Remember Me was a game that really stood out for me at GamesCom this year. The concept of altering memories and using them as actual weapons is intriguing, and it certainly helps when the combat looks polished and fluid. In a way, it’s a game that stands out from formats of interactivity, for something new and different. And according to the developers behind Remember Me, that’s because they don’t want this game to pander to those overused stereotypes.
“Video games have become such a formatted medium, but it’s the most powerful medium in the world and it has the most potential in the future. Yet everything is formatted,” creative director Jean-Maxime Moris said to CVG.
Moris explained that development studio Dontnod “just wanted to do things differently”, which is why the game was ditching the usual 30-something Caucasian with a gun male cliche that was so prevalent in gaming today.
How fucking stupid is this industry to only bet on those stereotypes? It’s the only thing you give people, they get accustomed to it and don’t want anything else. So yes, our character, Nilin, is mixed race, she is female, her sexual orientation is her private life, so I won’t go there.
In addition to the gender-hopping, Dontnod also wanted the star of Remember Me to be someone that didn’t need to rely on the ol’ ultra-violence in order to get the job done at the end of the day;
She runs around, climbs, leaps, kicks guys’ asses, remixes their memories, only kills a few people – and does it all in a game with no blood. We made those choices to say: ‘look you can have something that’s kick ass, something that’s powerful, and you don’t need it to be ultraviolent’.
And Morris has some really good points up there. Gaming really does play it too safe when it comes to content and who represents what, and provided that Remember Me can make their concepts work and prove why a memory-hack is better than an exploding head, we could be on to something here. Remember Me is out in May on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
Last Updated: November 5, 2012
