Year: 2013
Type: Original Soundtrack (OST)
Composer(s): Olivier Derivière
Number of tracks: 15

★★★★★

Forget-me-not

Ironically, Remember Me is a game that is probably only remembered today by those who have played it. As far as my knowledge of the 2013 game is concerned, it is limited to the fact that it surprisingly has something to do with memories, a protagonist who wants to bring down an evil company and a combat system in which combos can be freely put together. However, this rough outline is not my usual deliberately abbreviated summary in order to quickly jump into the soundtrack part, but is simply due to the fact that I simply missed Remember Me. Unfortunately, I must say, given that it is a critics' favorite.

In addition to the great story, they also praised the game's music and I wanted to catch up on that at least. The fact that the score was by Olivier Derivière made me skeptical at first, because his name had first caught my eye in the mediocre Vampyr and his pieces didn't rise above mediocrity either. A look in my library later, however, I realized that Derivière also produced the very good soundtracks to A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019) and the Assassin’s Creed IV addon Freedom Cry (2014). Both had stayed positively in my memory and I was excited to see what colors he would give a blank slate like Remember Me.

Derivière rehabilitates himself in my ears with the very first track. "Nilin the Memory Hunter" is a fascinating mixture of sci-fi à la Star Wars or Stellaris and agent thrillers from Mission Impossible, the Bourne-series or the thematically related score to the movie Source Code. In addition to the driving strings and wind instruments, two other characteristic features of the OST can be found here: the high female vocals like those of film grandmaster (Gladiator / Blade Runner 2049and the heavy distortion. This is used excessively at times, fragmenting track sections and thus forming a striking unique selling point, basically the exact opposite of my last review of Iron Harvest, in which I was still annoyed about the lack of such a feature.

Ironically, however, I am not satisfied here either, because the feature is too dominant in the foreground for my taste. It is a well-chosen stylistic device, as the narrative of the game is about memories and their pieces. This acoustic fragmentation in combination with the vocals, some of which breathe the word 'memories' ("Fragments"), creates a skillful connection between the soundtrack and gameplay - but unfortunately also an annoying one. Less would have been more here. A bit like when you were a child and had just discovered the volume control and immediately claimed to be a DJ because you turned the volume up and down at an unpleasantly inappropriate frequency until the ears of everyone within earshot bled.

For me, soundtracks like that of Remember Me vividly emphasize the class of genre greats such as Jesper Kyd, who skilfully combines historical settings with futuristic modern times. Derivier's unfortunate doses of distortion, on the other hand, merely form a remarkably valiant hair in an otherwise folicle-free musical soup.

Meanwhile, I find the JRPG-like influences in the action tracks fitting, the menacing brass and driving rhythms create tension ("Chase Through Montmartre", "The Fight", "Memorize", "The Ego Room"), while the quiet moments are emotional and atmospheric ("Rise to the Light", "Our Parents", "Hope"). All in all, Olivier Derivier does more than most with Remember Me and therefore almost everything right, just not enough for the top class by a hair's breadth.

Nr.	Title	Interpret(en)	Ratings
01	Nilin the Memory Hunter	Olivier Derivière	5
02	Rise to the Light	Olivier Derivière	4
03	Still Human	Olivier Derivière	4
04	Fragments	Olivier Derivière	3
05	Neo Paris	Olivier Derivière	3
06	The Enforcers	Olivier Derivière	3
07	Chase Through Montmartre	Olivier Derivière	5
08	Memory Reconstruction	Olivier Derivière	4
09	The Fight	Olivier Derivière	4
10	Our Parents	Olivier Derivière	4
11	Memorize	Olivier Derivière	4
12	The Ego Room	Olivier Derivière	3
13	Remember Your Childhood	Olivier Derivière	4
14	The Zorn	Olivier Derivière	4
15	Hope	Olivier Derivière	4