"To be very honest, I'm a big Joss Whedon fan, and a lot of the things in the story of the game came from Firefly and [feature film adaptation] Serenity," O'Brien told Gamasutra.

Mirror's Edge made waves early last month when publisher Electronic Arts released a gameplay trailer from the game, showing off the title's free-running action and Unreal Engine 3-powered visual style.

"It's very easy to look at this game, to misunderstand this game, and say, it's one girl against this police-state dictatorship. It's not. It's more subtle than that," added O'Brien. "One of the core questions that the game asks you is, how much of your personal freedom are you willing to give up for a comfortable life?"

O'Brien went on to explore the ways in which Joss Whedon's Firefly series—set in a dystopian, Western-inspired and space-faring future—made an impact on the development of the game's story.

"The basis of Firefly and Serenity is, you can't force other people to live by your system, even if your system is better. These people want to live on the edge of that society. Again, in Serenity, The Operative actually says, 'This is not an evil empire. We just don't understand why you don't want to be part of our happy club.'"

"Obviously, they take it too far, and similarly, that's kind of what happens in our game as well: the mayor of the city decides to take things a step too far," O'Brien concluded. Registered users can use the HD Stream