It’s padding. Beautiful, fast, responsive padding. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is not the masterpiece its fans hoped for. It is too flawed for that. The combat (which forces you to stop running and fight in clunky, slow-motion kung-fu) actively fights the game’s thesis. The stealth sections are tedious. The "Skill Tree" feels like an RPG feature stapled onto an arcade game.
When you nail a perfect run—wall-running, sliding under a pipe, jumping a gap, landing a roll, and crossing the finish line with three seconds to spare—the story doesn’t matter. The fetch quests don’t matter. All that matters is the rhythm of your heartbeat and the blur of the glass. Mirrors Edge Catalyst
You have seen this before. Every villain is a caricature. Every ally is a walking trope. The dialogue sounds like it was translated from a different language. You will spend hours running fetch quests for "Noah" or "Icarus," characters who explain their motivations in exposition dumps while you stand there, tapping your foot, wanting to run. It’s padding