Faith's Character Design

This is Faith, the main character of Mirrors Edge.
She is designed to look tough and athletic.
Her gritty image is iconic of her being street smart and able to handle herself.



This is not Faith.

This is a redesign posted on Kataku by a fan called Torokun, who decided that Faith should look younger and prettier.

"There is always a huge complain from Asian gamers whenever Western developers design Asian female characters..." As Torokun continues, this is mainly because many Westerners' definition of what is considered as "Asian" beauty is very different from what Asians consider beautiful." - Kotaku.

What Torokun is not taking into consideration is that Faith may not have been designed to appear beautiful to a western or asian market. You could argue that the change in character design also changes the signs given off by the character. Faith's design gives her an athletic figure, making her look like a hardened street runner, which is the preferred meaning. This is lost with the voluptuous look of the redesign. The redesign's eyes are cartoonishly large to make her appear more approachable, but Faith is not supposed to be an approachable character. Years of having to fend for herself have made her cold and distant but to only a few close friends. Faith is supposed to look old and fairly weathered, she runs across rooftops for a living... Whilst Torokun may have made the character look more beautiful, he has completely missed the point of a character design that has clearly had a lot of work and thought put into it to give out some very specific signs.