By the year 2084, social media has evolved to the point that everyone is equipped with a memory-capturing implant called a SenseEm. People record what they see, hear, smell, feel, and taste and share their experiences with others. This is the core concept by which the setting of the first game from Dontnod Entertainment, Remember Me, is built. Nilin is a memory hunter, one of a select few who can alter the memories of targets with the right reasons, but when she wakes up with no memories of her own, she will have to piece together her past while going up against Memorize, manufacturer of SenseEm, and the most powerful company on the planet.
Art Director Alexis Briclot, Creative Director Jean-Maxime Moris, and Senior Producer at Capcom Matthew Hart assembled at WonderCon on Saturday to give this more detailed look at the setting and gamplay of Remember Me.
The lead character Nilin is what initially drew me to this game. Making a mixed-race woman their lead was “a no brainer” according to Moris. They wanted to do something different and believe there aren’t enough women or non-white leads in video games. (They’re right!) The design work behind Nilin is rather interesting, too. A lot of time was spent designing her outfit, which is meant to reflect modern sensibilities such as the use of jeans, but have some neat sci-fi elements like her high collar and her data glove. Of interest is that Remember Me focuses on a yin-yang theme which is also reflected in Nilin’s clothes, which are a balanced mixture of white and black.
When designing the setting of Remember Me, the team looked at many major cities including Tokyo, Sydney, and San Francisco to serve as the foundation but ultimately wanted to make a futuristic version of a city that hadn’t been done before in science fiction. Then, it hit them that their own city, Paris, was in a perfect position to do just that. Now called Neo-Paris, the French capital has been divided into three different layers: Deep-Paris, Mid-Paris, and High-Paris. Deep-Paris is the foundation of the city where the dregs of humanity, including genetic abnormalities called Leapers, reside. These strange creatures move and behave like animals with some of the genetic degrading getting so bad as to create something truly monstrous. (Side note: Briclot mentioned how the Leapers’ unique look was created, and it wasn’t pretty either, as Briclot had a model wear a condom filled with shaving cream on his head.) Mid-Paris is the Paris of today, filled with modern conveniences and the bulk of the middle class. High-Paris is where the high rollers live, the folks who are able to afford the latest advances in technology and have designed High-Paris to be this high-tech science fiction world. It was important to the team to include historical landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and the Bastille Pillar as well as to have the city reflect Paris’ overall architecture to be as authentic a design as possible.
The core gameplay of Remember Me is a combo-based melee system; however, unlike most combo systems, players can go in and create their own in what’s called the ComboLab. The ComboLab allows players to take different moves that have different benefits and create a unique combo. These can be tailored to specific needs like regeneration of health or cooldown of special abilities called Pressens. Pressens each have a unique in-game effect, an example of which is the Logic Bomb, which overloads the implants of enemies causing them to be disoriented and have Nilin disappear from their sight for a time.
A game all about messing with memory isn’t just focused on punching and kicking. Nilin will also be forced to go inside people’s minds to steal or even modify their memories. This special ability of hers plays out like a movie that the player can rewind and fast forward through and make adjustments to certain elements, or glitches, in the memory during the scene, like maybe this gun’s safety was turned off instead of on. These set-ups are particularly interesting due to the design of the setting. Like a theater stage, these scenes only include the characters in the lead props, no walls or unnecessary detail, because when we remember something, we only remember the really important things.
It’s also well worth noting the unique properties the team is giving to the music of Remember Me. All the music is recorded using a full orchestra to provide this rich, organic feel, and then at different points the music is “glitched” to sound more like techno and more hollow. The team believes music is crucial to game immersion and have put a lot of time into making the soundtrack of Remember Me just as memorable as the gameplay, setting, or characters.
At the panel they also showed a brand new trailer featuring the various enemies Nilin will face, ranging from different kinds of Leapers to a group of armored soldiers called SABRE Force, aerial craft called the Nephilim and Seraphim, and a host of robots. Look for the enemies trailer to be online soon.
Remember Me is set to release on June 4th. Dontnod Entertainment also reports a few more products coming soon including a Remember Me artbook and a comic book. In the meantime, you can check out the game’s story trailer and stay tuned for more information as the game’s release date approaches.
