Today, Resident Evil is well known as the pioneer of the survival horror games genre, the beginning of a highly successful game franchise, from games to movies. Since its release, it has inspired other classics in the survival horror genre such as Silent Hill and Fatal Frame.
But is the series getting better or worse? This is the question I have been thinking about, thus in this post I will share my thoughts on this topic, as an old time RE fan. While I am at it, for all you RE fans out there, maybe you can think about it too.
For a start, let's take a little trip down memory. The first RE, Resident Evil in short, has a pretty simple setting and storyline about a group of special tactics squad tasked to investigate a forest where bodies of bizarre murder cases have been found.
It plays very much with suspense as the player controls either one of two characters, who ended up trapped in a mansion in a fictional Raccoon Forest after being attacked by a beast during their investigation, where one of their comrades was killed.
Nothing was clear at that point, and that was what makes the experience so eerie and frightening. I can still remember the first time the character walked right up to the man at the corner of the corridor, who turned out to be a zombie.
No words can explain my feelings about that classic scene, and the many that followed.
The experience was so gripping that I nearly forgot the fact that it was only a game. Truly, it played out like an interactive movie with rich story details laid out as notes along the way.
A gigantic mansion deep in the woods with nobody around but flesh eating zombies and creatures corridor after corridor. As the remaining members dispersed to locate the lost ones, the tension and fear grew with every door you open.
Bit by bit the story and exploration deepened, and it was then revealed that the mansion was actually a mere cover of an underground laboratory where secret experiments were carried out by a corporation called Umbrella to create the ultimate biological weapon, The Tyrant.
Soon, the game got really famous and Resident Evil 2 was released.
The anticipation for it was overwhelming and well deserved. Much was attributed to the brilliant script writers of the game. Resident Evil 2 was the first RE to introduce intercepting scenarios of multiple playable characters in the game.
The story deepened even more as the viral outbreak spread to Racoon City itself, after the futile persuasion of the surviving members from the mansion incident with the police force to look into the matter.
RE2's intro scene was excellent for PS1 standards, and also from a storytelling standpoint. Then, I haven't seen even a movie quite like it. The tension of the story build up was tense and extremely suspenseful. I spent 2 days and nights straight finishing the game at my friend's house. Really good times those were.
Til this day, I personally think that RE2 was the best in the series, with RE1 falling slightly behind.
However, the series' peak was also the start of my decline in interest for the Resident Evil series.
RE3 was a disappointment for me. The story failed to progress much anywhere and the setting was almost reused, apart from new accessible areas absent in RE2. There was little connection to the storyline of RE2, except that it was still in Racoon City. It was very light on story, an element that made the series so unique.
RE Code Veronica was what rekindled my interest with involving characters, good suspense and a tense situation. The beauty of it all was the emotional resolution, particularly the scene when Steve Burnside transformed into a tyrant, and gave his life for Claire Redfield, the woman he loved.
That was one of the most heartwrenching scenes I ever saw in a game, the best perhaps in the entire RE series, not to include RE5 as I havent played it.
Then came RE4 some years later, the instalment that proved that my well loved survival horror series was no more. Despite the critical acclaim it got, it lacked the appeal the previous instalments have, which was a rich story and developed characters.
Don't get me wrong though, RE4 was a good game in many aspect. The graphics was great, as was the gameplay mechanics and action sequences.
But it didn't feel like RE anymore. (I have yet to play Resident Evil 5 as I do not have a PS3, but from the trailer, it feels very similar to RE4 with probably several enhancements to the gameplay mechanics.)
For RE4, all the suspense and eerieness were gone, and what's left was what felt like an advance arcade experience to me. It reminded me of the first Final Fantasy movie, The Spirits Within, which shared little to no resemblance with the games which made it so famous.
Same problem here, breathtaking graphics and dramatic action sequences, with little story appeal. The settings and characters were dull compared to the unique and beautiful world that FF fans have come to love from the games. In the end, it was a flop.
For RE4, it succeeded because it still has the interactive value despite all the drawbacks- mainly better controls and gameplay mechanics. But it simply worried and puzzled me to hear majority of RE fans saying that Resident Evil 4 is a breakthrough and the best yet in the series when it came out.
Is it because that RE fans have lost their taste for quality stories in games or because they have always see RE as nothing more than a mindless zombie blasting experience with explicit gore and blood?
I really don't know.
For all RE fans out there, feel free to share your comments and discuss if the RE is really going the right direction and how you feel towards its changes over the years.
Thanks for reading!
My next post will be touching on Parasite Eve, the cinematic RPG from the makers of Squaresoft, a rare and overlooked gem in the gaming library.
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