Over at VG247, Brenna Hillier has conducted a really interesting interview with the co-art director of Remember Me – Michel Koch – about the game's protagonist. Nilin is something of an anomaly in the world of video games: a believable female character who can stand up for herself and was never designed to be a sex object. Not only that, but she's mixed-race and creative director and Jean-Maxime Moris has been quoted as saying “her sexual orientation is her private life”, so she may even be non-heterosexual.
But it hasn't been a smooth ride to get to this point, as Hillier discovered over the course of the interview. The industry has rules that feel near unbreakable, Koch points out; protagonists are supposed to be “perfect”. For men, that means brown-haired and muscular, with “a bad shave” (I'm sure you know the type, since this is the protagonist for almost every single big game). For women, that means “overly sexy, very thin” with “a perfect face with no flaws”.
Nilin is a bit of a compromise, then, as Koch says:
“Of course Nilin is still beautiful, thin and we had to make her attractive, but we really tried to avoid the sexualized route.”
It's clear that DontNod has spent a lot of time and energy on formulating this character. DontNod has shared some of the earlier concepts of Nilin with VG247, and the different forms she could have taken differ dramatically. One sees Nilin with red hair in a red bodysuit with minimalist black garments over the top. Another has her in more combat-oriented gear, all covered up and in a hood, in camouflage-style colours.
I like this one; it kind of reminds me of Fifth Element:
All credit to VG247 for an interesting interview. Who's intrigued to see how Nilin turns out when the game launches for PS3, 360, and PC on June 4?
