Remember Me Developer Doesn't Want A Super-Heroine

Karloff

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Remember Me Developer Doesn't Want A Super-Heroine



"We wanted [Remember Me's Nilin] to feel real," says Dontnod, which is why it didn't go the overly sexy route.

"I think that our industry is still constrained by codes," says Dontnod's co-art director Michel Koch. "Mostly the norm is to have a perfect character; male characters need to be brown-haired, muscular, have a bad shave and be very manly. Female characters need to be overly sexy, very thin and have a perfect face with no flaws." This is why, Koch says, we get the video game protagonists we do; but that's not the way Dontnod wanted to go with its Remember Me [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/trailers/6917-Remember-Me-Trailer] protagonist, Nilin.

"We wanted her to feel real and slightly casual," says Koch, "so yes we tried to avoid as much as we could the overly sexy approach." This was part of the solution to a problem that Dontnod identified very early on; Nilin just didn't feel right. Either she resembled a space marine in full body armor, or some kind of sci-fi superhero, neither of which really worked for Remember Me's cyberpunk memory-stealing aesthetic.

"We really wanted her to look like someone that could exist," says Koch, "something like your everyday character, not a super-heroine with clothing that nobody else would wear." Hence Nilin's current visual aesthetic, which mixes futurist elements with relatively ordinary blue jeans and jacket.

Remember Me, formerly Adrift [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119050-Capcom-Reworks-Cyberpunk-Adrift-as-Remember-Me], has you, as ex-memory hunter Nilin, navigating through a hostile futuristic Paris, in a quest to regain the life - and memories - you once called your own. This one's due for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in June 2013.

Source: VG24/7 [http://www.vg247.com/2013/03/07/believable-designing-remember-mes-nilin/]


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gigastar

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First off...


OT: In all seriousness despite attempts to tone down the absurdity meter, shes going to be badass anyway because shes going to end up running the full nine yards of the action-platformer genre. We already saw that trailer where she took down a helicopter, for example.
 

Sehnsucht Engel

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I think she's still pretty sexualized and hot.

Isn't this the box art, for example?



Kind of screams look at my ass.

<spoiler=Relevant>


I'm not complaining though. I don't want them to change her, because we don't get enough games with female main characters as it is and I do love a cute girl.
 

MetalMagpie

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She looks pretty skinny and sexy to me. And I imagine her face is everyday if you live in Hollywood.

I'm not complaining. Gaming is a visual medium and eye-candy is always welcome. I'm just curious as to what their original design looked like!
 

Fappy

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Well guess they really meant "overly" sexy, because she's still pretty damn fine. Then again, there's really nothing wrong with that.
 

Smooth Operator

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Right... must be why she looks like a freshly pressed barbie, not to mention is an immortal demigod in all their gameplay videos.
 

bafrali

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Have you looked at your own character's design lately mister? Giving her slightly messed up hair doesn't exactly "casulize" or "make her real" when we are gonna be punching armed dudes as a skinny chick with skin tight jeans.

Seriously though I hope that was an ironic statement

"Believable" has become the buzzword around the industry lately. Why do I get the feeling that It will translate to generic in the end product?
 

Andy Shandy

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Jun 7, 2010
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I suppose her boobs don't double up as airbags so maybe they do have a point. She is still rather good looking though. Not that that's a complaint or anything, it just doesn't help what they're saying.
 

Eclipse Dragon

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These people are out of touch with reality if they think that's what a "normal" person looks like. She looks like she wears a size zero. Now I know some ladies who wear a size zero, but most don't.

That being said, it could have been worse and video games aren't the only media with this problem, and maybe not so many people would buy a game with a protagonist who's 5'3 and 130 pounds, so I suppose it's a step in the right direction. We'll have to see how her characterization goes.

I personally would find it interesting to play a protagonist who was shorter than everyone else around her.
 

VanQ

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Oct 23, 2009
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I dunno, I'd say she looks pretty damn attractive. I don't see why this kind of statement is newsworthy anymore, anyway. Besides the fact that they apparently have a different idea of what sexy is to a typical male. I mean come on, the box art is the definition of the term "dat ass."

Aren't a lot of developers that aren't based in Japan steering away from hyper-sexualized female characters these days considering the knee-jerk reactions anything bigger than a B-cup causes in the community these days?

Giving Lara Croft a Reduction Mammoplasty was newsworthy considering her past but a totally new, never before seen character shouldn't be anything special. Nobody got worked up when Bungie West said the exact same thing about their lead female character in Oni in 2000.

But then again, the current climate of the community has changed these kinds of things, hasn't it.
 

RobfromtheGulag

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Wenseph said:
I'm not complaining though. I don't want them to change her, because we don't get enough games with female main characters as it is and I do love a cute girl.
I can't tell if it's merely feminist culture pervading or developers cashing in on recent community uproar, but there seem to be more recently.
 

DioWallachia

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Sep 9, 2011
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"Mostly the norm is to have a perfect character; male characters need to be brown-haired, muscular, have a bad shave and be very manly"

Why?

No really, where do you get that idea? did you ask the gamers or you are just jumping the bandwagon that everyone else is doing without thinking about it?
 

Sehnsucht Engel

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RobfromtheGulag said:
Wenseph said:
I'm not complaining though. I don't want them to change her, because we don't get enough games with female main characters as it is and I do love a cute girl.
I can't tell if it's merely feminist culture pervading or developers cashing in on recent community uproar, but there seem to be more recently.
I can only think of two right now, Tomb Raider and Remember Me. RPGs doesn't really count, since you can choose your gender.
 

plugav

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"We didn't want to sexualise her, so we made her look like a supermodel in skin-tight clothes." Eh, whatever.
 

LiMaSaRe

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She at least looks like a physically proportionate human being. I believe it. I guess they succeeded because she doesnt scream "fake" when you look at her but then they ruined it with that ass-first full-body cover as pointed out here
Wenseph said:
I think she's still pretty sexualized and hot.

Isn't this the box art, for example?



Kind of screams look at my ass.

<spoiler=Relevant>


I'm not complaining though. I don't want them to change her, because we don't get enough games with female main characters as it is and I do love a cute girl.