How the modernist skyscraper and how it metaphorically represents the future.
The time period I am choosing for this is 2007 to 2017 and I will be using computer games to back
my argument up on my points. I will be using Mirrors Edge Catalyst (2016), Shadow of Mordor (2014)
and Destiny (2014) as my examples as back up for what I will be talking about. I feel these games
have the strongest metaphors for their towers showing the future of the worlds they’re in. Now I
don’t feel like there is anything that I can quote these games on, its simply a matter of have you
played them or seen anything on them
So for starters I am going to talk about Mirrors Edge Catalyst, to make this clearer to get my point.
I’m going to talk a bit about the story of this game as summed up as I can. Now this game doesn’t say
when it was set so I can’t give a date. However, it presumed it is modern day, society has been reset.
So everything we know has been changed and the world is painted white and everything in life has a
set job. You play as a runner which simply brings parcels and messages across the city by
freerunning between buildings. More to the point, the world is run by a corporate/government
(Kruger) business and they allow runners to exist. Then it became illegal to run. Kruger are based in a
huge building that sits in the centre of the city known as the shard. Linking this to the question, the
largest and most secure tower in the game, (the shard) symbolises the future because when this
structure was built. In game it changed the society and the city itself, as for the outside world it
doesn’t talk about it.
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Now linking this further and using the information from Mirrors Edge Catalyst tells me personally
that the reason he developers and creators of the game chose to have these two towers
assigned to these two parties is to really show the player that it all lies down to these two
parties. They are the biggest and most modern towers in the game, there are other
skyscrapers but nothing reaches what these two are. Skyscrapers are often associated with
the future as its always a race between humanity to see who can build the highest and
biggest building, however I think this the case because once the “biggest” skyscraper is built,
that is the pinnacle of how fair our technology can go at that current state in time. Then
many years later, we hear in the news that a new skyscraper has been built. If you compare
the times from when the last biggest and modern skyscraper was built to the new one. It
reflects how far society and technology have come since. Now putting this into the mirrors
edge world that I have been talking about, there are many occasions where you run through
buildings that are in the process of being built and are clearly going to be bigger than
anything in that time. But again it isn’t about what is after the skyscraper that reflects the
future. Its about using the tallest skyscraper as a milestone and a way of dating the building
to refl...
