Remember Me, the upcoming video game, developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Capcom, is attempting to find success as a new intellectual property during the end of the current cycle of this game console generation.
In a recent interview with CVG, Dontnod co-founder Jean-Maxime Moris speaks about some of the issues the game will face in its uphill battle to become the next blockbuster franchise in video games including have a mixed-race female protagonist.
Moris says that the studio wanted its mixed-race female protagonist to standout amongst the status quo of leading characters in video games.
"We wanted Nilin to stand out," Moris said. "I think these sort of issues become self-fulfilling prophesies; people saying that only white males sell so then everyone only does white males. If you start believing these things you get your head inside this cold marketing strategy that you cannot get your head around."
Moris also said that the studio is directing Nilin's story and that Remember Me is a very linear game, in terms of the landscape and narrative, which makes the games story more important.
"The game is a near-future cyberpunk game, but it's about memories and human intimacy rather than a story about physical augmentation as it usually is," Moris said. "So the narrative is paramount in this type of game. It may sound like a bit of a contradiction, but within that tight narrative line you want to give the player the impression of choice as well. That's why I think the combat system is important - it's very fluid and gives the player a lot of choice."
Another way that the game separates itself from the action-adventure genre is that it focuses on close combat rather than using the elements of a shooter.
"I remember at the very beginning of the project, I said we should create an action adventure game, but most of these are third-person shooters," Moris said. "So we decided that one way to differentiate ourselves will be to focus on close-combat, we need to innovate within that space."
Moris also said that he didn't want the game to feature senseless violence and that Nilin does not kill anyone during the game
"When we started to prototype the combat, we realized it started to feel a bit samey when we included guns," moris said. "We decided that the last thing we want in the game is meaningless violence. The game's central character, Nilin, never kills anyone throughout the game."
Moris also sites the George Orwell's novel "1984" as an influences and mentions that Remember Me is set in the year 2084 and deals with a new form of control in society which the studio define as a "horizontal control."
"There is Orwell in there," Moris said. "The game is set in 2084, which is one hundred years after "1984." That book depicted a very vertically structured authoritarian society, with the government on top, people at the bottom, and that very blurry mix of bureaucracy in between. We believe that a new form of control is emerging, one which we define as a horizontal control, where the way you're directed isn't really clear."
But unlike Orwell's novel, the control is not established by a form of authoritarian government and is instead linked to social networks and other parts of society.
"It's not like it's just the state that controls your life, it is now many different parts of society directing you down a specific route," Moris said. "I think this is linked to the emergence of social networks, because we are all uploading our lives online. We are telling people what location we are at, who we're with, what we are buying. Our location can be pinpointed with smartphone devices too. We don't know if bad things are being done with this data, but we tend not to think about it because these networks are very useful to us."
Remember Me is expected to release in May 2013 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows PC. You can read the rest of the CVG interview by clicking here. Watch the game's trailer below and comment below.