Remember Me is 10 years old!
We share some never-before-seen content in celebration!
DON’T NOD’s very first game, the cyberpunk action-adventure Remember Me, was released on this date ten whole years ago! It was the first iteration of what would ultimately become our ‘DON’T NOD DNA’ — unique design, interesting setting, memorable characters, and a compelling story.
In celebration of Remember Me’s 10-year anniversary, we invite you to take a stroll down memory lane with us! Here you’ll see exclusive never-before-seen content from behind-the-scenes, fun anecdotes from the devs, and we’ve dusted off some old videos that you may not have come across yet.
From Cédric Lecacheur, Senior Programmer on Remember Me and now Senior Gameplay Programmer on an upcoming title:
One day, a programmer whose name I won’t mention added a mode to the game in development, which was known as the “Big Heads” mode. In it, the heads, hands and feet of all the characters were scaled up x4, like in High School! Kimengumi (fun fact: it’s called Collège-Fou-Fou-Fou in French). Everything worked perfectly and you could play the whole game in this mode, including the cinematics. Hilarious. For even more hilarity, it was set to activate automatically on every 1024th launch so it was always a surprise…
One day, Jean-Max Moris (one of DON’T NOD’s founding partners) came back from Japan furious: the “Big Heads” mode – which he’d never heard of – had been triggered during a big business presentation in front of a room of stunned executives.
It takes a lot of humor and charm to get out of a situation like that… We treated it as serious business from then.
Check out this video from the game’s composer, Olivier Derivière, sharing his own anecdote:
From Alexandre Cuing, Lead Gameplay Animator on Remember Me, and now Lead Animator on Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden:
A memory that is very dear to me are the brainstorming sessions of the combat team with Philippe Moreau (Co-Lead Designer on Remember Me) and Dimitri Sid (Gameplay Programmer on Remember Me) because I didn’t feel like I was just an animator animating, I felt like I was at the heart of the thinking behind our combo system etc… It was very enriching, both personally and professionally.
I also loved doing sessions where we wore the mocap costumes and tested different gameplay moves and prototyped cinematics in my old “206” (old car) (especially for the memory remix of the accident).
From Baptiste Moisan, Game/Level Designer on Remember Me, and now Studio Lead Designer in our Montreal studio working on a new title:
From time to time, my brain plays tricks on me and recites this passage, in an IVONA voice (text-to-speech voice), of course: ” The roof of the Louvre Hotel, I’m there. Get your little ass up here ASAP. Tonight we’re going to pay a little tribute to Zero Divide. Errorist Style”.
Oh yes, and I’d asked Gary (concept artist at the time) to draw me a picture of the Warehouse cart from EP7 on my version of the Art Book. That guy’s a rascal!
From Stéphane Beauverger, Lead Writer on Remember Me, and now Head of Narration on Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden:
During the development of Remember Me, Alexandre Cuing challenged me to mention Cyprus (his family homeland) somewhere in the game’s dialogues. The challenge was accepted: in the prison of La Bastille, two guards can be heard chatting, and one of them confides that he would have liked to have been transferred there. Since then, it’s become an easter egg between Alexandre and I: on every game we collaborate on, I have to find a way to mention “Cyprus” somewhere. So far, I’ve succeeded in Remember Me, Vampyr, Tell Me Why, and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden.
From Thomas Leroux, QA trainee on Remember Me, and now Lead QA on Harmony: The Fall of Reverie:
Remember Me was my first experience in video games. I arrived as a QA trainee, and it reinforced my determination to persevere in this profession and in the industry! Thanks to DON’T NOD and the QA team in particular for giving me a chance at that time <3
Watch the Behind the Scenes video: Rewind – Forward | The Making of Remember Me
From Vincent Eustache, QA Tester on Remember Me, and now QA Director at DON’T NOD:
I remember raging for hours over H3O before it had been tweaked to make it beatable without too much difficulty… Or the “Nilin noooooooo!” on a memory remix that sounded like “MI-MIP MOOOOO!!!” in fast forward which remained a QA onomatopoeia in-joke for a long time!
From Maxime Clavier, QA Lead on Remember Me, and now Executive Technical Producer at DON’T NOD:
I spent a whole year with
Jimmy Cliff in my head because of the monologue at the beginning of episode 7… “I can see clearly now.” (Sorry!)
From Luc Baghadoust, Associate Producer on Remember Me, and now Studio Executive Producer at DON’T NOD Montreal:
Remember Me? How could I forget!
I took this picture on June 1st, 2013, when I put the disc in my PS3 for the first time. After so many ups and downs, this was real.
This game marked the beginning of DON’T NOD’s adventures. I will forever cherish all the memories: our all-star Art team, Olivier’s score, the talents that have taken a different path, and the amazing people I still have the privilege to work with: Michel, Baptiste, Oskar, Sebastien…
From time to time, people tell me they played this game and loved it. The feeling is incredible.
That’s all for this slice of Remember Me history, folks! We hope you had fun reading this as much as we had reminiscing and putting it all together.
