Plain and simple, the trailers and news for Remember Me have me worried.
Dontnod Entertainment’s upcoming title (set to launch in May, 2013), Remember Me, had caught my eye a few months ago when I saw the “Memory Remix” trailer. The game’s mechanic of entering a person’s memory and altering it to change his/her perception of reality excited me. That concept for a puzzle felt fresh and creative, and after watching the “Combo Lab” and “Gamescom Gameplay” videos, I could see that the other major mechanics – climbing and combat – were looking polished. But after reading a few news articles and watching some of the more recent trailers, all excitement vanished.
In an interview with ComputerAndVideoGames, Remember Me’s creative director, Jean-Maxime Moris, discussed the game’s main character, Nilin. He talked about how she was a female of mixed-race, and how different she was from the industry norm of white male protagonists.
That is great on paper. Diversity can help generate new stories and memorable characters, but it’s just a single tool. It won’t get the job done on its own. Simply being of a different ethnicity won’t make a great character. That isn’t to say that Nilin needs a reason to be of mixed-race and female. It’d be silly to believe that. But it feels like the developers made her that way for a shallow purpose.
An interview with Gamespot shows Moris further emphasizing how Nilin is different because of her gender and unexplained race, and that she was meant to stand out. But who is she meant to stand out from, gaming culture or her world of 2084 Neo Paris? Based on the interviews, it sounds like the former. That makes Nilin sound hollow to me. The “Gamescom Gameplay” and “Late X-Mas Present” trailers don’t help much, as her dialogue and personality appear bland and stiff.
I feel like the developers should be talking about what makes Nilin an interesting character. If they say, “she’s white, he’s a man, she’s black, she’s an alien, she’s a toaster” or anything similar about her gender or race, then that’s only part of the answer. I’m happy to see developers try to branch out and create more diverse characters, but if Nilin turns out to be a flat, uninteresting character, then all of their efforts will be wasted. There need to be many sides to Nilin for her to be a three-dimensional character, someone worth remembering (no pun intended).
Maybe I’m wrong about Nilin’s character. I want to be wrong. I want to see Dontnod create an excellent game with a memorable cast of characters, but right now my expectations are low. Nilin, in trying to be different from the stereotypical protagonists, may end up being a stereotype herself if the developers think of her only as a mixed-race woman. And given the game’s box art – a static shot of her posed with her rear end in full view – she might turn out that way.
There are still six months between now and the game’s release. Maybe, in that time, Dontnod will show us a well-developed, interesting Nilin.
Quick-time Tangents 