It’s unknown when, someone suspicious did who knows what, after which – EVERYTHING.
Summary of local ENT specialist.
Post-irony (post-irony, from lat. post – after and irony [1]) – a term used to denote a state when sincerity becomes difficult to distinguish from irony.
Hello everyone. Well, how do you like the detailed analysis? CoD: MW 2019? Judging by the ratings – I liked it. Unfortunately, such masterpieces of idiocy are rare. Today we have a much less spicy dish – namely, we will analyze the history of the game world Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst. Just like that, suddenly and without declaring war – after all, not everyone who played the game studied all sorts of notes and files that describe the history of the world.
And even fewer climbed thematic sites. The situation is somewhat reminiscent Killzone, the history of the world which I analyzed somewhere nearby (look in blogs). Relationships Cascadia, OmniStat, Sabea and myself City of Mirrors this is an interesting background for a not very interesting game. This is the case when the concepts and art book are much more interesting than the final product.
Lace up your shoes, check your PULSE – now an armchair historian and political scientist from the Lower Internet will scold ENT games. And sometimes praise. And also, it’s not the place to insert quotes from the greats. This is by no means a review of the game (there would be something to review there) – we’re just walking around the City of Mirrors. Let’s see who will inhabit it. Where did he come from, what does he do… Well, stuff like that.
And let’s even assume how the world of the game lived before its events, and what awaits it in the future.
INTRODUCTION. Where would we be without him?.
Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst – this is an attempt to restart Mirror’s Edge, which in 2008 shot well. Despite its modest financial success, the game was memorable – firstly, due to the incredible feeling of running, inertia and movement of the heroine (Faith), and secondly, due to the visual style.
The minimalism of the environment and bright details intuitively helped to accelerate and maintain the running pace. Plus, it was possible to save on textures and improve optimization – for a game that involves fast movement in space, this is a critical point (2008, my laptop has 16 GB of RAM, which was quite a lot for those times, to put it mildly). Unfortunately, they couldn’t attach the same cheerful mechanism for interacting with enemies to the vigorous running. We could punch them in the face, grab a weapon – and if it wasn’t a pistol, then the game turned into a super dull shooting gallery. With a pistol, the shooting range was a little more fun – you could jump and gallop – but still the game was clearly not about fighting.
And this could be forgiven if there was something more important in the game than these parkours of yours. But here, too, cancer intervened, killing games to this day… Plot Mirror’s Edge I didn’t scold only the lazy one, the most complete analysis that I have seen is the video of Filinov and Rusyaev. Let me just say that some Rhianna Pratchett participated in the creation of this masterpiece of graphomania – and it did not disappoint. All her “professionalism” was revealed in full. To create even more confusion Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst operates with old characters, mentions of places, organizations and names – yes, yes, almost like the new one CoD operates with names Zakaeva And Shepard.
Everything is finally confused by the extremely strange chronology of the game universe, which vaguely gives us an idea of the dates and location of the action. It seems that at the time of the game 50 years have passed since the civil war and the founding of Cascadia. And Ten years since the November Riots.
AND THE THUNDER ROLLED.
Judging by the outlines of the continents, the game takes place in some parallel world. Well, or nuclear explosions and a construction battalion detachment did a solid job on the geographical map, because I tried to draw the outlines of land onto a globe, but I was not successful. In any case, we have references here to the Cold War in Europe and to Asian contradictions – which pretty much spoil the lives of our eastern neighbors. Also I read that the geographical map is based on Southern Tasmania after sea level rise of 60 meters.
An inattentive player could have missed this, but Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst – it’s kind of a post-apocalypse! Yes, yes, looking at giant skyscrapers and sparkling mirrored roofs, the last thing you think about is radioactive deserts and raiders, but human civilization survived the collapse known as Great Regression. This is one big, protracted resource crisis, in parallel with wars, famine, diseases and other things dear to the hearts of survivalists.
However, in contrast to the classical scenario, people did not fall into barbarism, and even on the contrary, they made significant progress in the field of high technology, medicine and genetic engineering. Which is logical, because as the great ancient sage said:
Both politics and state institutions have https://simonsayscasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ not disappeared anywhere: in conditions of endless danger, scarcity of resources, the need for their competent distribution in order to avoid total collapse, the “laws of the market” quickly gave way to a planned economy. So on the ruins of the old world appeared OmniStat. Yes, yes, exactly like that – together and in two capitals, OmniStat.
About how people lived in this world TO Regressions, we will say a little later – based on indirect data.
… He was inspired by legends of ancient utopian states, classless societies, where every citizen was valued equally and the fruits of labor were shared among all…
From the description of the OmniStat device.
The name of the state itself hints at the fact that iron discipline, order and accounting reign here – which automatically made OmniStat center of attraction for weak city-policies. Where with diplomacy, where with brute force, but OmniStat eventually became a single country, under the control of the ruling Party. This takes us back to the Civil War in China – which was largely formed into a single country only through the careful mass executions organized by the CCP and Mao Zedong personally.
Now it’s time to take a step back and see exactly how people lived before Regression. Again – based on indirect data. As far as can be understood from the scanty crumbs of information, city-policies this was normal in the game world, even before the Regression.
For a well-governed city is the greatest stronghold; everything is contained in it, and while it is preserved, everything is whole, but it perishes, [with it] and everything perishes.
This scheme clearly refers us to Hellas: city-policies were independent political units that emerged from several united villages. The form of government in each individual polis could be different: monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. As a matter of fact, it was oligarchy that was the form of government in most of them. I say this with confidence because more than once or twice we will be told that this or that corporation has a history going back to the old times, pre-Omnistat.
Let’s digress a little and think carefully: how realistic is this?? How exactly such a society has grown to modern technology is a really interesting question. The fact is that the relationship between the policies of Hellas was very unstable – they were always at war with each other, betraying each other, putting together coalitions and shaky alliances. Blood flowed like a river, daggers were stuck into each other’s backs so that Caesar could not even dream of it, and poison was poured out in buckets. This is very interesting to study – but above the conditional Middle Ages, such a system develops with great, great difficulty. Sooner or later there is someone especially toothy who gives everyone a blow and builds according to a ruler.
By the way, in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (“Amazing”? Are you serious?) we could even take part in the war between Sparta and Athens.
Those who don’t do this cease to exist and are swallowed up by their neighbors. But there is always an exception to the rule: Italy. Italy, more or less in its modern form, was formed in the 19th century, and it was finally consolidated largely thanks to the activities of the Duce. True, this was perhaps the only thing in which he succeeded… Before that there was a lot of intrigue, wars, bloody vendettas and betrayals between powerful cities. Pisa vs Milan, loud duels, but I digress.
I don’t want to dig TOO deep, but it seems to me that the world Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst before Great Regression came to corporate neo-feudalism. This is when large corporations and the clans that run them are fattened to such a size that they no longer really need the state, and they cut it into pieces. This happens regularly in cyberpunk settings: you can remember "Enclaves" Vadim Panov or "Anthill" William Gibson, where corporations finally got loose and bent the state.
By the way, it is quite possible that this is one of the main reasons Great Regression: Nothing compares to the lethality of a corporate monster that sees an opportunity to increase profits. He will chop, cut, squeeze out all the juices and chase even the ghostly shadow of profit. True, EA? Isn’t it Disney??
KRUGER’S UPRISING.
Krugers were a very influential figure even before the Regression. Apparently, their company specialized in security and safety: that is, in our modern language, PMC. Pay and they fight for you.
OmniStat concluded with by the Krugers deal: the clan was allocated seats in the ruling Party. We should not forget that not everyone agreed to enter the OmniStat on a voluntary basis: in addition to diplomacy, OmniStat also used force, and the Kruger corporate army came in handy here.
Here’s just the guide OmniStat missed one nuance: soldiers Kruger they remained soldiers Kruger. Again, I may be digging too deeply – but any military man will say that the dissolution and dismantling of a unit is a very significant blow to combat readiness. That is, if you have a squad of high-tech special forces with some kind of nanotanks, then it’s better to hold them with one strike fist. This is effective: the guys have already worked together, polished their actions, organized tactical coordination. However, at the same time, who knows what’s in the minds of these special forces – so you need to watch them closely. OmniStat failed this task.
So after a while Ditter Kruger raised what is now known as Kruger’s Rebellion. This resulted in a bloody Civil War, which raged for decades – according to the results it is also called Triumvirate War.
The ideology of the uprising was directly opposite to the ideology OmniStat: private enterprise and individualism versus collectivism and unified leadership. And the Krugers were not alone: they put together a whole coalition of like-minded people, and during the civil war they gnawed out a whole piece from OmniStat, which was in crisis, now called Cascadia. In addition, from OmniStat another state has fallen away – Sabean: during the Civil War there were many who liked to fish in troubled waters.
We know little about Sabaeus: a theocratic state with a murky religious and political ideology, where people from Gray Lands run away and don’t come back. Intelligence yields nothing – agents switch sides Sabea – but there have been no attacks from there yet.
Naturally Terra Incognita.
It seems that there was a DLC planned related to these mysterious types. But given the financial success – or rather, lack thereof – you can forget about it.
OmniStat used water – or shutting it off – to sway people to its side. Later, the rebels remembered this – since the desalination plants they captured were very valuable and OmniStat did not dare to attack them. This was one of the factors of victory: OmniStat was afraid that when trying to recapture the rebels would blow up the installations.
So, the newly formed Cascadia captured the most developed and “fat” territories, simultaneously cutting off OmniStat access to the sea and making it dependent on water. And it would seem that everything is fine! We won the war, and thanks to the availability of resources, we rebuilt… But then the laws of the market had their say.
Firstly, Ditter Kruger died. How and to what extent independently is unclear. I fully admit that his former allies decided to eliminate him as an overly active politician.
– What could be better than a hero??
– Dead hero..
Secondly, corporate families have actively organized Conglomerate. Remember the phrase “all animals are equal, but some are more equal”? This is it: corporate employees began to have more political rights (They work for the benefit of the country and the whole society!). Well, since corporations paid salaries and gave them work, very quickly it was corporations that began to rule Cascadia through the Conglomerate.
Kruger was supported by 12 family corporations: we’ll talk about these nice people a little later. For now, it is important to understand that despite the seemingly democratic slogans of the Uprising, LEGISLATIVELY democratic principles were never recorded. So a feeling of uncertainty and fear of tomorrow is the norm for residents of Cascadia.
CASCADIA. Brave New World.
Cascade is a word of French-Italian origin, meaning “waterfall” or “fall”. Also called a cascade is a certain system of repeating elements: “cascade of hydroelectric power stations”, for example. Or "cascade of fountains".
Cascadia in this case it is a country made up of repeating faceless corporations that tightly control their subordinates. Despite the fact that it all started under the slogans of individualism and private initiative, at the time of the game Cascadia is a strictly regulated caste society. That is, a cyberpunk dystopia in an open world with original design and features – how can you screw it up?? Can. Very much like. The dystopian nature of Cascadia society is the dystopian nature of teenage novels, with their division into factions of Friendly and Dauntless.
Let’s start from the top of the food pyramid: Corporations, aka Corporate Houses, forming Conglomerate.
The local PeKa boyars and prefix commanders. They produce software and hardware, gobbling up all other competitors. Work closely with "Kruger Sec", however, they are afraid that they themselves may devour them. It is completely natural to be afraid – because Gabriel Kruger is not the kind of person who will breed politeness and play by the rules.