Capcom first released Resident Evil all the back in 1996 as a spiritual successor to Sweet Home (1993) to huge critical acclaim. As of December 31st, 2019 Resident Evil has sold 95 million units worldwide and as such spawned an incredible franchise with many ups and some downs. Having just recently entered a publishing deal with Nintendo, Capcom seen to recapture some of the success of the original game and completely remake Resident Evil from the ground up in a brand-new engine with improved graphics, gameplay and voice acting.
When the original game was released back in 1996, the voice acting at the time was incredible! To achieve two full campaigns with a fully voice acted cast and strikingly beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds and to compress and fit it all onto the Playstation’s 650MB Compact Disks was a technical achievement and firmly planted Capcom and Resident Evil ahead of the curb. However, communication between Capcom’s English and Japanese speaking departments was flawed, communication could take days and localisation and translations usually take place at the end of development. With deadlines looming, Capcom USA had to do what they could. At the time, the voice acting was a technical achievement, but the quality of delivery left some wanting more. However, this did in turn create the general theme and tone of the future games, as future instalments in the Resident Evil series continue to be dark and gruesome, although camp and flirty in its general voice quality.
I haven’t even explained what Resident Evil is!? With a franchise rapidly approaching 100 million units sold, Resident Evil is one of the biggest survival horror games in the industry, a genre they pretty much created and defined through 7 mainline entries and several spin-off games that toyed with new mechanics and new genres. Oh, and it has a hugely successful film franchise that started in 2002 and now features 6 films grossing more than $1.233 billion worldwide.
So, this publishing deal with Nintendo? It was a exclusivity agreement to bring the series to Nintendo, Resident Evil 2 and 3 were ported to the newly released GameCube and are widely regarded to be the best versions by the community. However, the director of the original game, Shinji Mikami wasn’t content to just port the first game (potentially due to how badly the game has aged throughout the years and poor localisation in western markets). In 2001 development began on recreating the game in its entirety. The team believed that the GameCube would allow them to “achieve motion picture quality visuals and create even more suspense and fear than the original”. Originally the game began with a traditional 3D style, featuring fully explorable areas with a player-controlled camera, something the series had never featured to this point. But, as development moved on, they decided to go back to the tried and true pre-rendered backgrounds. This allowed them to create beautiful environments with very little processing power for the home console, this allows more resources for things like Lighting, Particle effects and detailing within the character models.
Set on July 24th, 1998 a series of murders in the outskirts of Raccoon City have rocked the town. Raccoon City Police Department (RCPD) have assigned their top men (and girl) known as the Special Tactics and Rescue Service (STARS) to the job of investigating a large mansion in the Arklay Mountains. After contact with Bravo Team is lost (See Resident Evil Zero), Alpha Team is sent into to investigate the sudden disappearance. The player can now investigate the mansion room by room, puzzle by puzzle and of course – zombie by zombie to uncover the mystery of these murders and where Bravo Team went! The player later learns that illegal experiments have taken place under the jurisdiction of medical company “Umbrella”. Without spoiling too much, the following story features twists, turns, betrayals, laughs and of course... many zombies.
Gameplay improvements were made over the original too as several mechanics were tweaked for a modern audience to enjoy the game in a traditional sense. Zombies in the original games, once killed, would typically stay dead. Perhaps they could respawn during story elements or as time progressed but typical once you pop the head, they would stay down. In the Remake however, they added a brand-new enemy called the Crimson Head. These brutal hunting monstrosities would take the place of a dead zombie and feature crazy brutal strength and increased speed and movement – these things are not to be taken lightly. The player is given the option to combat these monsters before they spawn however, sprawled throughout the mansion is gas canisters where you can refill your gas flask, paired with a fluid lighter and you will be able to burn the corpses of dead Zombies to prevent them coming back as a Crimson. Due to the pre-rendered backgrounds being recreated for this new adventure, there are several new camera angles to see and feature some dynamic character tracking, for example; previously as your character moved from one side to the screen to the other, as you reach the each of the screen the next area would load and you would be able to continue this throughout the entire game. In the Remake, the camera will track and follow the character throughout certain screens and instead of loading a new area or background it would scroll and pan to see some free movement. In the Original game, there were two campaigns to choose from, Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield. In a way, these act as difficulty modes due to the gameplay mechanics of each character, Jill carries a lockpick on her that can allow you open doors and find extra items and she also has two extra inventory slots that allow her to carry more items or ammo. Chris has a larger health pool so he can take more hits before he bites the dust and both characters feature unique story elements that only they can experience by selecting the respective character. Certain parameters such as choices, speed of completion, difficulty and more can affect the ending and the rewards you get at the end of the game. Resident Evil is also renowned for creating tension by limiting the amount of time the player can save the game, Ink Ribbons is an item in the game that can be collected in the environments and the player must use them to save the game. There are only so many in the game and the developers have purposely placed them far enough away to help you sweat your worries away – so make every save count!
In a surprise livestream on YouTube, Capcom announced that previous Nintendo exclusives; Resident Evil Zero and Resident Evil Remake will be coming to Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 and PC in early 2015! With these new releases comes with it some new improvements as they want to make these the “definitive” versions. Resident Evil Remake on next gen consoles feature 16:9 presentation with smooth camera movement, improved 3D controls that remove the infamous “tank controls” and finally they have added 5.1 surround sound support for added tension.
In conclusion, it’s hard to argue that Resident Evil Remake is not the perfect “remake”. It features a complete re-creation of the story and features brand new quality of life improvements. With the original story, an improved tone and new scary elements, Resident Evil rises above all in being the flag-bearer for all future remakes and the next instalments in the mainline franchise.
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