While many people know Dontnod today because of the widely-loved Life is Strange, few recall the company’s first game, Remember Me. Releasing almost 5 years ago to the day, June 3rd of 2013, Remember Me was an admittedly flawed action game that received mostly average reviews due to the flat characters and predictable story and was promptly forgotten by the overall gaming consciousness. However, those who enjoyed the game when it originally released, such as myself, remember it more for its breathtaking art design, striking soundtrack, and futuristic world where memories have become a commodity and a curse.

I chose to replay Remember Me recently, out of nothing other than boredom and curiosity. I hadn’t played the game since its original release but had thought about going back to it many times, wanting to see if the game was in fact worth remembering. After playing it again, I found myself thinking even more highly of its art, music, and world. During my playthrough, I also took over 200 screenshots, wanting a photo history of all the sights that dazzled and inspired me. As I neared the end for the second time, however, I realized I wasn’t quite ready to move on: I wanted to share my fascination for Neo-Paris with others.

With the game’s anniversary, and today’s release of Dontnod’s newest game Vampyr, I figured there was no better time to remind everyone about Remember Me. Instead of describing the game in text, which I’ve done before in my original review for the game back in 2013, I decided to try something a little different--sharing the sights and sounds of Remember Me through links to the soundtrack and embedding (some of) my screenshots. After all, the true strength of Remember Me is not in its gameplay or storytelling but in its grand score and gorgeous art design--what better way to show it off? Hopefully, I can evoke some of the same emotions the game made me feel in some of you and bring some interest to an oft-overlooked curiosity from the last generation.

First, let’s talk about the soundtrack. It was composed by Olivier Deriviere and features the Philharmonia Orchestra out of London. Deriviere took the original orchestral recordings and then added electronic sounds and distortion effects to create the uniquely glitched-out style that perfectly suits the themes and visuals of the game. One of his coolest tricks is with the main combat theme, Fragments, which dynamically rises and falls with the action of a fight. It makes an already cool-sounding track even better, ebbing and flowing as you nail combos and dodge attacks: hearing it an actual fight is how it was meant to be experienced. Still Human is a much more subdued track that demonstrates the strength of the orchestration and is still the one I remember most fondly due to its memorable opening. These tracks are just a taste of the fantastic soundtrack and I urge you to give the entire thing a listen.

I would consider art design to be one of Dontnod’s greatest strengths. Neither Remember Me nor Life is Strange have impressive graphical fidelity but they more than make up for it with the thoughtful care put into the looks of their characters and settings, immersively drawing you into the world of the game. The mix of Parisian architecture and cyberpunk elements in Remember Me was unexpected, but the studio melds them together in a way that looks both natural and awe-inspiring. It’s hard to do it justice through words alone, which is why I curated a collection of 35 images that I think show off the game’s look and style best. While I made sure to avoid posting any overt spoilers to the game’s story, I am obviously spoiling some of the more impressive visual moments.

Additionally, I want to note that the game looks even more impressive in motion. There are some fantastic effects which are impossible to show in full detail via still images, such as overloading your enemy’s memories and seeing them burst from their head in a shotgun blast of holograms. Nonetheless, I think these images paint a clear picture of Remember Me’s unique visual flair. I hope you enjoy!

I like dark and brooding, vampires, blood, occult...but there's just something about reading how the game plays out that seems to disinterest me. I will probably get Vampyr, at a bargain price. Remember Me however floored me with it's trailers. I love how the character and world looked. I liked watching Nilin move and flow in combat(which feels "ok" at the very least) and the memory scenes looked so crazy and trippy.

I loved Remember Me. Not for being the best game of the generation(or even one of my complete favorites overall), but for being fun and unique and having a vision for it's world. Your pictures illustrate this point well.

Absolutely lovely game. Music and art direction are definite highlights.

I appreciated the simplicity of the gameplay. It was more like combat-puzzles that had you create the right combos (from a menu) for the right enemy makeups. The traversal stuff was fine, shining mostly as a method for framing beautiful shots of Neo-Paris.

But the memory alteration sequences, few as they are, are fantastic. Sequences that had you rummaging through a particular person's memory, nudging objects in order to radically change the scene's outcome, all in the hopes of presenting a new memory that's sufficient for changing them in reality. The implications of this are unsettling, existentially and as an act inflicted upon another person. That kind of stuff is central to the whole game's world and narrative, like a more fantastical Black Mirror episode.

Memorable besides that I thought, was the final boss fight, which I won't go too deeply into. What particularly caught my attention was that they, once revealed, were actively encouraging Nilin to destroy them, while she at times expresses hesitance (not out of weakness, mind). It's a very odd and interesting dynamic.

Again, it's a very lovely game. It's a bit hokey and not especially subtle, but it's sweet. I heard a lot of complaints about the voice acting and writing, and watching some videos of the English VO, I don't think it's so much that it's out-and-out bad, as it is that it's got the whole Star Wars problem of "you can write that but not say it." I played it in French (which I don't speak much of) and had a great time. Just if you're playing on PC, you'll probably wanna make the default subtitles bigger (check the Steam forums).

Even if the story and stuff does nothing for ya, it's sure pretty, and has that great distorted orchestral score goin on. Give it a shot!

@theht: I chose to use the French voices during this second playthrough, despite not knowing any of the language, both because I thought it might be more in line with the setting and feel of the game and because I remembered those English voices being so inconsistent. I was pretty happy with the French version, although I can't really speak to its quality since I'm not familiar with the language. It did give the game a very different feel though, which I appreciated for a second run-through.

Man, Kid Xmas is maybe the best and worst name for a boss, but I love it. The fighting was nothimg special, only the setting, art, rewind sections and soundtrack are so great I could struggle through the fighting sequences. I occasionally listen to the soundtrack and enjoy it every time.

I remember playing the demo on 360 and not liking it, but a year ago i decided to play through it on PC because i knew it had something and i wanted to find out what it was.
I really loved it, the combat animations are kind of janky but the mechanics are fairly rewarding, and there are a couple puzzles which are obscure and completely stupid, but from beginning to end i loved playing this game.
A couple shots of my own :P.

I think it's worth a play through. Definitely a lot of stunning environments to see and the story has some moments, though quite sloppy.

The customizable combat system is a neat idea someone should flesh out.

I bought RM on Target clearance for less than $8. I spent about 2 hours with it and never went back. Maybe I’ll give it another shot.

Remember Me definitely had some great art design and it had some interesting ideas, but the the dull gameplay and the sloppy and predictable story made me put the game down after a few hours.

God Hand (released before Remember Me) has a somewhat similar customizable combat system where you can choose the moves in your combos that (in my opinion) is both deeper and more fun to tinker with. It`s also combined a combat system that is a lot more fun and satisfying than the combat in Remember Me which helps to motivate you to engage with the system.

@odinsmana: oh yeah. Man, what a great game. Seems like something that should be a pretty common feature.