Resident Evil Needs A Reboot
- Thread starter Fanghawk
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Even when Wesker was just a "regular" human villain there was very little to him. I never understood his status as iconic videogame baddie. He's not even entertaining, even with his Matrix powers. Both Birkin and Lisa Trevors had a far greater impact. Christ, even Saddler and Salazar were better villains, since they were at least fun idiots.
You mentioned The Last of Us and I think Capcom can learn something from that game action wise. In as much that it was an action game where you didn't feel like an action hero or a professional soldier. A problem with current Resi games -- which RE4 is likely to blame for -- is that every hero character is a freaking super spy doing crazy backflips and walljumps. In the classic games you were just a guy (or gal) with four or so guns and limited inventory. You weren't punching goddamn boulders. TLoU was the first game in a very long time to give me that same feeling of being just a guy with a gun, where having just three enemies bearing down on you was a fucking problem.
Capcom is completely creatively banktrupt though, so I'm not expecting anything from either a possible reboot or REmake 2.
You mentioned The Last of Us and I think Capcom can learn something from that game action wise. In as much that it was an action game where you didn't feel like an action hero or a professional soldier. A problem with current Resi games -- which RE4 is likely to blame for -- is that every hero character is a freaking super spy doing crazy backflips and walljumps. In the classic games you were just a guy (or gal) with four or so guns and limited inventory. You weren't punching goddamn boulders. TLoU was the first game in a very long time to give me that same feeling of being just a guy with a gun, where having just three enemies bearing down on you was a fucking problem.
Capcom is completely creatively banktrupt though, so I'm not expecting anything from either a possible reboot or REmake 2.
Honestly, I thought 4 was the worst one, it took the serious from a tense puzzle horror game, to an action game with freaky enemies (not even zombies).
I have played the core resident evil games, I played one section of 6 (the one with the cheap nemesis) and couldn't do any more and the first three were great at making you think you had very little chance of living. My personal fav was 3, never knowing where the big guy was going to show up ... not like most games "oh, loads of health and a big gun with plenty of ammo, I wonder what is next!", you could walk down a flight of stairs and in he pops through a window, shouts STARS and launches a rocket at you!
Go to 4 and ammo falls out of every box, so taking out 5 or 6 zombies is a cake walk and that means tension is out the window, which means horror is out the window (coupled with the fact the main antagonist is a dwarf sailor), I can't even remember if there are puzzles in that game! Well, there are the bits where you have to leash Ashley to your arse and escort her round the place, getting kidnapped god knows how many times.
I have played the core resident evil games, I played one section of 6 (the one with the cheap nemesis) and couldn't do any more and the first three were great at making you think you had very little chance of living. My personal fav was 3, never knowing where the big guy was going to show up ... not like most games "oh, loads of health and a big gun with plenty of ammo, I wonder what is next!", you could walk down a flight of stairs and in he pops through a window, shouts STARS and launches a rocket at you!
Go to 4 and ammo falls out of every box, so taking out 5 or 6 zombies is a cake walk and that means tension is out the window, which means horror is out the window (coupled with the fact the main antagonist is a dwarf sailor), I can't even remember if there are puzzles in that game! Well, there are the bits where you have to leash Ashley to your arse and escort her round the place, getting kidnapped god knows how many times.
I actually like Resident Evil 6 quite a a bit. I'd rank it, or at most of it, above 5, which became a pretty tedious slog. I never really understood the hate for 6, which I think mostly came from bitterness over being focused more on action than survival-horror. To me Resident Evil never was survival-horror though, it was a series of adventure games wrapped up in nonsense. I didn't mind 6 because it was just another silly game in a series of games that were always hard for me to take seriously, not to mention 6 is somehow the peak of writing for the series, as it actually feels the dialog was written by humans who at some point have interacted with other humans.
Also, I fucking love Wesker. Because he's just the dumbest god damn antagonist. He's a Saturday morning cartoon villain, like Megatron if Megatron wore sunglasses. He has a stupid voice, stupid sunglasses, and a stupid storyline in every game he's in. He's cheesy as hell and his plans make no sense and he gets BLOWN UP INSIDE A VOLCANO. He perfectly encapsulates the Resident Evil series to me in just how ridiculous and stupid all of it is, and how hard to is to take seriously.
I like the "canon" for similar reasons. Most of it is just bad, but the writers have stuck with it and tried to make us care about it for so long, that despite it being a jumbled mess, it actually comes across as somewhat endearing and kind of heartfelt. It feels like the writers really do care about the universe they've created way more than anyone else does, which I can't blame people for because most of the universe's writing is insane. I guess that means I'm not in favor of a reboot, because I'm willing to eat up whatever completely un-self-aware story they send my way. Because to me (With the exception of 4) Resident Evil was always great because of how bad it was, and what I other people hate I enjoy and find strangely charming. It's more Deadly Premonition than Silent Hill.
Also, I fucking love Wesker. Because he's just the dumbest god damn antagonist. He's a Saturday morning cartoon villain, like Megatron if Megatron wore sunglasses. He has a stupid voice, stupid sunglasses, and a stupid storyline in every game he's in. He's cheesy as hell and his plans make no sense and he gets BLOWN UP INSIDE A VOLCANO. He perfectly encapsulates the Resident Evil series to me in just how ridiculous and stupid all of it is, and how hard to is to take seriously.
I like the "canon" for similar reasons. Most of it is just bad, but the writers have stuck with it and tried to make us care about it for so long, that despite it being a jumbled mess, it actually comes across as somewhat endearing and kind of heartfelt. It feels like the writers really do care about the universe they've created way more than anyone else does, which I can't blame people for because most of the universe's writing is insane. I guess that means I'm not in favor of a reboot, because I'm willing to eat up whatever completely un-self-aware story they send my way. Because to me (With the exception of 4) Resident Evil was always great because of how bad it was, and what I other people hate I enjoy and find strangely charming. It's more Deadly Premonition than Silent Hill.
Know what it really needs? The ability to move and shoot at the same time. It's such a freakin pain in the ass, I would even pay money for a "move and shoot" DLC. Great game but it's just so damn annoying.
1. I feel so sorry for Silent Hill Downpour then. That game came out a few years before The Last of Us and the game did have that feeling of just "being a guy with a gun" or using random things as weapons. That game imo is a return to form for Silent Hill dispite what Yathzee said. It may lack the fear but it certainly made up for Gameplay and athmosphere/mood. I mean why does the Hideo Kojima Silent Hills game was being touted as a "proper scary and return to form Silent Hill game" when Downpour already did that?Casual Shinji said:
2. The only thing I am interested in an RE2 remake is seeing the monster antagonist William Birkin. Seeing this in next gen:
https://youtu.be/JaOpduSMDyw?t=129
William Birkin in RE2 imo is perhaps the scariest Monster I have ever seen in my entire life. The design of his monster just looks demonically horrifying.
(And yes I know there is the Darkside Chronicles but they did not show him transforming in detail like his head shrinking in his torso as a new head emerges)
I disagree completely. Resident Evil is doing just fine. RE5 and RE6 are among the best selling titles in the series. They're also both great games. RE6 moreso.
It's an action horror series now, and there's nothing wrong with that. The series moved away from survival horror for the simple reason that survival horror is no longer a popular genre. That's the long and the short of it. Resident Evil's mainline games require high sales because they have high production values. Resident Evil simply cannot go back to survival horror because that is a sure-fire way to kill the series.
Shitty translation jobs introducing inconsistencies aside, Resident Evil has 20 years of ongoing canon, lore, and character development. Throwing that all away to chase some nostalgic fantasy would be unwise and insulting.
It's an action horror series now, and there's nothing wrong with that. The series moved away from survival horror for the simple reason that survival horror is no longer a popular genre. That's the long and the short of it. Resident Evil's mainline games require high sales because they have high production values. Resident Evil simply cannot go back to survival horror because that is a sure-fire way to kill the series.
Shitty translation jobs introducing inconsistencies aside, Resident Evil has 20 years of ongoing canon, lore, and character development. Throwing that all away to chase some nostalgic fantasy would be unwise and insulting.
Resident Evil 5 was the last RE game I played, but there's very little in this post that I agree with.
-"With over twenty video games in the franchise, only three are considered legitimate classics: The original, its sequel, and Resident Evil 4. Everything else was disappointingly forgettable, gimmicky, or had the misfortune of exclusively launching on a lackluster platform."
I wouldn't call the original Resident Evil a classic. We tend to remember it more for its dialogue rather than gameplay. RE2 and RE4 I agree with (though personally I consider RE3 superior to RE2), and there's also the RE1 remake. That said, I don't think every other game automatically falls into the realms of forgettable or gimmicky. Plenty of RE games are at least decent. Sure, we have entries such as Gaiden and Survivor, but Outbreak, Code: Veronica, Zero, even RE5 (heck, I'd put RE5 above Zero).
-"Then along came Resident Evil 4, upsetting the zombie corpse cart with open environments and action-oriented gameplay. Don't get me wrong - it's still a blast to play, and felt like a breath of fresh air compared to previous titles. It's probably even appropriate, given how Leon was a hero who'd survived zombie outbreaks before. But it also lost the tension inherent in the design of earlier games. It had to rely on monster designs and gore to shock players, which wasn't anywhere close to the same experience."
I can't really disagree with that, but I think it's selling RE4 short to claim it lacked atmosphere and could only generate fear through monster designs and gore. RE4 was the first Resident Evil game where the player could face hordes of enemies, where previously zombies usually came in small groups.
-"His [Wesker's] death was retconned, he had significant cameos in Code Veronica, Umbrella Chronicles, and RE4, and mutated himself to gain zombie powers in Resident Evil 5."
Unless there's dev info, Wesker's death was never retconned. It was explained that the reason he'd survived was that he'd faked his own death using a serum Birkin had given him. Secondly, Wesker didn't mutate himself in RE5, Chris and Sheva did that by injecting him with more of the suppressent Excella gave him, sending his body into overload. Also, you're missing Zero on that list.
-"Wesker is basically Agent Smith in The Matrix - a perfect villain for the first story, but so effective that directors kept making him more powerful in sequels, even when doing so made no sense. Wesker is no longer just a prominent spy monitoring Raccoon City's police force to keep Umbrella informed of your progress. He's also a prospective Umbrella executive, a double-agent for multiple corporations, and secretly harbors a supervillain scheme to replace humans with mutants. Wesker wears so many hats across the series that his presence has been stripped of power - he's just a generic antagonist to introduce when the stakes must be artificially raised."
I don't entirely agree with the Agent Smith claim, but that's another discussion. But I will clarify that Wesker didn't harbour some supervillain scheme to make people into mutants. First, that only came about after he met Spencer, where he learnt about his origins. Second, RE5 wasn't about turning people into mutants, it was about unleashing Ouroboros on the world to wipe out the genetically impure. Survival of the fittest and all that. Wesker's actions in RE5 are more rooted in nihilism than anything else, and while the idea of "shatter it all" isn't a new motive, and isn't automatically a compelling one, given everything we know about Wesker's backstory, I can see how he got to this point when we consider it all.
-"We can do better with Wesker, but not in the current Resident Evil backstory. Short of a prequel set in the 70s where a young Wesker falls from grace (hmm, there's a thought),"
Wesker was born around 1960 and began working for Umbrella at the age of 17, and joined the Arklay lab at the age of 18. You really want to do a RE story with a teenager (Rebecca Chambers notwithstanding).
"In general, Wesker works best when he has an equal footing with the protagonist, or just the slightest edge. If Pokemon was a Resident Evil spin-off, Wesker would be that rival who's with you from the beginning, rushing ahead to snag the best monsters for himself. He should be the protagonist of his own story, advancing secretive interests parallel to the player until they finally intersect at the end. That's why Wesker was so engaging as a fellow S.T.A.R.S. agent - he's a dark reflection of the player characters."
Personally disagree. Wesker's arguably the protagonist of Umbrella Chronicles, but Wesker as a STARS agent was never compelling. Taking RE1 in isolation, his motivations boil down to greed, and the voice acting only became tolerable for him by the remake, by which time Wesker had certainly been expanded upon. Wesker only became compelling once we started learning more about him. I can't define that exact point, but I'd say it was in promotional material for Zero and Code: Veronica, namely the Wesker Reports promotional material. Likewise, while I can't call him a deep character, RE5 does make him interesting from a gameplay standpoint. I mentioned above that RE5 was the last RE game I played. Part of that was due to the death of Wesker. With the series's core antagonist finally knocked off (by Chris, no less), it felt like a natural end to the series. Wesker himself in it wasn't the problem.
-"Most importantly, a reboot gives us the chance to give Wesker an interesting backstory. Deserved or not, Wesker is considered one of the most important video game villains of all time. Capcom could do so much more than simply make Wesker evil for evil's sake. Was his father a prominent Umbrella executive? Is there someone he cares about more than the innocents he lets die? Or maybe it's Wesker orchestrating the zombie outbreaks all along, because he believes it's the only way to attract S.T.A.R.S's attention to Umbrella's activities."
Considering all we know about Wesker's backstory already, I'd think it's interesting enoguh already. I also think the idea of humanizing Wesker is a terrible one. Even back in RE1, you could at least ascribe the idea of "selfish" being part of Wesker's characterization. But given the characterization he's received since then, games or otherwise, trying to humanize him goes against all that characterization. Some antagonists benefit from being sympathetic, but I don't think Wesker is one of them.
Now, there's also the question of whether Resident Evil needs rebooting. To that I say, I don't know. As I mentioned, RE5 was the last game I bought, partly because it felt like the natural end to the series, partly because it felt like it was straying away into action territory (though I still rank RE5 above quite a few RE games). But I really don't know if a reboot is the way to go. Reboots tend to be egregious enough, and I'm left to ask, what the point of it is? We know every plot twist in advance, we've already had a remake of the very first Resident Evil game, so if they're going to start a new series in a different time and place, I'm left to ask, why isn't that game part of the series, or why isn't it a new IP?
-"With over twenty video games in the franchise, only three are considered legitimate classics: The original, its sequel, and Resident Evil 4. Everything else was disappointingly forgettable, gimmicky, or had the misfortune of exclusively launching on a lackluster platform."
I wouldn't call the original Resident Evil a classic. We tend to remember it more for its dialogue rather than gameplay. RE2 and RE4 I agree with (though personally I consider RE3 superior to RE2), and there's also the RE1 remake. That said, I don't think every other game automatically falls into the realms of forgettable or gimmicky. Plenty of RE games are at least decent. Sure, we have entries such as Gaiden and Survivor, but Outbreak, Code: Veronica, Zero, even RE5 (heck, I'd put RE5 above Zero).
-"Then along came Resident Evil 4, upsetting the zombie corpse cart with open environments and action-oriented gameplay. Don't get me wrong - it's still a blast to play, and felt like a breath of fresh air compared to previous titles. It's probably even appropriate, given how Leon was a hero who'd survived zombie outbreaks before. But it also lost the tension inherent in the design of earlier games. It had to rely on monster designs and gore to shock players, which wasn't anywhere close to the same experience."
I can't really disagree with that, but I think it's selling RE4 short to claim it lacked atmosphere and could only generate fear through monster designs and gore. RE4 was the first Resident Evil game where the player could face hordes of enemies, where previously zombies usually came in small groups.
-"His [Wesker's] death was retconned, he had significant cameos in Code Veronica, Umbrella Chronicles, and RE4, and mutated himself to gain zombie powers in Resident Evil 5."
Unless there's dev info, Wesker's death was never retconned. It was explained that the reason he'd survived was that he'd faked his own death using a serum Birkin had given him. Secondly, Wesker didn't mutate himself in RE5, Chris and Sheva did that by injecting him with more of the suppressent Excella gave him, sending his body into overload. Also, you're missing Zero on that list.
-"Wesker is basically Agent Smith in The Matrix - a perfect villain for the first story, but so effective that directors kept making him more powerful in sequels, even when doing so made no sense. Wesker is no longer just a prominent spy monitoring Raccoon City's police force to keep Umbrella informed of your progress. He's also a prospective Umbrella executive, a double-agent for multiple corporations, and secretly harbors a supervillain scheme to replace humans with mutants. Wesker wears so many hats across the series that his presence has been stripped of power - he's just a generic antagonist to introduce when the stakes must be artificially raised."
I don't entirely agree with the Agent Smith claim, but that's another discussion. But I will clarify that Wesker didn't harbour some supervillain scheme to make people into mutants. First, that only came about after he met Spencer, where he learnt about his origins. Second, RE5 wasn't about turning people into mutants, it was about unleashing Ouroboros on the world to wipe out the genetically impure. Survival of the fittest and all that. Wesker's actions in RE5 are more rooted in nihilism than anything else, and while the idea of "shatter it all" isn't a new motive, and isn't automatically a compelling one, given everything we know about Wesker's backstory, I can see how he got to this point when we consider it all.
-"We can do better with Wesker, but not in the current Resident Evil backstory. Short of a prequel set in the 70s where a young Wesker falls from grace (hmm, there's a thought),"
Wesker was born around 1960 and began working for Umbrella at the age of 17, and joined the Arklay lab at the age of 18. You really want to do a RE story with a teenager (Rebecca Chambers notwithstanding).
"In general, Wesker works best when he has an equal footing with the protagonist, or just the slightest edge. If Pokemon was a Resident Evil spin-off, Wesker would be that rival who's with you from the beginning, rushing ahead to snag the best monsters for himself. He should be the protagonist of his own story, advancing secretive interests parallel to the player until they finally intersect at the end. That's why Wesker was so engaging as a fellow S.T.A.R.S. agent - he's a dark reflection of the player characters."
Personally disagree. Wesker's arguably the protagonist of Umbrella Chronicles, but Wesker as a STARS agent was never compelling. Taking RE1 in isolation, his motivations boil down to greed, and the voice acting only became tolerable for him by the remake, by which time Wesker had certainly been expanded upon. Wesker only became compelling once we started learning more about him. I can't define that exact point, but I'd say it was in promotional material for Zero and Code: Veronica, namely the Wesker Reports promotional material. Likewise, while I can't call him a deep character, RE5 does make him interesting from a gameplay standpoint. I mentioned above that RE5 was the last RE game I played. Part of that was due to the death of Wesker. With the series's core antagonist finally knocked off (by Chris, no less), it felt like a natural end to the series. Wesker himself in it wasn't the problem.
-"Most importantly, a reboot gives us the chance to give Wesker an interesting backstory. Deserved or not, Wesker is considered one of the most important video game villains of all time. Capcom could do so much more than simply make Wesker evil for evil's sake. Was his father a prominent Umbrella executive? Is there someone he cares about more than the innocents he lets die? Or maybe it's Wesker orchestrating the zombie outbreaks all along, because he believes it's the only way to attract S.T.A.R.S's attention to Umbrella's activities."
Considering all we know about Wesker's backstory already, I'd think it's interesting enoguh already. I also think the idea of humanizing Wesker is a terrible one. Even back in RE1, you could at least ascribe the idea of "selfish" being part of Wesker's characterization. But given the characterization he's received since then, games or otherwise, trying to humanize him goes against all that characterization. Some antagonists benefit from being sympathetic, but I don't think Wesker is one of them.
Now, there's also the question of whether Resident Evil needs rebooting. To that I say, I don't know. As I mentioned, RE5 was the last game I bought, partly because it felt like the natural end to the series, partly because it felt like it was straying away into action territory (though I still rank RE5 above quite a few RE games). But I really don't know if a reboot is the way to go. Reboots tend to be egregious enough, and I'm left to ask, what the point of it is? We know every plot twist in advance, we've already had a remake of the very first Resident Evil game, so if they're going to start a new series in a different time and place, I'm left to ask, why isn't that game part of the series, or why isn't it a new IP?
For me it was the crap controls, wobbly camera, awkward healing system, repetitive situations and patently idiotic characterization.Dango said:
RE6 has the best controls in the series. They distill complex combat mechanics into a handful of functions. Every classic RE that wasn't RE2 or Outbreak had bad controls. RE4 had bad controls. RE5 had bad controls. RE6 was like RE2 N64's control system reimagined as a third person character action game. The game integrates melee, movement, and shooting into a holistic package that few games have done anywhere near as well.Johnny Novgorod said:
This one is hugely subjective. If you're talking about established RE characters, I'd say you're wrong. RE6 may have translation issues, but the writing of existing RE characters is fairly solid. They fixed Leon, who was badly butchered in RE4. Chris' manly excesses from RE5 were dialled back. The new characters are another matter. I think they were fine for the most part, but opinions are opinions.Johnny Novgorod said:
I need to be aiming for the cover prompt to appear, and swerve the movement stick to pop out of cover? Bad design.Ambient_Malice said:
You lean out of cover by pressing WASD/moving the stick to "lean" from a cover surface. Press W, and you'll aim over the top. Press D while near a <- cover, and you'll lean around it, your character automatically switching guns to the relevant hand to keep the camera free.Johnny Novgorod said:
What exactly is wrong with that? If you want to leave cover, you lower your gun. RE6 isn't a game where you run around with your gun aimed constantly. The very act of raising your gun puts you into a different combat mode. The default mode is melee. Raising your gun puts you into shooting mode.
As for the "cover prompt", you should be SLIDING into cover if cover is waist high. You don't walk up to an overturned table and then press SPACE while aiming to crouch behind it. You run towards the overturned table and hit/hold Right Mouse Button to slide towards it, your character automatically taking up a cover stance when in close proximity to the cover surface because "aim" and "slide" are the exact same button.
Oh, I like that last idea. Wesker causing all of this because he's trying to get people to look into Umbrella. I think that could prove to be very interesting. A man who tried to do things right, tried to play inside the law, but it just wasn't working. And so, he slowly begins to fall, causing a small outbreak that kills a few people. No big deal. Sacrifices must be made and such. But it's not enough. No one goes after Umbrella, and worse, Umbrella helps clean up the mess, coming out looking like heroes. And so he tries again, and again, and again, to the point where entire cities are being destroyed and Wesker has become the very thing he was trying to stop--evil. He no longer cares about trying to save people from Umbrella. He cares about stopping Umbrella, and the cost is no longer important.
All those instructions only illustrate how clunky the controls are. That and "you've been playing the game wrong".Ambient_Malice said:
How are these perfectly straightforward mechanics "clunky"? The mechanics are DIFFERENT to other TPS games. This doesn't make them "bad". If RE6 has a failure, it is the failure to comprehensively teach players how these mechanics work. But they work regardless.Johnny Novgorod said:
Maybe I'm not expressing myself properly - I understand how it works. I just find it counterintuitive as fuck.Ambient_Malice said:
Oooooh, and then, when he finally realizes he's as bad as Umbrella, he infects himself because it's all he knows. And it's what finally lets him take out two birds with one stone.Sniper Team 4 said:
Even Wesker becoming a literal monster works better in this scenario.
Something being intuitive is a matter of perspective. There's nothing "intuitive" about pressing a button to take cover, Winback-style. Yet many games do it. There's nothing "intuitive" about Playstation games using X for "Yes". It's simply a convention. RE6's cover system can be distilled to "aim/slide = take cover". It is different to most of its peers, but it follows clear, poorly explained logic.Johnny Novgorod said:
All I want is for RE4 to be smashed together with RE 0/1/2/3. Actual fucking zombies, BUT with larger areas like The Village that have multiple options, BUT with limited ammo and an emphasis on survival, BUT with actual hordes rather than the two or three at a time (hordes that cannot realistically be killed with mere firearms), BUT with a decent camera angle and controls (RE4).
There isn't, to my knowledge, a single game from the past decade that comes anywhere close to what I'm thinking of. The whole "village" part in particular was such a cool design that has yet to be replicated in anything I've seen.
There isn't, to my knowledge, a single game from the past decade that comes anywhere close to what I'm thinking of. The whole "village" part in particular was such a cool design that has yet to be replicated in anything I've seen.
That first moment in the village when all the enemies come charging out at you? I was freaking out. The parts of the game where The characters were surrounded on all sides by a huge horde of enemies were some of the most tense for me.chadachada123 said: