I really enjoy Any Austin’s “Unremarkable and Odd” series open_in_new . In these videos, he highlights the strange in-between places that exist as the inadvertent byproduct of the level and environment design processes. Not the result of any deliberate decision-making, these places are instead what fills the gaps between those deliberate decisions, like sand filtering into a jar of marbles. Most of his entries focus on older games like Half Life and Mario 64, which makes sense. Modern games often try to smooth over these places, to greeble every corner of the world with believable detail to reinforce the illusion that the world of the game isn’t a thing of artifice.
However, my hope is that——with the right mindset——these types of places can still be found in modern games. As a girlie predisposed to 👀looking around👀 and 🤔philosophical ponderings🤔, I believe I have the qualifications for the job. I’ll start with one of my favorite series, Mirror’s Edge. The freerunning gameplay means that the environments are designed to be moved through quickly, so my theory is that we’ll find some strange spaces when we slow down and have a look around.
Top Tip: I discovered at the very, very end of writing this post that, if you have Nvidia GeForce on your PC, you can enter photo mode in pretty much any game by pressing Alt + F2. Thank you now-deleted user on a random four-year old Reddit thread, you are truly the last bastions of knowledge on this AI-blighted internet.
Smoke Break
This was the only spot I found in the original game that felt like it truly fit the unremarkable and odd ethos. You bust out the red door and fly across this little platform on the run from the cops. This particular balcony stands out to me because unlike most others, it has no railings. The combination of the door, benches, and trashcan makes me imagine the employees of City Eye taking the world’s least OSHA-compliant smoke break.
Alleyway
In Catalyst, the first mission of the game is one of the few times you’re at street level. This is also the only time we see any sort of weather in the city of Glass, and if you’re anything like me, a rainy night in the city is a surefire recipe for ennui. The narrow canyon of this alleyway frames a sliver of far-off city lights. Your runner buddy pesters you to climb, climb——street level is for the cogs of the corporate machine, not free thinkers like you. For the rest of the game, these alleyways are nothing more than anonymous pits where sloppy runners hurtle to their death——but tonight, for a brief moment, you’re looking up instead of down.
Tree Hole
Outside of the neatly-groomed balconies of the wealthy, greenery is rare in the city of Glass. How endearing, then, to discover this tree that has stubbornly pushed its way through a concrete floor! This is supposed to be a punishment pit that you only end up in if you’re too stupid to jump good, but just look at it. Look at the way the leaves drift down. It’s so peaceful in the pit.
Look also at how the spotlight casts your shadow on the wall. Because reflections are historically challenging to implement, glimpsing the self in games is always an interesting moment for me. Do you remember seeing yourself for the first time through a portal in Portal? Faith encountering her reflection is an ongoing motif in the series, and I like to imagine this as an inadvertent nod to that theme.
Orange Cathedral
This room is the fig leaf for where enemies spawn from. It says “Look! Ostensibly those future-cops could have been in… here, for some reason.” You as the player can’t actually get inside, but it’s simply too good to omit. Look at the proportions. Look at how barren it is. Look at how orange it is. This is a holy place. I just know the acoustics in there would crack my my third eye open like a can of Sprite.
In Conclusion
The verdict? Somewhat slim pickings. My theory was that the Mirror’s Edge series would have unremarkable and odd places because it was meant to be moved through quickly, but this also worked against it——because the gameplay is all about flow and speed, the level design tries to eliminate any nooks and crannies that the player’s movement might get “caught” in.
Now, I wouldn’t say that unremarkable and odd places make a good video game; in fact, too many of them would almost certainly make a bad one, especially in games like these where their existence runs counter to the goals of gameplay. I really liked the few spots I did find, and more than that, I liked the excuse to dive back in to one of my favorite series and appreciate it in a new light. Bye for now!