As it stretches towards the horizon it reaches towards simplicity, devolving into white cubes as if reaching back into its own history of white-boxed levels and untextured 3D spaces. This virtual city lacks the complexity of the glacially growing oil slick that is London. There is no dirt, no decay, only pristine progress occasionally sullied by the scuff marks of black-soled running shoes. Instead of crumbling brick and rain-stained concrete there are only glistening volumes and flaring screens. The city of Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst is nothing like London.

There is no dirt, no decay, only pristine progress I began to see the city differently, not as a territory of demarcations, but as a single branching corridor of various volumes, a set of rooms that might be traveled in a single path, one to the other, never stopping, like the current in the wire-the signal in the system.

I followed them down flights of stairs, into low corridors, slanted and uneven, where rows of doors were marked with pristine private signs, leading to unknown destinations at unknown angles along unknown vectors. Among the fake leather seating and off-white walls, the large canvas prints of Parisian street scenes and the art-deco light fixtures they stood out as uniquely functional objects, unornamented, hidden in plain sight. In my fifth year in London, buried in basements fashioned to appear as French cafés or Italian bistros, I obsessively traced the shapes of silver ducts and pipes, interwoven along the ceilings as if they were circuit boards. The system and interface of their streets. I’ve always been fascinated by the coherence and incoherence of cities.

Nosteam.ro mirrors edge