When I was twelve years old I was introduced to Resident Evil 2. I had heard nothing about the game, except that it something that your mother would not want you to play which was high praise for prepubescent boys. Unlike today, Zombies did not have the iconic presence in my head as my parents had failed to introduce me to things like Night of the Living Dead or other classic horror flicks. To be honest, I was too much of a pansy to watch them. Which is why it was probably for the best that I didn’t know anything about Resident Evil.
In the middle of the night, two friends (one owning the Playstation, the other owning the game) and myself sat in the living room, embarking on a nightmarish journey through a destroyed Raccoon City. The game frightened us with its undead monsters and captivated us with its mystery about the Umbrella Corporation. After spending night watching the gory saga unfold with my friends, I convinced my mother to buy myself a copy of the game, describing it as a puzzle game where the protagonist escaped monsters. When the game arrived I played it obsessively, I explored every corner of the police station, sewer system, and Umbrella facility. I beat the game twice as Leon and twice as Claire. Then I played Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and Code Veronica in one weekend, staying up through the night with my step-brother to enhance the scares with the darkness of night.
Resident Evil 4 signaled the end of an era. The game would never be the same. As excited as I was to play a new game focused around Leon, I could not help but feel like something was lost by ditching the slow, menacing zombies. I felt betrayed by having enhanced controls that replaced the old, complicated, clunky commands I had learned to master. Resident Evil 4 was an amazing game, for some it was the pinnacle of the series, however Resident Evil 4 began a trend that the the developers of the series have been unable to escape.
Recently, Capcom released Resident Evil Revelations which received praise for returning some of the gameplay from the original foursome in an attempt to inject some horror into what has become an action-first series. Unfortunately, Revelations couldn’t really deliver the same feelings of plodding terror captured in the first games. Even when Revelation hits its “old school” Resident Evil stride, it still doesn’t quite translate.
Part of what made Resident Evil so terrifying was its terrible controls. To a generation of gamers that were still trying to wrap their heads around 3D environments, the controls were simply part of the experience, something that you got used to. However, now clunky controls can turn people off from a game completely. It never used to bother people that protagonists would get struck in poorly constructed environments, it was simply part of the drama. The game’s imperfections fed into the gameplay in a way that naturally enhanced its survival horror roots.
When we weren’t overlooking Resident Evil’s terrible controls, we were ignoring the atrocious dialogue. The dialogue in the first Resident Evil games felt like it was scribed by a five year old. However, audiences were so mystified by characters simply speaking, the awful dialogue didn’t stick out as clearly as it does today. The bad writing in the early Resident Evil games felt like the campy stuff one would find in a classic Romero flick or an old school slasher movie. The stories weren’t all bad, concise and more personal tales chronicled players simply trying to escape a mansion, a city, or a strange island. These types of settings don’t normally fit with the visions of AAA developers, even the praised Resident Evil Revelations opts to cut away from the moody, abandoned ship for globetrotting locales.
In some ways, becoming a staple AAA franchise is the worst thing that could have happened to Resident Evil. The large scale budgets require blockbuster storytelling and easy-to-use gameplay that has betrayed much of what the original games were about. In some ways, Resident Evil means something completely different to this generation of players, much like Star Wars has a new meaning to moviegoers. While those of us who played the original games cry out for a reboot, remake, or simply a return to form, the problem may not lie with Capcom as much as it lies with us. We expect new things from video games, in many ways we expect things that the Resident Evil series never offered us. If those original games came out in this, or the next generation, would they still hold the same place in our hearts?
Resident Evil, in its original form, is a statement of the time it was made. It may even be a statement of who we used to be as players, people who were gluttons for gory punishment, imperfect controls, and poor storytelling. With new a new age of graphics, an increased focus on narrative, and astronomical financial gambles, video games have lost their innocence. Thus, us as players have become a bit jaded with mainstream development and publishing. So many games have become cookie cutter versions of themselves, its hard to imagine a world where something like the early Resident Evil games existed. Maybe we were starry-eyed at the 3D worlds and pre-rendered cut scenes, but I like to think when we first encountered Resident Evil we had a naivete that allowed us to, not only look past a games flaws, but love them for their flaws. I may never be able to recapture that feeling I had, playing Resident Evil 2 in the dead of night with my friends, so instead of speculating on how Capcom could best duplicate their success, I am hoping–however unlikely it is– they lay the series to rest. I want their to be a new series for a whole new generation of twelve years olds, staying up late in their parents basements, discovering the thrill of survival horror.
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