were two fronts of fighting social rights movements.

(A) Sabotage social movements in whatever area the United States had control over - I live in Brazil, in one of the areas of influence, and we lived a dictatorship during a big period where the cold war was in place, along with many of other countries. The objective was clear, disarticulated and persecute everyone that opposed capitalism's goals of making the rich richer at the expense of the poor. The main people persecuted here were the left leaning military. That's also why they deployed wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam, that's also why they prosecuted social movements such as the politically engaged hippies, the black panther party, assassinated Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr, but the more relevant part was...

(B) They instituted politics to make a storefront of so-called "capitalism freedom", that is, the freedom to consume. We've got Keynesian politics, the welfare state, and the Marshall Plan in Europe. The classic way of life of the 50s that the United States still grieves losing acess to, to this day! The objective was to propagandize how great and plentiful life under capitalism was, but we have to pay attention to the fact that these benefits were not for everyone! Those were for the select few, you know, "true Americans", white cis heterossexual nuclear families. The best symbols for these were the automobile industry and the picked fences suberbias (whifh white families received incentives to move to - leaving the ghettos to other ethnicities where the police would have free reign to brutalize all they wanted).

Then URSS imploded and the illusion of social welfare was allowed to be teared down. There was no competition anymore, so capitalists started giving more attention to economists that employed a false, scientific appearance to say that the world would be better if the poor lot what little they had in benefits. Those economists would be called Chicago Boys, for many of them graduated there. Critics of this movement would call them the new liberals - neoliberals, for they would get metaphors of past economists like John Locke - and adopt them at face value. The invisible hand of the market is one such concept.

Just a pause to tell what freedom meant when they talk about freedom: John Locke was a slaveowner. Freedom for classic liberals is the freedom of profiting over other people's labor for simply inheriting the factories and business workers would be forced to work into if they wanted wages. Now I want you all to reflect how biased United States politics are if the left leaning party are called "liberals". In any other country where there is real left leaning opposition liberals are considered right-wing. That's why Democrats cooperate so much with Republicans on screwing over workers.

Back to the neoliberals. Their main idea was make everything a market. If you are mad you have to pay that much to just exist, they're the main reason. Their main figures would be:

(A) Pinochet in Chile - the bloody military dictatorship that tested the policies of tearing down social benefits conquered by centuries of popular struggle - what would cause a social convulsion if government opponents would be rounded up and taken to football stadiums to be executed and piled on the fields. There are documents that alledge CIA instructed the military on torture, including how to train dogs to sexually abuse prisoners. The results were clear: as long as they had an iron fist on social movements the capitalist class could profit a lot!

(B) Ronald Reagan in the United States - he himself a former actors union member. He would hand over his leftist peers to be persecuted by the authorities. An elected union president, he would make sure actor strikes were only about raises and not other relevant causes such as reducing the number of hours worked and etc. He proliferated with his politics and economic ideas all the way to be an US President, and there was fertile ground for Neoliberalism to root in the US! Hundreds of years of worker movements stifled from the old west private militias such as the Pinkerton's. Do you know these fine mercenaries exist to this day? Cause they do, and are responsible for much of the avoidance of establishing worker rights on the US history. Along with an already established police state in service of minorities genocide, Reagan had to struggle...but not as much as....

(C) Margaret Tatcher, the witch herself - may she rest in piss. She is the example of why you need a police state to take away workers benefits for profit. She wage a decade long war against the many unions in the UK, having a couple losses until it was understood that the police would have to be bolstered to bring down the strikes with extreme prejudice and propaganda against worker rights would have to be made, to the point of multiple murders being comitted. She persecuted LGBTQ+ people, did away with the children's milk in school breaks, and tried to sabotage the UK health system so private health could profit by picking up the scraps (this last one was unsuccessful).

And that's pretty much how we got to this day, where we have to pay abusively for rent, water, electricity and most of what should be human rights. Even hobbies and nudes are monetized, people are in a state of constant competition with each other and themselves, and people are miserable.

And year after year it gets worse because there's no alternative coming from the workers because we're either too tired or too hopeless to organize.

In my reply to the linked post, I said Mirror's Edge was a critique of Neoliberalism in developed countries and I stand by that affirmation - in UK it wasn't that simple to institute Neoliberalism, an illusion of progress was needed tone crafted, and that's what we have in Mirror's Edge City in the first game.

Maybe the most damning evidence that it's a critique of Neoliberalism is Faith'a Quote: "It's not news anymore - it's advertising." In neoliberalism, consumerist propaganda is disguised as news articles, and advertising itself is coated as scientific - ever wonder why mattress selling store workers use labcoats? Even the think tanks, Non Government Organizations devised to secretly pass corporate favoring propaganda to pass as "scientific and mathematical ", preparing laws to be passed in Congress and lobbying politics to do their bidding, do the same of trying to pass as just "centers of research of concerned citizens and experts " (where does their funding come from?).

That's why Robert Pope was killed, because he would not be accept to be lobbied to benefit corporations. That's why they pinned the blame on Kate/The Police, so the police could be defunded and private security - more susceptible to be swayed by corporate executives, more brutal, more interested in stifling social movements and disarticulating poor neighborhoods to displace people in Old Town and build complexes in their place. Anyway, that's why PK was muscling in in the place of CPF.

I thank anyone who's patient enough to read this lol.

im guessing hicaste is basically the rich, mid caste the middle class and lowcaste the poor? can someone tell me if im right? im pretty sure im right about the hicaste because they live in regatta bay.

edit: i was right but what about the outcaste?

This post is a direct reply to this post by user u/Quick-Cause3181

https://www.reddit.com/r/mirrorsedge/comments/1h25na4/based_on_this_line_and_the_countless_opinions_of/

Before you read: let me preface this with utmost honesty by saying that, i am, indeed, VERY biased towards certain political tendencies. The following is of my own opinion and by no means i present myself as the sole beholder of truth. Wether you think Mirror's Edge has, or has not, societal or political commentary that is up to you.

Begin reply:

It's a very very vague commentary on fascism or how easy it is for a society living in a "democracy" to slip into fascism. Allow me to explain:

Because of how things are kept vague in the game's plot and enviromental storytelling i will make the somewhat educated assumption that the form of the government in ME's world was (in the past) and still is (or at least maintains the façade of) the equivalent of our world's modern neo-liberal "democracy". I do this because they [the gov.] still have a city mayor as a governmental office to administer the city (in ME), and mayors are commonly elected through votes by the population in any given city they campaign to take office.

Currently (or the frame of time where most of Faith's story unfolds) there is an active supression of information, this being the raison d'être of the so called "runners" which basically act as information courriers functioning outside of the state's surveillance apparatus, which i will assume is mostly digital; hence the absolute physicallity of being a runner, as both the information contained within the "runner bags" is contained in physical media and must be delivered physically, by any means necessary, to it's respective recipient.

As mentioned before, there is an established surveillance system to keep tabs on the civillian population. Civil dissent is absolutely intolerable by the current regime and compliance to their [the gov.] wishes is required to be a functioning member of ME's society.

While that stuff doesn't in its entirety fit within the literal definition of fascism, the government in ME does fit certain criteria to be possibly considered as a fascist form of government. Though this can be taken as pure conjecture from my part, take it as you will... after all i am still some guy on reddit lol.

Now, in the real world, we are facing similar issues in regard to the themes presented in the world of our beloved FPS-parkour video game.

Take the protests and the whole period of civil unrest that Faith and her sister went through as kids. Though, in the game's story, it is kept very vague about what exactly prompted the masses to make public denounciations of the government's actions, the violence they faced on the other hand, carried out by state institutions such as the police, was (in the game) and is (in our world) a very real thing which can impact a person's or group of people's lives, often with damaging consequences to their physical and mental wellbeing, or even, thanks to the powers that be, face societal repercussions because of their public demonstrations, in which they are, for example, blacklisted by employers, making for them impossible the prospect of securing employment.

As for faith and sister, this meant the loss of their parents: the mother died during the november riots, and the father became an irredimable alcoholic because of depression due to his daugther's mother's death.

Faith took the streets as her home, she, symbolically speaking, represents the rebellion and struggles of years past... the faith people have on revolution and societal change. but, she is just a token... i'll get into that later.

Kate Connors on the other hand became a police officer, naïvely believing in some "good" the city has, she joined to help preserve and realign the police's mission to "better serve the people" . She represents conformity and faith in the status quo.

This could be considered as social commentary from DICE's part

But here is where DICE through not fault of their own make somewhat of a series of "mistakes" in their "effort" to make social commentary about "authoritarian" forms of government

First: The why-s are kept very very vague

This was done intentionally as if the game's themes were too much in your face and caused controversy this would impact the game's sales and subsequently EA's profit margins. Remember, ME was an unproven concept in the videogame market back in its day, it was a novel idea; a first person, parkour/freerunning focused game and not your Call of Duties or Gears of Wars of the era... so given the circumstances they had to play it safe where they could so that the game would sell (because they were not playing it safe to begin with by making what basically amounts to a "proof of concept" game)

Second: Inherent biases from the developer

This point will be a bit hard for me to hammer home but stick with me and hear me out.

DICE is a video game developer company originating from Sweden, owned by an american video game publisher giant, that being Electronic Arts.

Sweden being part of the social-democracies of the "Nordic Bloc" of Europe have always being touted in the west (just as other nordic countries like Norway or Denmark) to be one of the "bestests and happiest places to live" in the world, with high standards of living and GDP per capita.

Now you cannot separate the social enviroment and material conditions each and every one individual developed and grew up in. In this case i am talking about the individuals that were part of DICE during the game's development; them being (in majority) of swedish nationality.

Thus, it is not unreasonable to assume that the group of people that worked for DICE to develop the game at the time were influenced ideologically by Sweden's societal and political landscape, that being one of social-democracy.

Social democrats, by the virtue of their ideology, are directly opposed to the concept of "violent" societal revolution, instead, they believe that by assimilating themselves and working inside "the system" they can achieve a better standard of life to their people... ||if they get elected that is.|| Because they also champion our modern "democratic" systems and vehemently oppose anything that they regard as "Totalitarian forms of government" i.e anything that isn't "democratic" in their view.

ok, where was i? aha yes!, the GOTY of 2008!

You can connect the dots and see the implicit influence Swedish society had on DICE and the ME team just by virtue of the themes and they way they present them.

Point being, Faith and their family noticed the changes around them and were part of the revolution and they were crushed, just as like the rest of the dissidents by the new regime that took hold of the city. Now, those who "did not notice" and those who "did not care" are a mirror into our own societies, the so called "political apathetics" and the people who are simply just politically ignorant. See how inaction sometimes puts you in the same lot of those commiting "evil" and "wrong" deeds?. See how a lack of proper education and study keeps you in the dark, ignorant and unquestioning of what happens around you?

Faith, she, as a runner, lives between the gloss and the reality: the mirror's edge!; in my view, when she says this, it implies she lives in the very fringes of the society she finds herself in... and things could be even worse for her, if it weren't because of Merc when she took her in, fed her and trained her to become a runner.

But, as mentioned before she is just a token. Why? Because she is a "token rebel" in which DICE's writing team tries to convince you that faith is anti status quo when, in fact by inaction, mantains it for everyone else that lives in the city!

Instead of doing social agitation of the masses (waking up the sheeple if you will) by means of spreading anti regime propaganda...

instead of sabotage of the government's surveillance apparatus which is the reason why runners exist and there's no privacy in people's lives...

Instead of partaking in any action that can be considered even remotely revolutionary, truly anti status quo... she and by extension the rest of Merc's team are simply a black market postal system. Think about it, with all the organization, effort and resources it takes to keep such a dangerous operation going, all the information they can smuggle behind the suits and blues' backs... they do it for... uhh [checks notes] money...? and [checks notes again] cold pizza i guess???

When you lay out the game's plot elements and themes just by themselves... it doesn't hold up to scrutiny and the game becomes more of a "saving my sister" story more than anything. The rest becomes set dressing.

Again, this is a fault in the game's writing, the inherent biases show and it is very common and convenient for the writers to keep the whole "dystopian quasi-futuristic totalitarian regime" thingy at a very surface level because it suited their interests.

Third: the game is ultimately a product, game has to sell on the market.

DICE wanted to make a game that not only was groundbreaking but that also could sell; they pitched the idea to EA execs about this cool new project with parkour and the execs go like: why the fuck do they run and jump across city rooftops?

And so, they needed the whole scenario to be as vague as possible, to justify Faith, Kate, Merc, Celeste, the gameplay, the soundtrack, the whole aesthetics of the game... it needed to be vague, because you can easily write any story around it involving parkour and because the game needed a cool sounding concept to attract audiences to buy the game which was a whole new intellectual property and not an established franchise.

And let's face it, no development studio producer, no big publisher exec, is gonna give a project the green light and most of all the budget to develop a AAA game where the protagonist fights against against the police force, potentially killing them, and then goes to blow up a telecomunications tower... or whatever, it doesn't matter, either way, it's financial suicide to make a politically charged game, be it an indie studio or a AAA one. (this holds true to this day, as it did in 2008... oh and see how they reward you an achievment if you don't kill any member of law enforcement? instead you gotta knock them unconcious or avoid them)

What they needed was mass market appeal, how do you do it with a brand new franchise and novel gameplay concepts?

They did so with the vagueness of the plot and world, giving it some semblance of our own, familiarity; the pretty graphics and unique visuals drew you in, amusement; the gameplay was solid and there was nothing else quite like it available to play, fun.

In conclusion (TL;DR): DICE and EA, they didn't even remotely wanted to make actual socio-political commentary it was just happenstance that suited their interests, all for the sake of selling a new game in a brand new IP.

every month i remember that i have mirrors edge catalyst installed and i play it A LOT. i never really think about the first mirrors edge though. should i play the first one? you will probably think im crazy for this lol

In the Shard mission, when you get to the server room, Miller yells and then his radio goes silent, did he die?

I used to play mirros edge catalyst quite a lot in 2021 and recently I wanted to pick it up again however every time I try to launch it, either through Steam or EA, all it says is 'Preparing Game' before the EA app closes and relaunches itself. Is there a fix for this? Thanks.

https://reddit.com/link/1h1o7pe/video/o3du5uhapk3e1/player