Dontnod Entertainment
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'Tell Me Why' is free for Pride Month
Starting today through to the end of June, you can download Tell Me Why for free.
'Life is Strange' dev's upcoming game centers on twins and trans identity
Dontnod Entertainment has more than Twin Mirror on its slate for next year. At X019, Xbox Games Studios announced the Life is Strange developer is working on another narrative adventure title for 2020 called Tell Me Why. You'll play as twins Tyler and Alyson Ronan, who try to untangle their childhood memories while a mystery plays out in small-town Alaska.
'Twin Mirror' will be a one-year Epic Games Store exclusive
A year after revealing Twin Mirror at E3 2018, Dontnod Entertainment said it's delaying the first of the psychological thriller's three episodes until 2020. It was previously slated to arrive sometime this year.
Remember Me studio building vampiric WWI RPG
Remember Me and Life is Strange developer Dontnod is working on Vampyr, an action-RPG set just after World War I and starring a doctor who's also a vampire, The Sixth Axis reports. As the doctor, players must grapple with moral quandaries – to heal or to feed on your patients? – and the game's tagline is "Take blood. Save a life," the site reports. Focus Home Interactive is publishing. Dontnod announced the game during a Focus Home event today. There's no release date or confirmed platforms for Vampyr just yet. Dontnod is also working on the episodic, time-bending, emotional journey of Life is Strange, due to debut on January 30 for Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4 and PC. We have a preview of that one here.
Dontnod: Publishers wanted Life is Strange's hero to be male, but Square didn't
If you're wondering why Remember Me developer Dontnod Entertainment partnered with Square Enix to publish its upcoming game Life is Strange, look no further than the gender of its main character. "We had other publishers tell us, 'Make it a male lead character,'" company employees reveal in a new dev diary for the game. "Square were basically the only publisher that didn't want to change a single thing about the game. ... Square didn't even question [the decision to make Max female] once." If this story sounds familiar, it might be because Dontnod was in a similar situation regarding Remember Me. "We had some [publishers] that said, 'Well, we don't want to publish it because that's not going to succeed. You can't have a female character in games. It has to be a male character, simple as that,'" creative director Jean-Max Morris said in March of 2013. Of course, the gender of its protagonists might not have been the only reason why other publishers passed on the project, but it's an interesting insight into the climate of games nonetheless. Morris told Joystiq at Gamescom that despite the consistent use of female protagonists, the studio is not "trying to 'fix the industry.'" As a Dontnod employee says in the above diary, "It felt natural to have Max as a female character for this game." Life is Strange's first episode of five will debut on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on January 30. [Image: Square Enix]
Time-bending teen drama Life is Strange debuts next month
The debut episode of the DONTNOD-developed Life is Strange arrives on January 30, 2015, Square Enix announced today. The publisher commemorated the news with a new trailer showing the game in action. To see how Remember Me studio DONTNOD is mixing emotional teenage drama with supernatural time manipulation, check out the video below the break. Life is Strange caught our eye at Gamescom this year, particularly in the way it presented a convincing glimpse of modern teenage life. As Joystiq's Jess Conditt put it, "Life is Strange presents two fully realized, genuine young women navigating adolescence, betrayal, love and loss. Chloe's pot-smoking and profanity-laced room feel honest to her character, as does her reception of Max. Anyone who's drifted apart from a teenage best friend can relate to the guarded, chilly reunion between these two girls, as well as the spark of envy that Max can display when she learns about Rachel, the new best – and perhaps better – friend."
Remember Me creative director: 'It was misunderstood'
Remember Me launched in June 2013 to mostly mediocre reviews. Our own critique called its animations "stilted and poorly portrayed," and found the overall experience disappointing. That following January, French developer DONTNOD entered "judicial reorganization," meaning the studio wasn't keeping up with its debts. "First of all, we're extremely proud of Remember Me," Creative Director Jean Maxime Moris told Joystiq at Gamescom. "I think it was not perfect by any means, but to some level it was misunderstood. It was our first game. We got totally buried under the hype for a very big game that came out directly after. These are not excuses because it was not perfect, it had flaws. But people are still writing about it today. Every once in a while we see a piece popping up and people actually showing the game some love."
Life is Strange: Ambiguous young love among leading ladies
Life is Strange is DONTNOD's second game ever – it's also the studio's second game starring a woman, following 2013's Remember Me. "That's not us trying to be different for the sake of being different," Creative Director Jean-Maxime Moris said during a demo at Gamescom. "It's not as if we're trying to 'fix the industry.'" And Life is Strange is so much more than "a game with a girl in it."
Square Enix gets real, reveals time-bender Life is Strange
Square Enix and DONTNOD, the studio behind Remember Me, are working on a new IP to be released in digital, episodic chapters: Life is Strange. That's not a commentary on the chaotic nature of existence; it's the name of the game. Life is Strange stars Max Caulfield, a high school senior who's just returned to her hometown of Arcadia Bay, Oregon. She discovers that her classmate, Rachel Amber, has disappeared under "mysterious and rather uncomfortable circumstances," as the Square Enix blog describes it. Max reunites with her friend, Chloe, and attempts to discover the truth behind Rachel's disappearance – and then Max finds out she has the power to rewind time. "Thus begins the story for a game that everyone here at Square Enix has fallen in love with," the blog post reads. "I know I've mentioned this before, but Life is Strange is something entirely different .... Each and every texture in Life is Strange is a hand drawn work of art and every action enacts a butterfly effect – but with the power to rewind time, what would you change? And would it turn out to be a change for the better or worse?" Life is Strange is in development for PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC. Two months ago, we reported that Square Enix and Dontnod were working a new project that was a "twist on traditional story-driven games." This seems to fit that bill.
Remember Me dev Dontnod working with Square Enix
Develop reported today that Dontnod Entertainment, the French development studio behind Remember Me, is collaborating with Square Enix on a new title that will be a "twist on traditional story-driven games." You may remember Dontnod as the studio that entered "judicial reorganization" not long after Remember Me failed to live up to its premise - and sales - earlier this year. At the time of the reorganization, Dontnod CEO Oskar Guilbert told GamesIndustry International that the company had "started new projects" which needed investment. Develop also reported that Dontnod wasn't ready to share details regarding the game just yet. But see, there's this ... thing going on next week at the Los Angeles convention center, so it may not be long before we have some solid info to go on. [Image: Capcom]
Remember Me dev Dontnod enters 'judicial reorganization' following financial struggles
Remember Me developer Dontnod Entertainment is in financial mire, but CEO Oskar Guilbert claims the company isn't on the brink of bankruptcy. Speaking to GI.biz, Guilbert dismissed reports coming out of France today that the Parisian company is in fatal trouble after it entered "judicial reorganization" this week. "We started new projects and those new projects need some investment and we decided to resize the company in order to match these new needs. That's why we needed judicial reorganization," Guilbert asserted to GI.Biz today. "I cannot say that we have no financial difficulties, we have some, but I think that now they are behind us, not in front of us." Judicial reorganization or redressement judiciaire is a similar process to receivership, where the French courts appoint an administrator to oversee a company's restructuring when it has troubles paying its debts. The process can be drawn out over many months, but it's often a precursor to liquidation. Guilbert says Dontnod is in "close negotiations with one big partner," presumably to take over, and in "very close negotiations for our next project with one of the top publishers." Despite being published by Capcom, Remember Me was a game that struggled to live up to its name, both critically and seemingly at retail; Capcom failed to even note the game in its financial brief for the quarter following its release last summer. In March 2013, Dontnod received 200,000 euros from France's National Center of Cinematography, apparently for a separate project denoted as "What if?" – here's hoping that isn't an ominous name too.
Remember Me launch trailer arrives in style
This trailer for Remember Me flashes its action-packed, stylish side to commemorate the game's recent launch. Be sure to read our review of the game to find out about its other sides.
Metareview: Remember Me
A memorable aspect of Remember Me is its soundtrack, available now on iTunes or accessible through Spotify. As for the game, our review tried its best not to repress the whole thing. Edge (80/100): "Schlocky and silly in places, but potent and reflective in others, Nilin's tale has bags of heart to play off against its flamboyant bosses and existential quandaries, all grounded by a charismatic female star." Game Informer (78/100): "The environmental climbing sequences offer some simple fun, but the linear paths diminish any sense of exploration this otherwise would have achieved. Combat is filled with fresh ideas, but that creativity inhibits your capability in combat. Hopefully Dontnod doesn't forget any of the lessons it learned this time around, because a sequel could be truly memorable." GameSpot (70/100): "Remember Me is not the game its world and premise hint that it could have been; rather, it's simply a good third-person action game: entertaining, slickly produced, and flavorful enough to keep you engaged to the end of its six-hour run time." IGN (59/100): "Ultimately, it failed to challenge or excite me as a game, as all of its best ideas are confined to its overarching fiction rather than its gameplay." NowGamer (50/100): "This feels like an awkward first step rather than a finished product. As it stands, Remember Me is a series of mediocre gameplay ideas stapled to a pretty, hollow shell."
Live-action Remember Me trailer has some cake
This live-action trailer for Remember Me sets the tone for the game's beginning chapters with thoughts from the founder of the Memorize corporation. Remember Me will launch this coming Tuesday on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.
Just jargon through Remember Me
Join Joystiq in the streets of Neo-Paris and the intricate pathways of the mind in this Remember Me video preview. Dontnod's memory-focused action game features strategic battle jeans, "remembrane buoys" and even more dubiously named plot devices, if you can believe it. Remember Me launches for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 on June 4. [Video production: Miguel Concepcion] %Gallery-178785%
Remember Me hacks our memories, inserts this trailer
Defying our understanding of neurology, memory can be found in the heart and soul of Remember Me. Manipulating memories drives the action in Dontnod's cyberpunk game, as creative director Jean-Max Morris reminds us in this six-minute synopsis.
Remember Me PC requirements remind you to prep for playtime
Remember Me appears to have something against kids and/or opening presents, but it's not entirely opposed to handing out treats. Sweet, sweet PC-requirement treats.Remember Me minimum specs include 2GB of RAM, 9GB of free hard drive space, and at least an Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS or an ATI Radeon HD 3850 video card, running DirectX 9 or greater. For high performance, save 4GB of RAM and play with a GeForce GTX 560 video card or better. Check out the full PC requirements below.Don't forget, Remember Me launches on June 4 in North America for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.
Publishers rejected Remember Me because of female lead
Dontnod Entertainment's Remember Me – set in Neo-Paris 2084, the game stars Nilin, a memory hunter – got a lot of dismissals from publishers thanks to its female lead. For some publishers, successful games and male leads are synonymous, so when creative director Jean-Max Morris and his crew were shopping for publishers, this spurred the cold shoulder."We had some that said, 'Well, we don't want to publish it because that's not going to succeed. You can't have a female character in games. It has to be a male character, simple as that,'" Morris told The Penny Arcade Report. Capcom, of course, didn't seem to mind.Morris said the decision to have a female lead was "something that just felt right from the beginning" of development. "It's one of those things that we never looked at from a pure, cold marketing perspective because that would have endangered the consistency of the whole game." That's not to say Morris didn't receive the advice to switch Nilin from a girl to a guy, but changing Nilin would've been relatively impossible for the stage Remember Me was at. Still, hypothetically that change would've brought its own set of problems.One anecdote Morris talked about is a scene where we see Nilin kiss a man and Morris was told that scene wouldn't work if she was switched to a guy, even though technically it would be far from the first depiction of same-sex romance in video games. "We had people tell us, 'You can't make a dude like the player kiss another dude in the game, that's going to feel awkward.'" For Morris, that response is puzzling. "I'm like, 'If you think like that, there's no way the medium's going to mature,'" he said. "There's a level of immersion that you need to be at, but it's not like your sexual orientation is being questioned by playing a game. I don't know, that's extremely weird to me."Remember Me launches on June 4 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.
Remember Me recollects June 4 launch date
Remember Me, the futuristic action-adventure from developer Dontnod, will launch on June 4 and 7 in North America and Europe, respectively, publisher Capcom has confirmed.The game will find a nice snug spot during the summer with PS3, Xbox 360 and PC before the next console generation begins this fall. Depending on how the game does, Capcom and Dontnod already have plans to extend Remember Me's world into the next gen.
Remember Me trailer goes behind the music
This behind-the-scenes video of Capcom's Remember Me discusses how the soundtrack fits into the game's "Neo Paris" setting. Remember Me is coming to PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in May.
