Story Discussion [Spoilers]

[AllenPCarlson]

I really like the premise of the story and it starts off strong. The idea that memories can be shared and removed. It reminded me of the necessity for lying in our culture. Instead of giving someone an unpleasant memory you can simply lie. There were a lot of different ways you could express this idea and explore it. I feel like the story dropped the ball in this department.

The game starts off with very clearly defined character motivations that make sense. Nilin is trying to discover her past, Edge is using her for his own devices, and you had that blonde bounty hunter, Olga, who's memory you had to remix for your own ends. Then over the course of the game it gets ridiculous. Why doesn't anyone remind the Olga that Nilin can change her memory? After her memory is changed why doesn't she ask herself, "Why the ♥♥♥♥ am I trying to kill Nilin if I should be against Memorize?" The only thing we see her do to take down Memorize is transport Nilin around. She's one of the easier characters to accept the story flaws of. You could explain these away as expedient uses of the storyline. It's really not acceptable, but understandable for a minor character at least.

The story jumps around a lot, half the time I didn't know why I was doing something or the proper sequence of events. The first place the story starts falling apart at the seems is when Nilin remixes her mother's memories. Her mother blames her for the car accident with which she lost her leg. Once Nilin changes her memory to making it Scilla's own fault for the car accident Scylla goes from ruthless work-a-holic who believes in the reconversion project to complete lamb who doesn't believe in it. I have no idea why this influences her character identity so much.

As for the reconverstion project. We know Dr Quaid can create leapers, but we also know that not all leapers are created by Dr Quaid. It seems to me that it would make sense to integrate them into society. I suppose this could be seen as a copndescending allusion to minorities being forcefully integrating into society through affirmative action. Scylla makes this rather clear in her speech stating it's immoral to enslave a a minority population. What's the alternative they have though? Leapers are not the same as minorities in our society. Leapers are violent and psychotic. Greenteeth and the other mutants make it out to seem like the leapers are an oppressed minority, but Nilin has no interest in harming the leaper culture, if anything the Errorist movement is helping stop leapers from existing. So I've never really understood why they have a vested interest in attacking her. It seems to me, the reconversion project was the best way to handle leapers. Their lives would be infinitely better than living in the sewers and they wouldn't be going around killing people anymore.

So I completely understand where Dr Quaid was coming from. There should've been more exposition when it came to why he was -creating- leapers. Yes, creating leapers is bad, but the only reason they gave for this was that he himself was criminally insane. That doesn't fly for me.

Once Scylla was on Nilin's side, she should've been able to go directly to Charles. All the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of chase Trace around was completely unnecessary. Scylla was the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ president of Memorize. She should've been able to bring Nilin directly to her husband who does something for Memorize. I'm not sure what. He invented the tech for Sensen and rearranging memories, but these days it doesn't look like he does much.

Which is actually a really good question. What the ♥♥♥♥ is he doing? Why is he some maniac reliving his daughter's memories? Why did he take all of his daughter's memories? So Nilin finds him in some room perversely reliving her memories. He remixes his memories at the point that he found out his technology worked. In this way he makes her father think the technology he created killed her instead of working perfectly without a hitch. This makes Charles going into a bit of an emotional roller coaster. If I was him, the first question I would ask would be, "Why am I so gung ho, positive, and enthusiastic about this technology if I killed my daughter with it? Why do I have all these memories of my daughter as an Errorist and being alive when I remember killing her?" I'd think there was something wrong with my memories then swing into a deep depression. Two seconds later Nilin reveals herself and Charles realizes that she'd remixed his memories. For some reason Scylla comes out and they mutually decide to shut down the project.

I don't see why altering these memories would have any significant impact on their personality traits and personal beliefs. Especially since Charlies -knows- Nilin remixed his memory. Also, it doesn't take away memories of the memory. It's also ironic that the way they get Cartier-Wells to shut down the memory changing process is to change their memory. It's almost as if to say, "Lying is only ok if you aren't being honest about lying." This being exemplified by Nilin's memory changing being ok and discrete while the Cartier-Wells open marketing of memory changing being someone less morally sound. Lying about a lie is ok, but being honest about being a liar isn't. I would've prefered the message to be something more grandiose for praising and valuing the truth. That the painful memories we keep are important character traits and shape who we are for the better. That there's value in the cold painful truth.

As the game stands, it impresses upon me that lying and manipulation is acceptable and preferable only when the people you're lying to are unaware of your underhanded tactics. That doesn't sit right with me.

[talgaby]

Concerning the plot: if we take into calculation that none of the initial levels they showed on expos made into the game, along with some of the game mechanics showcased there, it seems that this final release was cut and simplified considerably.
As for the theme, it is something not unheard of in French fantasy stories. Your description would, for example, fit one of the adaptations of Vidoque, where the basic premise was, in the end, that who lies and deceives better and for the better cause is the good person. When I initially played this game, I didn't look into the production, but as I went with the story, I knew instantly that this was done by French, the style just screamed it. (No, being set in Paris would mean nothing, there are enough British and American games set in France.) And these storytelling mechanics with some holes that I swear are put there on purpose are almost their trademark.

[AllenPCarlson]

Originally posted by talgaby:

Concerning the plot: if we take into calculation that none of the initial levels they showed on expos made into the game, along with some of the game mechanics showcased there, it seems that this final release was cut and simplified considerably.
As for the theme, it is something not unheard of in French fantasy stories. Your description would, for example, fit one of the adaptations of Vidoque, where the basic premise was, in the end, that who lies and deceives better and for the better cause is the good person. When I initially played this game, I didn't look into the production, but as I went with the story, I knew instantly that this was done by French, the style just screamed it. (No, being set in Paris would mean nothing, there are enough British and American games set in France.) And these storytelling mechanics with some holes that I swear are put there on purpose are almost their trademark.

Oh, wow, that's really interesting. I'm glad I was on the right track. Out of curiosity, does this type of storytelling have a name? Also, the Madame reminded me of LeBlanc from LoL. You know, she's some sort of deceptive power obsessed wizard of sorts. Does this come from some sort of French origin or theme?

[talgaby]

I suppose it has a style in their cinema, but I don't know the name. But French mystery films, especially made in the first half of the last decade, loved this kind of dramaturgy, and their sci-fi creators like Enki Bilal (who is Serbian, but he is totally French :)) love this kind of visual style.

But, to give an example of they are not being stuck in their own style, the last game of this studio that made Remember Me pretty much screamed (English) Canadian mystery miniseries and had no typical French cinema elements in it. :)