Resident Evil: In Depth Part 2

Hmm? No, you're the one who's two months late!

Yep we're finally back with Resident Evil Sundays, which is thing I've certainly already established and doesn't need to be introduced at all. But just for the hell of it I shall oblige; this will be my series of blogs in which I go through and micro-analyse all the elements of Resident Evil that I think make it one of the greatest horror franchises of all time as well as just fun games to play through in your spare time. I had originally planned to cover them in a much more concise time-frame but plans don't always work and I'm a huge lazy sack of- the point is that I'm here now, no? Now, if you've been abreast of things you'll likely have thought something along the lines of "You're doing this weekly? Then how in the heck are you going to manage to get to Resident Evil 3 before the release next month." And that, Jimmy, is a great point! The answer to which is: I dunno, I probably won't. But considering I'll be playing that game on my very first playthrough anyway, perhaps it would make more sense for me to hold off on my whole 'in depth breakdown' until I understand things fully. Look, I'll figure it out when I get there, until then; Resident Evil.

Now, as you can imagine from coming back to any save game after a 2 month hiatus, I hit this game a little discombobulated yesterday. My Jill was heavily wounded, criminally under equipped and only had one key. (I really didn't get a whole lot done, huh?) But what this did give me a chance to highlight, though unintentionally, was the importance of planning in a game where that doesn't initially seem like it'll be too hefty of an issue. Even though I'd played this game so much that I could probably draw you a half-reliable floor-plan of the Spencer Mansion on the back of a napkin, having no idea where I was in terms of progression did sort of regress me to knocking at every door I came across in order to see which one opened. Eventually this resulted in me going to the otherside of the Mansion and wasting my bullets in an encounter that I didn't need to even partake in. (That's peak Resident Evil performance right there!) Soon I ended up exactly in the place that I needed to be, although I get there from the wrong direction, which alerted too many zombies and put me in the FUBAR situation that you see below. (Points to Capcom for that great camera angle!)

The lesson of all that; you can't go wondering around willy-nilly without thinking things through, and that's one of the great strengths of a Resident Evil game. Despite looking like typical action adventure affairs upon first glance, the second you get ahold of the controls you'll become frighteningly aware of two key things; first of all how little ammunition you have on you and how hard the zombies are to take down. (Note that I'm currently playing on Normal, so you don't even have to be on Hard to have difficulty with the zombies.) This makes it so that every threat is one that you take seriously and Zombies, although bumbling, are never become a cake-walk to go up against. This sets the baseline for the tension that the ambience of the game builds and builds upon, laying the ground works for that patented Resident Evil experience.

So how do you start getting a hand of things in a manner that's sensible? Well, the first step of that is getting ahead of your inventory management and learning how to utilise safe rooms. As you'll have seen previously, in Resident Evil you are only privy to a limited amount of inventory spaces for holding all of your weapons and items that are needed to progress the game, and the only way to put items down is to either destroy them (Which you never want to do) or deposit them in a Item box. Item boxes are found in every safe room and are linked between each room, allowing a smart player to take only the items that they need in order to survive the trip to the other side of the mansion before retrieving the necessary item to complete a puzzle. (Fun Fact: In the original concept for the game the item boxes were not linked, making item management a literal beast to contend with.) Mastering this allows you to impart a little bit of 'gather and retrieve' play into your game as you'll find yourself venturing out into the mansion in order to gather health and ammo and bring it back to your reserves. There's some modern zombie games that base their entire identity around such a concept (I'll cover you in a bit; State of Decay) and RE just manages to slip that in.

At the end of the last blog I finished with the sword key, and that is the moment where the game really opens up into an investigation as you start exploring exactly where it is that you can now go. Along the way you'll begin to learn some of the unique traits that each playable character has, making repeat playthroughs feel genuinely distinct. Namely, Chris can take slightly more damage, has a more powerful Knife and a lighter that he keeps in his special pocket so that it doesn't take up any of his inventory slots; Jill, on the otherhand, has a slightly easier route through the mansion and an unlimited use Lockpick that she can use to open any door that isn't key/puzzle locked. Whilst utilising this, it's likely that players will come across the broken shotgun as it is situated literally right next to the game's first safe room. This is one of the clever ways in which Capcom chooses to test the player by literally handing them the solution to a later puzzle early on to see if they can figure it out down the line. (Of course, that comes more into play for Chris' playthrough as Jill's has an iconic get-out-jail-free card that you just have to exploit whenever you play as her.)

With this freedom you'll also be granted your first chance to really go toe-to-toe with your undead foes as they start to really come out of the woodworks. The developers use this as a chance to familiarise the player with the baseline zombie and ensure that they know exactly what is required in order to take them down. You begin to learn about their lurching movement and most importantly the way that they lunge if you get too close, something which can be exploited in order to run past them. And, as this is such an early stage of the game for which the player is inevitably under-equipped, it's practically a necessity to learn how to run past zombies. The method for pulling off these 'dukes' requires pretty on-the-money timing and makes navigation stressful in that distinct Resident Evil style.

Of course, if you are so inclined you can also use this opportunity to learn exactly what ways you can exploit your opponent to get the upper-hand on them. In the original Resident Evil, this can mean learning all the weaknesses in the animation so that you can easily run past them or even take them down. Some of my favourites is the way that there's no actual grapple attack animation on the stairs because of the potentially awkward collision, instead all they have is this stiff acid-vomit attack which is damaging but takes a second to wind up. With that knowledge you can pretty reliably trick zombies onto stairs so that you can run past them without a chance of them biting you. Additionally, there's the fact that zombies posses no sideway attack animations, only one for directly in front of them and directly behind. This means that if you're nimble and don't mess up, you can pretty easily take down a zombie without spending ammo just by running around it and stabbing it in the legs. (The leg stab animation has the longest reach for some reason.)

However, as a learned Resident Evil player you'll likely have come to terms with the fact that there's a little more to worry about with these zombies than just avoiding and killing them. On one's first playthrough this is something that you'd likely never know, but that's just another way that this game hides one of it's layers until latter playthroughs. By this I'm of course referring to resurrection. Now to be fair, the game does tell players about this through a note situated inside the first safe room. It describes how the 'beings' may appear to be dead but in fact are able to come back to life. Unfortunately this is a game about zombies so you'll likely mistake that for world building instead of a hint of what's to come. Essentially, zombies aren't killed when you shoot them down, only put out of commission. They will be reanimated roughly one hour later (the time differs depending on your difficulty settings) and in doing so be ascended to a more powerful version of themselves called Crimson Heads. Of course, this game isn't all that long so player's will only really have to worry about this once a playthrough, but that's still a big kick in the head for those who thought they were effectively clearing out the mansion early game.

The only methods for effectively and permanently clearing out zombies are either to blow off their heads (obviously) or to burn their bodies to a crisp after you put them down. (There was a rumour that 'destroying' their legs with repeated leg stabs also worked, but I don't think that's true.) This mechanic was actually newly added for the 2002 remake, as were the Crimson Heads themselves, and its implementation was actually quite deftly handled. Now throughout the mansion you'll find jugs of oil that can be gathered with a flask and used to burn zombies as long as you have a lighter in your inventory too. Of course, in keeping with the 'survival horror' leanings of the game, there is only a limited amount of oil that the player can discover and utilise, meaning that you'll have to pick and choose exactly which bodies you need eliminated and which you can live with. The strategy never stops.

But what if you didn't know about any of that that in your first playthrough, (which, as we discussed, was very likely) does that just mean that you're screwed in the late game because the mansion will be full-to-the-brim with suped-up zombies? Well, it seems like Capcom actually accounted for that possibility with two failsafes. Firstly, there's a limit to how many zombies can actually respawn meaning that you'll never be too overwhelmed, and secondly the zombies don't just come back ready to murder-ize you. Actually they spawn face down on the floor close to where you left them but with visible changes to their model to let you know that they are a potential problem. These grounded zombies will not rise again unless you actively step on their corpses, adding an extra layer of strategy to the early game body disposal as the player needs to figure out the places that they are likely to return to late-game and the bodies they need to remove to facilitate that movement. This mechanic is even foreshadowed very early on with your first Crimson Head who you'll find facedown in the mirror room. (Meaning you can bump into him during the first act if you're not careful.) Of course, an experienced player would know all about him and avoid waking him up with careful footfalls around him. I, on the otherhand, well- just look...

With the sword key now granting the player access to the eastern wing of the Spencer Mansion, the player can find themselves in some of the more atmospheric locations in the early game. One of most memorable locations for anyone who played through this game would be the connecting hallway at the east most corner which is notable for being pale white and deadly silent when you first come across it. All that's there to break the monotonous silence are the player's footsteps alongside the occasional crackle of lighting that illuminates the interiors. Oh, and of course there's the subtle cracking of a nearby window which I had completely forgotten about when I ran through there yesterday. This location is so effective, in fact, that Paul W.S. Anderson actually used it in the movie adaptation, which is incredible when you think about all the great visuals that movie straight up ignored.

Your explorations will then probably take you to the washroom, where you'll face one of the most pedestrian jump-scares that this game has to offer. Looking into a full bath tub only to be attacked by a zombie is hardly the most original thing in the world, but I appreciate the send-up to traditional horror tropes none-the-less. What's more unsettling for me is the room next door which leads to a herb collection outside in a gated area. Just outside those gates, however, are a couple of undead dogs who seem keen on reminding you that you're not safe anywhere. For now they are held back by the gates so the player likely feels just safe enough to be lulled into a false sense of security. This is something that Resident Evil is great at, making you feel safe before robbing that security away from you when you least expect it.

Along the way there is a classic Resident Evil moment to catch as you can find yourself in a side room with a little bit of a puzzle to solve. There is a working shotgun on the wall that they player can grab, but doing so will activate a weighted trap which will prevent them from leaving the connecting room out of that place. Whatsmore, as soon as they enter that connecting room the ceiling will start slowly lowering down on the player just like the old Star Wars trash compactor, encouraging the player to return their stolen property. If you're playing as Chris this will likely present something of a conundrum. On one hand you're not leaving this shotgun behind and on the other hand the alternative is getting squashed into oblivion. Of course, the only solution is to use that broken shotgun from earlier to replace the weighted counter measure Indiana-Jones style. Although for Jill this scene is markedly easier. You see, for some reason Jill gives up the second she realises the doors won't open and just starts screaming for Barry, who happens to be nearby. Barry manages to shoot the door open and save you only to provide the immortal line. "A second later and you'd have been a Jill-sandwich!" Although, prepare to be heartbroken when I tell you; they actually changed the line in the remake to something just as dumb but not as snappy. (Damn you, Quality control!)

Finally you'll have worked you way around to just outside the second safe room on the Eastern wing, which incidentally is the same place that I got eviscerated in earlier. This is when the player will find themselves up against their first big challenge as they'll be in a large area with multiple floors and 3 present zombies. Now as long as you've been careful with how you've approached the area, you can handle the zombies one-by-one, but this will be the first time that the player is required to handle multiple threats at once. There are several ways to handle this, including and not limited to bringing heavy fire power to make short work of them, or choosing to take them out one by one with an abundance of caution. This is likely the moment when players will have a chance to put their play-style to the test and play in a way that works for them. As someone who is deftly allergic to using up resources in video games, I err towards the latter approach.

The environmental puzzle is another important aspect of Resident Evil, and in the eastern rooms you'll find an example of this due to an oddly shaped engraving just above a fireplace. Examining the area will provide no prompts to interact, all you have is an odd camera angle that tells you this is something significant in order to work things out. Luckily these puzzles tend to open themselves up in a fairly logical way. light the fire place and you'll see the engraving flood red hot and then press a chunk of wood up to the engraving and you'll sear a map of the mansion's second floor for you to use. (Odd, but functional.) These are the sorts of puzzles that really tug at the brain sometimes, which is why it makes sense to put such a logical and easy example up first in order to set that precedent in the player's mind.

Nearby is the next piece of the puzzle as there is a dog whistle with an attached note that drops snippets of lore and a direction. You'll hear that mister Spencer wanted an item hidden for some reason, so the staff had it tied around a dogs neck and attached a helpful picture of where the dog should be. (Disregard the fact that the picture is one a second floor balcony, so I have no idea how the dog manages to get up there.) Lacking any sort of waypoint, this is closet that this title gets to telling you where to go, by giving you a picture and relying on your recall to remember where it is. Once there all you need to do is blow the whistle and wait for the dog to show up. This will also throw the player into an encounter with the first new enemy type; the zombie dog, at which point Capcom wants to throw people off their game once again. The dog is fast and vicious and cannot be duked like normal zombies can. In fact, the most effective way to deal with these things is to just shotgun blast them and be done. (Luckily they can't revive like normal zombies can.)

Our next key comes back to item manipulation and critical thinking. Messing with the collar reveals that it contains a key with the Armour emblem emblazoned on it, however "it lacks the rigidity to be used like a proper key." Once again this puzzle has a clever solution as it turns out there is a much more solid Armour key that you'll have possible come across during your initial wondering around the mansion. Only this one is on a pedestal that locks you into a death trap as soon as you pick it up. (sound familiar?) All you have to do is re-utilise the information that you learnt from acquiring the shotgun and pull the old switcheroo, giving the player their next key to open up even more of the map to explore. This part of the game is all about that slow difficulty ramp and it's handled effectively and dynamically so that the player can solve anything by applying their mind to the problem. That is what makes Resident Evil just so accessible. We'll have to wait until next week to see how things ramp up, though, as I believe that's when the first boss fight happens. (See you then).