Last year, EA published two distinct titles: Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and Titanfall 2. They’re pretty decent games, I’ve reviewed both of them. Despite one being a fast paced shooter and the other being a sort of elaborate obstacle course game, the two have one major feature in common. Both include a lot of parkour. In both games, the architecture is very benevolent to the free-runner, with many buildings shaped in ways that allow you to line up the perfect double-wallrun jump. Why point this out? Because I have an insane theory you need to hear.
“Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and Titanfall are the same universe.”
MEC takes place in a nation-state called “Cascadia”. There are a lot of supplemental materials you can read about the world here, but there’s a precise detail that isn’t in the books. Nothing says that Cascadia is ON EARTH. And why would it be? Most of the world is an unhospitable grey dump with a closed off supercity in one area. There’s a couple mentions of other countries, but no mention of Earth. Nothing places the storyline to a certain date or time, nor are you told if the city was formerly anything else, other than being a slightly different nation-state beforehand. Nothing stated in the index mentions any earthly location to indicate that it was historically somewhere we know today. Therefore, it must take place on another planet!
Stay with me. The Titanfall universe takes place on multiple colonized planets. Earth is only referenced in an unofficial wiki as the home planet of series antagonists, the IMC. Other than that, no real mention. In this universe, pilots are exemplars of the Militia, and many soldiers look up to these special operatives with envy. They get to pilot the titans! But when not using a titan, the pilots dash all over the place using a series of fancy free running techniques (and the assistance of jump-jets, which are becoming my new favorite thing in games). If you observe the characters who aren’t pilots, both in the campaign and multiplayer, it seems pilots are the only ones who can actually pull off those acrobatic feats. Clearly, its not really a common skill, and only the best can do it.
Back to Mirror’s Edge, the “runners” are a group of gangs that run along the rooftops of Cascadia, which is super dangerous and stupid. But the enemy security team can’t free-run, neither can the regular civilians. It’s a special skill that only the best can accomplish, and it becomes second nature to these individuals.
In either universe, despite not being common, parkour is widely used by those who strive to be excellent. The runners do it for the freedom and the pilots do it for the glory. Neither of these groups have to do it, but they do. So clearly, in both these worlds, free-running is a highly useful and advantageous skill to have. Pilots from Titanfall 2 would love to jump and run around the walls of Cascadia, and the runners wouldn’t be our of their element if they were given jump-jets and set loose on the planets of Titanfall 2.
So, by virtue of a valuable practice, you could surmise that Titanfall and Mirror’s Edge could plausibly be the same universe. Now you may be wondering what the point is? So what, they are same universe, no big deal? Wrong. There’s a big reason to come to this conclusion. That is: both games need more DLC and a universal crossover would be awesome.