In December of this year, the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 finally will be released. We hope so, at least.
After the game’s development reached the finish line, and CD Projekt Red released a lot of materials dedicated to the local universe, interest in the cyberpunk genre significantly increased.
But the creation of the Polish developers is not the first attempt at creating a world of a dark and technological future with neon lights shining everywhere.
In 2013, Remember Me introduced players to the beautiful and believable Neo-Paris of 2084. Though the debut project of Dontnod Entertainment was not perfect and almost buried the studio, and over time people forgot about it at all.
Let’s remember why the project with such great potential didn’t work out.
From the beginning to clinical death
The history of Remember Me began in 2008. Two programmers, Hervé Bonin and Oskar Guilbert, who have worked in the gaming industry for many years, have long harbored the idea of their own project. Ubisoft, EA, and Criterion Games, where they worked, would not have been able to implement these ideas. The reason lay in the lack of creative freedom: in these companies, they were cogs in a giant mechanism that worked according to a long-established template.
In such conditions, they had almost no chance to realize their creative potential. Tandem quitted jobs and started their own studio. Former colleagues, who were interested in their idea, also joined: creative director Jean-Maxime Moris, designer Aleksi Briclot, writer Alain Damasio. These five formed the backbone of Dontnod Entertainment.
The debut project was called “Adrift”. The first couple of years were spent by a small team creating prototypes that could attract the publisher’s attention.
Initially, the game was built around the concept of the “aimless existence of a family person”. But to the science fiction writer Damasio, the idea seemed too boring and banal. It was from his submission that the chip with memory manipulation appeared, and events were transported to the distant future.
We know not that much about the first iteration of Remember Me. Although the game was set in 2084, there was no cyberpunk yet. An environmental disaster led to the flooding of a large part of Neo-Paris, so the protagonist jumped on the roofs of houses in the French capital and scattered various opponents in hand-to-hand combat. She moved through the water using an upgraded mini-surfboard. Of the gadgets of the future, we could notice only energy gloves.
The developers’ efforts were appreciated by Sony, which offered the French a full-fledged contract. But after carefully studying all the Adrift’s materials, Sony put forward two conditions.
First, they demanded exclusivity for the PlayStation 3, which was logical. And secondly, the game was supposed to turn from an action-adventure into an action-RPG genre. These changes have greatly affected the development process.
Gritting their teeth, the authors made big changes to the overall concept, local level design, gameplay, and scenario.
The idea of a worldwide flood was dropped. From that moment, the core of the project was digitized memories and the ability to manipulate them. It was then that the first elements of cyberpunk appeared in Adrift.
2010 was completely spent in disputes between the studio and the publisher. The developers were firmly convinced that all their ideas and ideas are best revealed in the format of action-adventure, and RPG-mechanics only harm the game. The developers did not have enough capacity and manpower to create entertaining open levels. Sony required to make more changes.
The atmosphere in the studio was oppressive, and the tempo of work noticeably slowed down.
The creative confrontation ended in 2011. Due to financial difficulties, the Japanese corporation cut back on extra expenses. Many projects around the world have gone under the knife and one of them was Adrift. Moreover, the French had to buy the IP back.
Dontnod Entertainment was left with nothing.
The second life
Left with an unfinished game and a hole in the budget, the developers still decided to finish the work. The French regained their creative freedom and returned to the original vision of the game. They cut out most of the RPG mechanics, some locations and opponents – everything that did not suit them, and was imposed by Sony. In fact, they rolled back a couple of steps.
In search of a new publisher, Dontnod Entertainment again began to travel to exhibitions with their best practices. At E3 2011, the hastily assembled build did not launch and all bets were placed on Gamescom. But even there, the team faced numerous rejections. Potential sponsors were largely dissatisfied with the game concept.
The developers did not agree to the demands of potential partners, because they had neither the time nor the desire to radically recreate Adrift.
In the end, Capcom took developers under its wing. In exchange for financial support, the publisher also demanded a number of changes. But Capcom’s terms were not as drastic as others. In addition, the developers were already tired and just wanted to finish the project. And no matter how the French did not resist, their creation again underwent massive changes.
At first, Adrift lost its Playstation exclusive status. The game had to be redesigned for other platforms, which was a big test for a small team. Finally, such unloved RPG elements disappeared, the levels became corridor-like, and parkour became more vertical.
We want to mention the main character separately. Although not immediately, the developers decided that they will have a female protagonist. They wanted the main character to combine refined beauty and danger. This was done to attract a male audience, as was mentioned in an early interview. The character’s appearance, clothing, occupation, and combat skills – every detail has been changed repeatedly.
At the same time, Nilin was one of the reasons for the rejection of many publishers. At that time, it was believed that women in the first roles could not ensure high sales of the game. The rare exceptions only prove the rule. However, Dontnod refused all offers to change the gender of the character, explaining this as a story necessity.
Capcom saw the future game as a blockbuster and wanted to turn Adrift into a franchise. The authors had to urgently rewrite most of the script. In the end, a personal story of Nilin found the scope of the confrontation system and corporations. Because of this, the plot of the project finally lost its integrity. Instead of Nilin searching herself personally, the authors presented a fairly standard story. Moreover, due to the alteration, the character of the protagonist changed for the worse, so that it became difficult for her to empathize, and the pace of the story became ragged.
In 2012, the development reached the finish line. At the same time, the name Adrift was changed to the more sonorous Remember Me. After five difficult years of development and creative searches, the game finally reached release in 2013.
What was the result?
Critics and players met the game ambiguously. Everyone noted the magnificent appearance of the Paris of the future. The musical accompaniment also was noticeable. Olivier Deriviere was responsible for the soundtrack. it was recorded with the London Philharmonic orchestra. The classic sound was diluted with electronic effects, such as digital interference, which made it possible to better beat the setting of the technological future.
The game world itself turned out to be extremely curious, interesting, and plausible. After all, it’s easy to believe in the digitization of our memory during the dominance of social networks. And here lies the big problem of Remember Me. Dontnod Entertainment has created a beautiful cyberpunk, but the boring and unbalanced game.
The developers clearly overestimated themselves and did not cope with the scale of their own ideas and requirements of the publisher.
Because of this, the work of designers and artists was not used at full capacity. Despite the magnificent neon Neo-Paris, which combined classic French architecture and technological future, players were driven into narrow dark tunnels and slums.
The broken and indistinct plot could be compensated by filling the game world. But very quickly it became boring and dreary to play. Parkour was not impressive, and it was impossible to study the surrounding world because of the corridor-like nature of the game. All fights in Remember Me took place in strictly designated areas.
The game simply did not create memorable situations.
The combat system finished it all off. The idea that a player builds a combo system with their own hands is really interesting. At any time, the gamer could choose the style of a battle for a specific opponent. But the implementation failed again, and the chip turned into a useless set of patterns. Fights quickly turned into a simple clicking of enemies. Even adding beats from Street Fighter and dynamically adjusting music to the beats didn’t fix the situation.
The most important know-how of game-changing other people’s memories was given little time. Initially, it was planned that during missions, the player will be able to pull off such a trick with a lot of NPCs. This would increase the variability of origin. But in the final version, you can only use the mechanics on a few story characters. As a result, the idea of manipulating digitized memories was pushed to the background.
In general, if we look at the creative path of Dontnod Entertainment, this feature is characteristic of the French. They come up with interesting mechanics, but it doesn’t work. In the same Vampyr, this minus of developers was especially noticeable. The player could eat the story character, but the game itself did not push for this.
There is a feeling that at some point the authors were lost between their own vision and the publisher’s requirements. The final version of the game was very different from what developers originally wanted to create. Because of this, players saw a real mix of ideas of various concepts, developments, and creative ideas. And some of its elements, reworked many times, did not fit together well.
Capcom’s PR team is also largely to blame for the failure of Remember Me. The project’s advertising campaign turned out to be, to put it mildly, unremarkable. The release of the project was poorly covered, which is why the game was released almost unnoticed.
This was overlaid by the fact that the authors themselves delayed the release for another month for “additional polishing”, although the game was scheduled for release in May 2013. As a result, the project came out right before The Last of Us, a skating rink passed by all other competitors, including the creation of Dontnod.
The authors themselves said in interviews that Remember Me has become a hostage to inflated expectations. Everyone, and especially the authors, expected to see a real breakthrough, but they got an unbalanced game that sometimes was falling apart.
Because of all these problems, the game sold poorly, although it enjoyed some popularity on the Playstation. This almost brought Dontnod Entertainment to the brink of bankruptcy. The studio was saved by signing a contract with a new publisher, Square Enix, and the success of the new projects allowed the French to come back to relatively normal life.
As for Remember Me, the financial failure put an end to the franchise’s prospects. But, despite this, in 2015, the developers stated that they have a completely ready scenario for the sequel. And what, it all depends on the consent of Capcom. But since then, nothing has been heard about the game.
In a way, Remember Me is the cyberpunk we deserved. It is a pity that as a game it turned out to be extremely mean.
Author: Irinchin “Kron Ronan” Darguev
