Remember Me was Misunderstood Says Creative Director

[Esmeralda Portillo]

Remember Me was Misunderstood Says Creative Director

DONTNOD Entertainment believes their first game Remember Me was just misunderstood and the release of The Last of Us overshadowed it.

Remember Me was a sci-fi action-adventure game developed by DONTNOD Entertainment and published by Capcom, detailing the journey of protagonist Nilin in 2084 Neo-Paris. It was a game that garnered much attention in its initial reveal but was met with mixed and average reviews upon its release. Creative Director Jean Maxime Moris feels the game was misunderstood, and despite the reviews and sales DONTNOD Entertainment is still "extremely proud" of their product.

"I think it was not perfect by any means, but to some level it was misunderstood," Moris explains, "It was our first game. We got totally buried under the hype for a very big game that came out directly after." The Last of Us [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/reviews/10366-The-Last-of-Us-Review-A-New-Apocalypse] was released one week after Remember Me. "These are not excuses because it was not perfect, it had flaws."

However, Moris has recognized several instances when the game has been appreciated for what it was, "But people are still writing about it today. Every once in a while we see a piece popping up and people actually showing the game some love." DONTNOD Entertainment announced at Gamescom it's working with Square Enix on a new episodic game titled Life is Strange, "Even the announcement of Life is Strange, we've seen many comments about DONTNOD as a studio, about Remember Me. So even though right now our life is Life is Strange, we're definitely happy to see Remember Me live on in people's memories. That's great."

The Escapist gave the game a 3 out of 5 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/reviews/10362-Remember-Me-Review-Sadly-Forgettable], citing that its interesting elements never came together.

Source: Joystiq [http://www.joystiq.com/2014/08/15/remember-me-creative-director-it-was-misunderstood/]

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[drkchmst]

Played Remember Me. Did not play Last of Us. Guess I'll have to see what life is strange is about.

 

[BarkBarker]

People remember it as that game with an interesting premise with broken combat that was wholesomely unnecessary and didn't do anything REALLY interesting with its concept. I also hear that traversing the landscape was irritating and inefficient, but it DOES look good when it comes to detail, clearly the love was put in by the artists and not the designers.

 

[erbkaiser]

Remember Me had nice levels and an extremely cool memory remixing aspect, but the combat system was horrible and repetitive. It's more than a little arrogant to imply the reason it failed was that TLOU came out -- I think Remember Me's combat would have brought it down no matter what game it went up against.

 

[Angelous Wang]

The game kind of played like a very stripped down liner Batman Arkham game, just with a girl.

Visually the game was appealing. The memory investigation/alternation mechanics where cool, but there were far too few and far to simple (scenarios wise). If the game had been more (And more complex)of them, then it it might have gotten somewhere.

The fact is I completed this £30+ game in 9 hours on hard mode and have never touched it since.

Overall was bad game.

 

[Eternal_Lament]

Honestly, the game tried to do too much at once. The Arkham style combat was rather boring, the altering of combos was too simplistic, the platforming was uninteresting, and the memory sequences were barely in the game. Honestly, either DONTNOD should have focused purely on combat and ignore the platforming/memory sequence in an effort to make the combat more fun/engaging, or DONTNOD should have scrapped the combat entirely in favour of platforming and memory sequences. As it is, the game feels to have spread itself too thin, and, besides the controversy surrounding it's production, will stand as a rather unremarkable game few people will remember.

 

[weirdee]

Just because you don't intend to make a mediocre game doesn't mean it's impossible for that to happen...

 

[Bke]

I thought Remember Me was actually pretty fun, and I seem to be alone in enjoying the combat. What let it down for me was the story was a bit too predictable. It had so much potential for exploring how integrated we are with our technology, and how we are more powerful, yet weaker for it. Instead it turned into the main characters story about mommy issues. I was expecting, and would have preferred a more "Ghost in the Shell" approach, where the problems with new technology can't simply be erased by taking down the big evil corporation.

That said, I would love to see a sequel set in the same universe, but not with the same characters. They are, to me, rendered bland by the events in the first game. So hopefully this new game, while not a sequel, shows some growth in the areas where DONTNOD are lacking.

 

[Scrythe]

I just wrapped up Remember Me last week, and while I did find it very enjoyable, I won't deny that it has some huge flaws.

There's really nothing I could add to that that hasn't been said before (and above this post), but I will say it would be nice if they revisited the concept.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

I really liked Remember Me. It didn't do as much with the premise as it could (I mean there were only like... 4? memory-altering sequences), but the combat kind of felt like a better version of Batman's and I really like the visual design.

That said, the game had a boss fight near the end in a cramped room against two invisible teleporting enemies that summon a ton more enemies, all of which are too fast for you to do a full combo on them before having to dodge away and shred through your health like a chainsaw through brie. That was not something I would describe as a good design choice. Balancing that out, there's a scene in which the main character delivers the line "This Little Red Riding Hood's got a basket full of kick-ass" without laughing.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

I'll give them Last of Us overshadowed the entire game. That's fair, and that's a failure in their product launch calendar. They should have planned better.
But misunderstood? That's a lot hard to quantify and prove. Or, more accurately, its IMPOSSIBLE to prove. Anything Maxime says about what was intended has to be taken with a grain of salt because it could have been made up on the spot as an excuse.

 

[VondeVon]

I thought Remember Me was actually pretty fun, and I seem to be alone in enjoying the combat.

You're not. I thought it was smooth and I loved how the music reacted to it. If someone just couldn't manage the simple timing, I can see why the frustration would lead them to accuse it of being broken, though.

I agree about the story. Except for Edge, I saw the 'twist' a mile away. I felt there was more potential there, like it ran out of money and had to tie up fast.

It would also have been nice for your memory mixing have different effects (instead of 'only one right way' with a couple of unimportant changes or outright failure). You should have been able, accidentally or otherwise, to kill Olga - especially since it was Nilin's first time doing it with no memories. All she did was provide you a lift and you could steal her aircraft or just find another way in if you stuff up her remixing. (Also, it was weird that she never seemed to notice her husband wasn't dead after all... you'd think the hospital would ring her up to pay the bill for his treatment, if nothing else.)

The visuals were far and away the reason I loved it, though. A gorgeous, detailed world is 80% of the prize for me because that's where the fantasy element comes in.

 

[josemlopes]

Saying that its their first game isnt a very good excuse because that is part of the pre-production, you make a project that you find capable of achieving. Not really trying to bust their balls because if they decided to do it then they certainly thought they could with success but I guess they aimed too high and in the end its all in their hands.

 

[JediMB]

I just wrapped up Remember Me last week, and while I did find it very enjoyable, I won't deny that it has some huge flaws.

Did they ever patch in cutscene-skipping? Having to sit through the cutscenes over and over again really killed replayability for me, since it made hunting for collectibles ludicrously time-consuming.

That said, I really enjoyed the game. Flawed as it was, it was clearly a work of passion with very interesting aesthetics and features.

 

[Goliath100]

Do Moris ever explain why Remember Me was "misunderstood"? Is this like Metro 2033 where there is a hidden mechanic?

 

[FredTheUndead]

Remember Me was quite forgettable, says me.

 

[Erttheking]

Ugh. I want to support the devs, but the "we're misunderstood" defense never fails to come off as pretentious.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

I never played this game, and just going off the title of the article the "it was misunderstood" thing comes off as really whiny, but actually these guys seem fairly humble. They acknowledged the game wasn't perfect despite all the love they put into it and want to do another project to see if they can do better. I can't hate on them for that. And it's better than "Tomb Raider only sold 5 million copies and was a failure because of those dirty pirates".

 

[LaoJim]

I think overall Dontnod should be proud of the game, and I'm happy that, with so many companies going bust after one flop, they're getting another chance to do something. While the setting and concept of Remember Me wasn't original from a science fiction point of view, it was a lot more interesting than most games produced.

There were a couple of main problems with the gameplay. Firstly if you 'got' the combat system (understanding how to chain together damage with multipliers or to reduce cool-down time) fights lasted a normal amount of time. If you didn't 'get' the combat system they dragged horribly. Most games if you are playing badly, you end up with the game-over screen sooner or later, with Remember Me you ended up in this limbo where you were neither failing nor succeeding.

Secondly there are many games that try to implement Prince of Persia style climbing without really understanding why PoP is fun. Basically the environments were so detailed it was impossible to tell what was climbable and what was not, so they ended up putting an arrow showing you were to go next.

Its the sort of game where I'd welcome a sequel, because they'd probably iron a lot of the kinks out and make it a much better experience the second time around.

The fact is I completed this £30+ game in 9 hours on hard mode and have never touched it since.

Overall was bad game.

There's the rub. I bought it for about £6 and on that basis reasonably enjoyed it. (Although there were more than a few annoying section). It definitely didn't have much in the way of replay value. If I'd paid £30 for it, I'd probably be a lot less happy. There certainly wasn't much reason to replay it.