Line #55 Headscratchers/ResidentEvil1


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3	[[folder:Thanks For The Radio, Richard. I-- Hey, Wait... Why Didn't We All Bring One Of These?!]]
4	* The header says it all. Why would two special forces teams heading into an unknown and almost certainly dangerous situation not give all their members a way to stay in contact with each other, not just the comms specialist and the chopper pilot? Maybe Wesker arranged it to create confusion and sabotage any other rescue efforts, but at the same time you'd think he'd have an even easier go of manipulating the rest of his team if he had a way to easily get in touch with them and give commands without having to appear in person.
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7	[[folder: Dangerous Cannibals? Let's Split Up!]]
8	* Hey, Alpha Team! We just found the wrecked and completely abandoned chopper of Bravo Team, the ones we've been searching for since dusk today, and in this chopper, we found the mangled and mutilated corpse of their pilot. ''Let's wander around in the woods in complete darkness for hours instead of heading back to the city and telling the commissioner that one of their members has died horribly and the investigation will probably need federal help''. For that matter, why did Alpha Team decide to begin this operation so late in the day?
9	** They weren't wandering around for hours. They were on the ground for a few minutes, maybe, before their helicopter pilot freaked the hell out and left when they were ''attacked by killer mutant dogs''.
10	*** There was an obvious transition of time between Joseph finding Kevin in the helicopter and subsequently getting mauled to death, which shows they were on the ground longer than just a few minutes. Even then, it doesn't really matter how long they were walking around ''after'' they found him, only that they didn't immediately drop everything they were doing and call back to the city for help.
11	** While we're on this; Hey, Bravo Team! Our helicopter is wrecked and we're stranded in the middle of the woods. ''Let's completely abandon our mission and search around for a war criminal who has killed his military escort single (and possibly bare) handedly and is probably much, much better trained than us. Even though this whole thing is probably way out of our jurisdiction''. While we're at it, let's all split up so it's guaranteed that should one of us encounter him, they'll be outclassed in every single way and probably get killed horribly. '''All in complete darkness!'''
12	*** The splitting up is stupid, but an escaped prisoner who (they think) has committed multiple murders couldn't be more within their jurisdiction. They are basically the Raccoon City SWAT team, they don't have the luxury of saying "Whoa, this guy's dangerous, we should leave him to his own devices."
13	** Could this all be possibly be connected to the fact that Alpha Team was being led by the same man who was planning to lead them into the zombie-infested mansion so he could get some test data on the bioweapons he helped develop, with the main goal of betraying Umbrella and selling the data to competitors? Basically, the answer is Wesker. Why did they go so late in the day? Wesker told them that leaving Bravo Team out there another night wasn't an option. Why didn't they leave when they found the chopper pilot? Wesker told them to keep searching for Bravo Team, and the rest of the team didn't feel like abandoning their comrades. As for why Bravo Team abandoned their mission to track down Billy, they knew he was in the area while they didn't know where the cannibals they were hunting were, and they could have effectively found the latter while looking for the former. As for splitting up, my hunch is that they were supposed to stay somewhat close to one Bravo Team member, they were armed and weren't expecting to be mauled by zombie dogs, and no one they were after had guns as far as they knew. Splitting up meant they could cover more ground, and they intended to stick close enough so they could be within sprinting distance of each other (which is why Edward or whoever that Bravo Team guy was fell into the train). Not perfect, but this is Resident Evil after all.
14	*** While I believe what the above troper said about Alpha Team, I still think Bravo Team splitting up was a stupid idea. What I'm talking about is less about ''how'' they decided to split up, but ''why''. They knew that there was a group of around 10 or so cannibalistic people in the forest along with an armed and extremely dangerous convict, and they knew that should something go wrong, they would have absolutely no way out of the forest beyond just running around and getting lost. Splitting up would also inevitably lead to everybody losing one another and possibly getting killed, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS. The whole 'stay somewhat close to one another' theory is equally as bad. We know for a fact that Bravo Team is the least experienced out of the two teams (hell, one of their members is a freaking chemist), so unless they kept in constant radio contact with one another, which is something only Enrico seems to be actively trying to do, they would inevitably lose one another and, you guessed it, get lost in the woods.
15	*** This leads back to a whole bunch of other stuff that doesn't make much sense; what the hell was Bravo Team's plan exactly? Wander around the woods for a while or just comb the woods with a search light until they find the cannibals? If so, why did they arm up so heavily? Why did only 3 people out of the six man team seem to have radios? ''WHY DID THEY SPLIT UP?'' Why did they send the combat medic (who's apparently the most inexperienced out of the team) to wander away on her own instead of staying with somebody just in case they got hurt? Why was it that only one person in the entire team seems to be trying to keep radio contact with the rest of the group? How the hell did Wesker convince the team that it was necessary to bring a ''grenade launcher'' into a densely wooded area to use against a group of ordinary (cannibalism aside) people?
16	*** Given how news in the town (the Scrapbook file says as much) reported that there were rampant animal attacks in the Arklay forest, it paid to be prepared, hence the heavy artillery. Bravo Team's plan was to go to the house in question (or fly and do reconnaissance or something) and put an end to the cannibals; but the chopper was sabotaged: hence the crash. They split up, because having a group of six armed men would've risked a faulty misfire and one of their own getting hurt. Rebecca was sent away to scout; and it wasn't like they were expecting to get eaten alive by ''undead killer dogs.'' Enrico may have been just barking orders and the others probably not talking back. That, or if I had to guess, Combat High: too freaked out by what they saw to respond to their leader.
17	*** The novelisations of Resident Evil note that the S.T.A.R.S. are an anti-terrorist/anti-drug task force specifically trained to operate alone, rather than with partners as most police forces do. And it should be noted that under the circumstances, neither team did too badly: Alpha's only canon casualties were Joseph Frost (killed in the initial ambush) and Wesker. Bravo fared worse, but the team members who die early were the pilot and the chemist (who likely had less training than the others) and the sharpshooter (who was killed by a few hundred crows -- ''not'' a good situation for a marksman to be in). Then there's Richard Aiken, who actually stuck with Rebecca until a giant snake ate him, and Enrico Marini, who was taken out by Wesker's treachery.
18	*** Good response, but Rebecca was the chemist and she didn't die. You may be thinking of Edward Dewey, who was apparently designated as another marksman, auxiliary mechanic and primary pilot (but he served as co-pilot to Kevin Dooley so that he could primarily function as an operator on this mission).
19	*** The fact that they brought a grenade launcher into a wood isn't necessarily a problem. Standard fragmentation grenades would not cause a forest fire, nor would the exotic acid rounds. However, it would make sense for them to not deploy the incendiary type out in the forest. Also, for all they know the cannibals have their own heavy weaponry, so it makes sense to bring in the big guns just in case.
20	** It probably doesn't make a bit of difference and it doesn't make the situation any less confusing, but... as of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Richard has also been someone who seems to be making an effort to stay in contact with Rebecca as well.
21	** Also, radios of the type they are using (especially in 1998) are most reliable over short range, but less so the further you get away from the people you're trying to stay in contact with. This is also affected by things like numerous walls and floors in the building you're ensconced in (the mansion and the surrounding structures, and the other buildings shown in ''0'', including the train) or being in the midst of a dense forest (other times in the beginnings of the games, and with the forest surrounding the buildings in general). Not to mention how Rebecca and Billy went deep underground at the end of their game. It's established in one or the other, and perhaps both, of ''1'' and ''0'' that the radios had choppy transmission due to these factors.
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24	[[folder: What's that moaning noise up there? Oh well, it's probably nothing.]]
25	* Why do Chris/Jill/Barry not notice the zombie(s) on the balcony above the dining room when they are in the dining room? Yes, I know the real answer is probably due to not wanting to give away that there were zombies up there and likely technological reasons as well, but still...
26	** Well, they probably couldn't see the zombies because 1) [[TruthInTelevision people don't look up a lot]], and as I recall it was pretty dark up there, and 2) They don't spend a lot of time in the hall (except for Barry, who is too focused on investigating the blood). The zombies probably couldn't see them either, which was why they were just standing around idly instead of shuffling around and making noise.
27	** It may also be possible that the zombies just weren't there until later.
28	** This makes even more sense following the remake, where zombies can move to different rooms.
29	** Even if they were already up there, if you notice most of the zombies tend to stand completely silently until they see you, even when you audibly open and close the door when you enter a room. Not to mention, when you first enter the dining room, a piercing and distracting grandfather clock is ticking.
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32	[[folder: The Spencer Mansion? Nah, couldn't be!]]
33	* Probably the stupid question of the hour, but how is it nobody in S.T.A.R.S. is aware of where they are the moment they enter the mansion? Notes found in RE2 and 3 indicate the presence of the Spencer estate in the woods is common knowledge in Raccoon City. Why is it when they enter the mansion, nobody goes "Hmmmm... big ass mansion... Ah! I know exactly where we are now!".
34	** The Bravo team might have known but were all too busy dying to care. The Alpha Team, however, has at least one member who is out of touch with the events of the city. Mr. Redfield didn't know what Umbrella was, after all. Also, Wesker might have been giving them fake coordinates. "No, we're not in Arklay forest. We're in the OTHER forest on the outskirts of Raccoon City!".
35	** Going by the dialogue in the remake, maybe Chris knows about Umbrella in general terms (a big pharmaceutical multinational) but not that they are specifically headquartered in Raccoon City and produce medical supplies, or that the mansion is connected to them.
36	** Likely they knew very well where they were, for all the good it did them. They're in a big ass mansion, surrounded by zombie dogs, in the middle of an apparently vast forest. Why would it impact that situation that they knew where they were?
37	** OP here: In the long run, it probably wouldn't have affected anything, I just think it's weird everyone's going "where the hell are we?" when they should know ''precisely'' where they are.
38	** As far as I know, all references to the mansion in [=RE2=] and 3 are specifically regarding the mansion incident. The mansion was certainly common knowledge in the city ''after'' the S.T.A.R.S. survivors reported the incident, but there's no indication that it was well-known ''before''.
39	** The characters would have been aware of the mansion existing, but if they hadn't seen it before and were disoriented from being chased by the dogs (in the woods, also in the night), it's more than reasonable that they wouldn't be too sure where they were.
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42	[[folder: Unknown Monsters...]]
43	* The infamous Keeper's Diary mentions a monster in one of its pages that I'm ''certain'' does not appear in the actual game - I think it's described as being like a ''gorilla with no skin'' or something along those lines? So which monster is this meant to be? It vaguely sounds like one of the Lickers, but could it be one of the ape-based RE0 monsters? It just doesn't sound like anything that appears in the game.
44	** I assumed that referred to the Hunters. They walk with a hunched-over gait and long arms, so I gathered they were meant to look more primate-like in an earlier build.
45	** It's the Eliminators from ''Resident Evil 0''.
46	** No it's not. It may seem like it is, but RE0 wasn't created at the time of this game, let alone were the Eliminators even conceptualised. It's most likely a reference to the Hunters. Remember, what a guy describes may not be one for one to what it actually is.
47	** He is absolutely referencing the Hunters. They are reptilian, but they have the physical shape, gait and mannerisms of a gorilla type creature.
48	** Gorilla with no skin could be referring to the Chimera you encounter in the labs later on. Their walk could be seen as primate-like and they also like to climb and hang off the ceilings like they were tree branches.
49	** There's also the possibility of it being the Tyrant. At a glance, it looks like a nightmarish combination of organs and (albeit, pale) muscle tissue, and they're sometimes depicted in a hunched stance. The Tyrant might have only been put on ice when shit started getting real enough to abandon the lab.
50	*** Except the "creatures" are obviously referred to as a plural, and the blatantly retconned Prototype Tyrant from [=RE0=] wouldn't be thought up for a few more years. It's the Hunters, guys; don't overcomplicate this. The form factor has a somewhat superficially similar resemblance to an ape, but they're also described as intelligent and sadistic, which is definitely borne out by the Hunters' behavior when you encounter them.
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53	[[folder:Use of the mansion]]
54	* Did Umbrella staff make of the mansion itself for offices and such? You find offices that look like they've been used, but everything also looks long abandoned even though the outbreak happened recently.
55	** It's plausible that it was used as such at an earlier time, though it's never clear how the mansion was staffed. The owner of the mansion may have cut the staff down to a minimum and thrown the office staff to the zombie dogs. It's a stretch, but considering the mansion seems to have been built some time in the 60s if the typewriters are any indication, it's a possibility.
56	** The mansion would probably look decent, if dated, with better lighting - at least in the remake. The game's colour grading flattens the colour that should be there (imagine if the lights were a more natural warm yellow, for instance), and the game also takes place at night. Some corners are disused (such as the broken shotgun closet), but the rest looks like it could've been functional as little as a few weeks ago. To the researchers, it would probably feel like staying at a hotel that hadn't been updated for a few decades.
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60	[[folder: Why wasn't Alpha Team more heavily armed?]]
61	* This is something that has bothered me since the very first Resident Evil. The player can find several files in the mansion that contain newspaper clippings about the mysterious deaths that occurred recently in the Arklay Mountains. The information presented suggests they were the work of very strong creatures, at least one of them powerful enough to completely remove someone's foot from their body. Yet when the police finally investigate the forest they're only armed with 9mm pistols. Why would they go in so lightly armed?
62	** The more you have on you, the slower you go in real life. And despite what one would read in the news (which to a person grounded in reality, would sound like hogwash especially with the closing along the lines of "if you're into danger, wanna try?"), actually seeing monsters or the like is a whole different beast to people not even expecting them; much less not even trained in dealing with them. They expected a search and rescue from at worst, hostile gangs or crazy people, maybe a wild animal or two, not undead killer dogs or zombies.
63	** Also, they very likely DID have more supplies and weaponry... in the helicopter... which took off at the first sign of trouble.
64	** Agree with the above point, but also remember that Joseph is carrying a shotgun and Barry is carrying his Colt, so two of the team definitely were packing. Chris is also an expert marksman, so even a pistol would have been plenty in his hands and I think the game shows this since he seems to have a slightly better chance of critical hits on zombies than Jill. That would only leave Jill and Wesker.
65	** They went in with a freaking rocket launcher, it's just it sat uselessly in the helicopter until the last moments of the game. There easily could have been more weaponry in there.
66	** Also Wesker is said to be an ex-Army officer so he probably has some shooting skills, and Jill, being ex-Delta Force, is definitely no slouch either.
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70	[[folder: What is the title screen image once you beat the game in the remake?]]
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72	* What are we actually looking at here. Kind of looks like a green eye but what is the frame around it?
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76	[[folder: Random Shark]]
77	* In the DS port, Rebirth Mode will add a second enemy type among the main types in some rooms, such as crows with Hunters. Nothing out of the ordinary and believable that the two creatures could be in the same room. On your first trek through the courtyard by the waterfall, you encounter two zombie dogs... and a random shark flopping about on the ground. The real (out of universe) answer is the shark was there was to screw with your auto-aim so you couldn't target the dogs, but what's the logic behind a random shark found in the middle of nowhere?
78	** Is it possible it somehow got turfed out and beached by the waterfall, losing it's family and nesting grounds from the lab?
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81	[[folder: How did Umbrella move so quickly with the Tyrant project and offshoots?]]
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83	* I know that in the ever-expanding lore, the T-Virus was in development for a long, long time, with research eventually culminating in the Tyrant, the second of it's kind [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil0 after the botched prototype]]. The creature is implied to be the high point of Umbrella's research at that time, and yet a few months later Umbrella is capable of deploying not only mass-production models to terrorise our heroes in the city, but also the ''Nemesis''; this is to say nothing of the numerous special Tyrants that popped up at the same time, or fairly quickly afterward. Are we meant to believe these were developed in around two months or so, or would Umbrella have been receiving updates all the while from Arklay? And is there something special about the Arklay-produced Tyrant? Because it sure doesn't seem like it.
84	** This one's easy. Umbrella is a BIG company, with branches all over the world. Its even mentioned that the US and European branches were rivals, trying to outdo one another with their BOWs. Combine that with the fact that Umbrella is decades old by the time RE1 starts, and its no surprise that they have dozens of different creatures in various stages of completion, just waiting to be deployed.
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88	[[folder: Carrying Chimera to term?]]
89	* The book "''Inside of bio-Hazard''" reveals how Chimera are made, they took a human embryo, added insect DNA, using the T-Virus as genetic glue (similar to how they made Hunters) and then forced a homeless woman to carry it to term, eventually cloning the best results, the bit that gets me however, is how they managed to do that? What with the T-Virus being 100% lethal, if you got even a drop of infected blood in wound, how could a woman be able to carry a Chimera, a being literally pulsing with T-infected tissue, to term without zombifying within a few days?
90	** That same book explains that the strain of the T-Virus used for creating Hunters is not the same as the one that caused the incident (the Epsilon strain). So presumably, that strain does not turn people into zombies.
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93	[[folder: Enrico's shooter]]
94	* I just listed this under Cutscene Incompetence for both games, but I simply can't comprehend why Chris or Jill and Barry just moped over the guy's corpse and let the shooter escape instead of, like any competent police officer, immediately chasing after him and potentially identifying and capturing him.
95	** Wouldn't they be quite rightly concerned about getting ambushed by the shooter, who made the killshot from an advantageous position? By collecting themselves and grieving for a moment, Wesker had time to get away, and this may have saved their life.
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98	[[folder:Fixing the broken doorknob]]
99	* Why does Wesker fix the broken knob for you when he actively wants you all to die in the mansion? Or for that matter, leave you extra ammo and healing spray in the saferoom in Chris's route (it makes more sense in Jill's where it's Barry who does it)?
100	** Simple, he hasn't collected enough combat data yet, and until then Jill and Chris are more useful alive then dead.

Context Headscratchers / ResidentEvil1