Your video game hot take(s) thread

[Casual Shinji]

I think the Ashford's are the better villains in RE. The siblings certainly leave an impression and the family adds flavor to Umbrella so it wasn't just a faceless corporation doing things seemingly for the hell of it.

Not for me. I think I only ever got far enough into Code Veronica to see Alfred, and Jesus was that character the absolute worst.

Umbrella never needed to have a face, because it worked in making the company feel inculpable and free of consequences from the horrors they created. It felt inhuman, like a real corporation. You can feel Umbrella's presence through their absence as you're making your way through monster infested mansions and police stations, with the people actually running the company likely somewhere safe without a care in the world. Honestly, just a giant, omimous tube with the Umbrella logo on it, likely housing some creature, is enough to get the point across.

Umbrella is ostensibly just a logo and it makes their actions and presence feel far more inhuman and horrifiing than if it was a main bad guy running the show. I guess that might actually be the core reason I don't like Wesker being the main baddie in this franchise.

 

[BrawlMan]

It really wouldn't be hard to develop Chris's, and by extension, Claire's, characters and backstories. The two both showed they were willing to go charging into dangerous places to find each other, Chris was a cop and Claire seemed to either be some kind of free spirit or went through a "bad girl" phase, there's things you can do with that that could be quite compelling if they bothered.

Claire's rebellious nature was always kind of there, but it's an offshoot from her original design, Elza. It's more pronounced in the remake where she basically becomes like Ripley even more. I do love the mother hen/big sister nature of her, and that's what I always liked about her the best. It's still a waste that she never shows up in RE6. I've seen fanfiction, fan art, and fan comics do a better job placing her in the story. Helena was so not needed.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Claire's rebellious nature was always kind of there, but it's an offshoot from her original design, Eliza. It's more pronounced in the remake where she basically becomes like Ripley even more. I do love the mother hen/big sister nature of her, and that's what I always liked about her the best. It's still a waste that she never shows up in RE6. I've seen fanfiction, fan art, and being comics do a better job placing her in the story. Helena was so not needed.

In OG RE2 I really loved the dichotomy between her look and how she was very kind and caring to Sherry. I really liked Alyson Court's voice for Claire.

Not for me. I think I only ever got far enough into Code Veronica to see Alfred, and Jesus was that character the absolute worst.

Umbrella never needed to have a face, because it worked in making the company feel inculpable and free of consequences from the horrors they created. It felt inhuman, like a real corporation. You can feel Umbrella's presence through their absence as you're making your way through monster infested mansions and police stations, with the people actually running the company likely somewhere safe without a care in the world. Honestly, just a giant, omimous tube with the Umbrella logo on it, likely housing some creature, is enough to get the point across.

Umbrella is ostensibly just a logo and it makes their actions and presence feel far more inhuman and horrifiing than if it was a main bad guy running the show. I guess that might actually be the core reason I don't like Wesker being the main baddie in this franchise.

I'm really tired of that shit though. It's so fucking played out, the "mythical, magical all encompassing company in the shadows that is controlling EVERYTHING, yada yada yada." It's part of why I love how RE4 has Umbrella killed off before the game even begins and in a very logical way. Companies get away with a lot of shit, but they aren't invincible, real major fuck ups do have ramifications for them.

And I didn't mean the Ashford's needed to be the eternal faces of Umbrella or anything, I don't mean it needed some primary big bad, but showing who the actual major players are in it instead of just the "hands and feet", goes a long way to making things more interesting.

Part of the problem with Wesker is that he IS actually a good villain but as an enforcer for someone else, he suits that role well, he is NOT suited for being the major bad guy. They should have introduced more major players in Umbrella and not just the people working for it.

 

[BrawlMan]

They should have introduced more major players in Umbrella and not just the people working for it.

Certain writers on the novels, and the comics tried to do this during the PSX & DC era, but Capcom retconned them or made them all non-canon, because "they didn't fit enough" or had too many characters. Irony.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

The thing I've never understood about the whole "short campaigns bad because money" thing...people buy Blu-Rays or 4Ks for $20 each, with a movie running around 2 hours on average, right? By that logic, any campaign that's at least 6 hours long would be equal bang for your buck. Yet any campaign shy of 8-10 hours is considered too short.

People buying blu-rays is not the driver of the movie industry. It's streaming, television licensing deals and despite everything, still actual movie theaters.
Sure I don't have the data to back this up but I really would be shocked of blu-ray sales are anything but a nice, and that the vast majority are people buying movies they already saw.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm really tired of that shit though. It's so fucking played out, the "mythical, magical all encompassing company in the shadows that is controlling EVERYTHING, yada yada yada." It's part of why I love how RE4 has Umbrella killed off before the game even begins and in a very logical way. Companies get away with a lot of shit, but they aren't invincible, real major fuck ups do have ramifications for them.

I didn't mean as an untouchable shadow organization, but just as a regular old corporation that had no qualms grinding up the little people. Just like with Coca Cola and Nestle you have this nice professional logo that hides some of the shit they've been up to. It's why Raccoon City works well as sorta a base of operations for Umbrella, as it shows how this small town got bought up and then chewed up and thrown into the garbage. And the ones responsible did it all from a nice ivory tower. So in that sense it's not really important that we know the people who did this, but that we know people did this for profit.

And I like that RE4 gets rid of Umbrella too, because once a town gets nuked you can't really continue on the same foot narratively. Except that they do. The concept of Umbrella, whether faceless or not, can only go so far before it becomes incredibly ridiculous. Umbrella's actions starting in a masion in the woods and then spreading to a nearby town is a nice escalation, but once you move past that you get into nationwide type stuff and then the genre collapses and just becomes something else entirely. At the end of RE3 the franchise tries to keep the whole Umbrella narrative going by moving it to Europe and focussing on the Ashfords, which ultimately didn't provide much of anything, and was just Capcom trying to drag Umbrella past the nuking of Raccoon City.

Part of the problem with Wesker is that he IS actually a good villain but as an enforcer for someone else, he suits that role well, he is NOT suited for being the major bad guy. They should have introduced more major players in Umbrella and not just the people working for it.

I don't feel Wesker even had a chance to show himself as an enforcer though. I honestly think the only reason Wesker is still around is because he was the one villain from the original Resident Evil, so Capcom just doesn't want to ditch him. Same with Chris, eventhough Leon is far better action hero protagonist in every way.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I didn't mean as an untouchable shadow organization, but just as a regular old corporation that had no qualms grinding up the little people. Just like with Coca Cola and Nestle you have this nice professional logo that hides some of the shit they've been up to. It's why Raccoon City works well as sorta a base of operations for Umbrella, as it shows how this small town got bought up and then chewed up and thrown into the garbage. And the ones responsible did it all from a nice ivory tower. So in that sense it's not really important that we know the people who did this, but that we know people did this for profit.

And I like that RE4 gets rid of Umbrella too, because once a town gets nuked you can't really continue on the same foot narratively. Except that they do. The concept of Umbrella, whether faceless or not, can only go so far before it becomes incredibly ridiculous. Umbrella's actions starting in a masion in the woods and then spreading to a nearby town is a nice escalation, but once you move past that you get into nationwide type stuff and then the genre collapses and just becomes something else entirely. At the end of RE3 the franchise tries to keep the whole Umbrella narrative going by moving it to Europe and focussing on the Ashfords, which ultimately didn't provide much of anything, and was just Capcom trying to drag Umbrella past the nuking of Raccoon City.
I don't feel Wesker even had a chance to show himself as an enforcer though. I honestly think the only reason Wesker is still around is because he was the one villain from the original Resident Evil, so Capcom just doesn't want to ditch him. Same with Chris, eventhough Leon is far better action hero protagonist in every way.

Ah, I see, sorry for misunderstanding. You make many good points.

Something I liked from Revelations was the seeming attempt to move the "world state" forward in that the ramifications of a world with access to things like the T-Virus and how people deal with that was explored a bit. Would be interesting to see a story (Even outside of RE) explore that angle of rampant and extreme biological tampering.

 

[BrawlMan]

Another RE hot take: even with all its problems, I would still play Resident Evil 3 Remake over original RE4. By the way, the third person mode for RE8 should be a free update.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Another RE hot take: even with all its problems, I would still play Resident Evil 3 Remake over original RE4.

 

[Dalisclock]

I think it really depends what the devs do with all that game space... is it a 'living' world or just bland distance between plotpoints?

I remember getting into this bizarre argument with someone online about how he wanted a version of Death Stranding that was 1:1 scale of the US and didn't quite seem to get it when I said nobody would buy the damn thing because of how fucking tedious it would to hike 3000 miles from coast to coast in something close to real time, because he was so enamoured by the idea of a full size US to hike across. Space Compression exists for a reason.

Especially considering how empty much of DS's game world is. Yes, there are always a few people who want things to be super hard and super realistic, but that's generally a Niche market.

Let me put it this way.There's an actual game where you fly the space shuttle realistically by flipping all the switches a real astronaut would flip. This game is almost completely unknown because while it's very true to life, very few space nerd gamers are actually interested in this kind of game.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Wesker just never left much of an impression as a villain, except if you were really into his rivalry with Chris....

Where did that rivalry even come from? I played RE 1 through 4 (plus one hour of 5 and half an hour of 6) along with Code Veronica, plus read a number of the books (to my eternal shame) and I never saw anything that would put Chris squarely against Wesker so far beyond any other STARS member. Did they explain it in 5?

 

[BrawlMan]

Where did that rivalry even come from? I played RE 1 through 4 (plus one hour of 5 and half an hour of 6) along with Code Veronica, plus read a number of the books (to my eternal shame) and I never saw anything that would put Chris squarely against Wesker so far beyond any other STARS member. Did they explain it in 5?

It's implied/stated in RE1 and its respective Remake that Wesker favored Chris, and that he consider him his best man on the team. This is more so noticeable in the Remake. The canon is foggy, but it is implied that Chris and Jill were working in different parts of the mansion, but neither were captured for duration of the Mansion Incident. Chris nor Jill took Wesker's betrayal well; especially Chris. The rivalry does not really start until Code Veronica. When Wesker goes all Agent Smith and Advanced Model (bonus for anyone who gets that character reference) on Chris.

​

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Yes, there are always a few people who want things to be super hard and super realistic, but that's generally a Niche market.

Hardcore realistic sims will always be niche. Most people just don't find that sort of thing fun or interesting... and those that do probably wouldn't be interested in a game where you throw your piss at ghosts to scare them away.

 

[Dalisclock]

Hardcore realistic sims will always be niche. Most people just don't find that sort of thing fun or interesting... and those that do probably wouldn't be interested in a game where you throw your piss at ghosts to scare them away.

Yeah, I have to imagine the number of people who both want to play an ultra-realistic walking sim on a 1:1 US and also enjoy Kojima's particular brand of throwing piss at ghosts could fit a particular small car.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Yeah, I have to imagine the number of people who both want to play an ultra-realistic walking sim on a 1:1 US and also enjoy Kojima's particular brand of throwing piss at ghosts could fit a particular small car.

They could probably hold a convention is a phone booth... although that would mean holding it somewhere that phonebooths are still a thing.

I think the other thing to note is that, by and large, the more nuts-n-bolts realistic a sim is the less it's player base is 'gamers' and instead draws enthusiasts from whatever slice of nerdom the sim is related to (because that's what they're looking for, that's where their fun is). Look at car racing games or flight sims as an example, the more realistic the game is the less it's the darling of the gamer crowd and the more it's beloved by petrolheads or Aviation nerds.

 

[BrawlMan]

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While I'm at it: I probably mentioned this before, but I consider both Shadows of the Damned and Evil Within 2 > RE4. In fact, EW2 & RE2Remake I consider my personal favorites and the greatest survival horror games of all time. Bar none!

 

[Casual Shinji]

While I'm at it: I probably mentioned this before, but I consider both Shadows of the Damned and Evil Within 2 > RE4.

 

[BrawlMan]

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One more thing: the reason why is that both games have more enjoyable gameplay for me. Shadows let's Garcia dodge with a dedicated dodge button. While Sebastian doesn't have a default dodge mechanic (he does have one as an upgrade you have to purchase), he can still sprint away, sneak, stealth kill, and stump on downed enemies. Yet, the enemies are still a threat, because they can kill you fast or overwhelm if you're not careful. Especially on the harder difficulties. Also, no annoying mid cutscene QTEs. Ain't it grand?

One more thing: Julie Kidman is a better Ada Wong, than Ada Wong will ever be. EW2 actually did something with her character, that Capcom has always failed to do with Ada since the 4th game.

 

[Casual Shinji]

One more thing: Julie Kidman is a better Ada Wong, then Ada Wong will ever be. EW2 actually did something with her character, that Capcom has always failed to do with Ada since the 4th game.

None of the RE characters are allowed to grow or change really. Change in the RE verse (not that one) is Leon wearing a leather jacket and Chris wearing a turtleneck.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

None of the RE characters are allowed to grow or change really. Change in the RE verse (not that one) is Leon wearing a leather jacket and Chris wearing a turtleneck.

Leon's really the only character that had any kind of character change between being more naive and "fresh faced" in RE2 and his dry, sarcastic "seen some shit" self in RE4. Other than him everyone's basically the same though, yeah.