Weekend Confirmed 108 - Resident Evil 6, Lost Planet 3, Fez, Super T.I.M.E. Force

So I'm just going to throw it out there that one of the main reasons I started taking video games seriously, and really enjoying them were the stories in the original Resident Evil games. And as such I'm going to break down Jeff's statements in this episode.

So when Jeff says:
"I can't name a Capcom property that isn't like that. ... This is a company that grew out of the arcades. And a lot of these properties are vestigial remains of the arcades. And that's not bad either. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm attached to their narrative."

So, aside from the inherent absurdity of calling Resident Evil inspired by arcade games, lets just start with the basic premise of the RE franchise. What was it that made those games so distinctive and exciting back in the 90s? Uhh.. well that they were FILMIC. The whole thing that Resident Evil 1 pioneered was that video games could be truly scary, because it used cinematic camera angles, music, and effective "boo" moments.

Beyond that most apparent aspect of presentation though---the games make constant allusions to various horror films: obviously zombies, but also a haunted house, booby traps, mutated giant snakes, sharks, alligators, and spiders, Frankenstein esque tyrants. So much of the original conception of Resident Evil was *homage to horror film.*

So these are two major points that immediately fly in the face of the notion that Resident Evil was built on the "vestiges of the arcade scene" and that one would have no attachment to the narrative.

But lets look a little deeper, at the content of the games, and how the homage translates into something we might actually feel attached to. Garnet mentioned Sheri of Resident Evil 2, lets consider what she is for a second:

An innocent young blonde girl, scampering around in the shadows of a police station, who is adopted by a tom boyish woman (Claire Redfield), and is chased relentlessly by a monster that wants to implant her with an embryo---that will gestate in her chest and eventually explode from her body.

Hmmm what. does. that. sound. like. what science fiction horror classic..... orphaned girl... embryo.... heroic woman... Oh gosh! That's right! It was Pac Man! Or no, I mean Ms. Pac Man!

So what we see here is RE2 transposing a really effective story element from one of the greatest horror films of all time into a zombie context. The way in which RE expands that plot idea though for its own purposes is that the mutant is actually Sheri's father, and you the player he is your greatest obstacle in the game.

Now think for a minute about all the creepy intense parables that evokes. William Birkin wants to track down and impregnate his daughter basically. In his first major form he has a tattered white shirt and wields some kind of pipe. He is this patriarchal figure that a young female outsider has to stop.

Ok so that's an argument for the content and meaning of the RE plot line. But lets make some empirical observations about the sheer significance of Resident Evil's narrative.

I would argue that RE2 is the first video game to ever use the concept of narrative continuity. It is resolutely an expansion and continuation of the first. It takes place in the same world as the first one, but not in the same setting. It uses characters who are different, but with relationships to the original cast. And it takes place in a part of a linear timeline established by the first game.

These are things that are incredibly rare for video games even today, at least in a credible way, and are not something to be scoffed at. Even Metal Gear Solid, perhaps the series most known for story, continually reinvents itself using meta devices like clones, virtual reality training, the idea that you are constantly a soldier being treated as a pawn.

RE2 is perhaps the first video game in history that was not by designed as a product of planned obsolescence---for the purpose of increasing the technical "fun" of the product, but in fact designed using planned canonical expansion.

But beyond even that there is the evidence in RE being one of the first original game properties with a novelized book series that ran for like 9 installments. And books that didn't just expand the universe, but would literally retrace the events of the games in prose narrative form.

As a fan I have loved the original fictional world of Resident Evil for an intriguing combination of the X-files and Dawn of the Dead. Its a great gore laced mystery surrounding a corrupt pharmaceutical corporation. Now everything Capcom has done over the years does kind of obfuscate that idea. But lets not just sit back and rewrite history.