Capcom has produced a very interesting piece of promotion for the upcoming game from Dontnod, Remember Me. The interactive journal features key moments from the life of Antoine Cartier-Wells, the creator of the memory technology – called Sensen – that exists in the dystopian future of Remember Me, in the form of text, images, videos, and audio clips. It'll take you quite a while to watch, listen to, and read it all, but it's worth it if you're at all interested in the fiction behind the game.
The first of the five parts of the journal – “The Trigger” – covers 1984 to 2016, Antoine's youth. It begins with a few audio clips that highlight key moments in the history of technology, for instance when in 1997 a computer beat the world chess champion for the first time. Throughout the next part – “The Quest” – Antoine develops the technology alongside the love of his life. Of course, things start to go wrong when she is seriously injured in an explosion and ends up in a coma.
In the third part – “The Surprise” – Antoine's company Memorize starts to receive serious backlash. In 2035, Antoine writes a message on some kind of social network:
The temple of the human mind lies in ruins. There has been no privacy, of thought or action, nothing off limits to aggregation and corporate exploitation for thirty years! What the hell did they think Facebook was?
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Which is pretty ironic, because the site asks you to log in with Facebook to enhance the experience.
Throughout the last two parts – “The Crisis” and “The Resolution” – the world seems to be falling apart. Europe is at war, cities are destroyed, and thousands of people are apparently saved through a “stay at home” programme from Memorize. The company starts to experiment with remapping memories, such as those of a war orphan, altering her emotional response so that she remembers the deaths of her parents but is capable of rebuilding her life.
In 2065, the first internal implants to feature Sensen (rather than external devices) are given to volunteers and the procedures are broadcast live. In 2072, the first person to die as a result of a memory wipe does so by committing suicide. By 2074, a group called errorists is intent on bringing down Memorize, destroying Sensen, and taking Neo-Paris offline.
It's a pretty thorough look at the events that have led to the world in which Nilin lives. Will the game live up to the promise of such a thought-provoking story?
