Behold! The great realm and Dwarf-city of Dwarrowdelf...

Well, maybe not quite as beautiful but almost as impressive. These are the storm drains here in Saitama where I live. Pretty big! I came across this set of pictures years ago and they fascinated me then just as they do now. They do offer guided tours there a couple of times a week so if you have the chance I highly recommend it. More details on the offical site.

If these pictures seems familiar to you even though you haven't seen them before you might have played the positively excellent (Swedish!) game Mirror's Edge. In the second chapter, Jacknife, Faith ends up in some storm drains that looks almost exactly like these, including the huge doors below! What I'm curious about is if they made the level from the photos or if some of the guys from Dice actually came here and checked them out in person.

Oh well... I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Notice the truck being lowered down in the above picture.

It's really breathtaking I have to say. When my friends get here in Februari we'll have to make a stop in the Saitama storm drains.

I'll sign off with a last plug for Mirror's Edge. Although it has it quirks and can be quite unforgiving at times it's definitely one of my favourite games of recent years. I had followed its development and although I liked what I saw, especially the art direction which reminds me very much of Tokyo, it never felt like a must-get game for me. That is until I downloaded the demo on Xbox Live. Then it all fell to place and just a few minutes of free running in Faith's well-toned body and I was hooked! Sure, Assassins Creed has great looking free running but it's nothing compared to the adrenaline rush you get when you get into the runner mindset in Mirror's Edge. Highly recommended!


That's all for now I suppose. I got an email from Robert telling me that my fledgling Northern Guard army has been shipped. Yay!

Now I think I'm going to go jump on some roofs!