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1[[quoteright:314:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lost.jpg]]
2
3-> ''"Brotherhood, strength and fortitude... in the face of the Angry Night."''
4-->-- The last radio transmission received from Russia, looped endlessly over 12,000 stations before the fall of the Red Curtain.
5
6''Resistance'' is a series of [[FirstPersonShooter First-Person Shooters]] (beginning with ''Resistance: Fall of Man'') by Creator/InsomniacGames. Yes, the guys who did ''Franchise/SpyroTheDragon'' and ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank''.
7
8[[AlternateHistory In this era]], the Spanish-American War was prevented via diplomacy, UsefulNotes/WorldWarI was mostly contained to Europe and its ideological fallout greatly diminished by the lack of US intervention and the triumph of the Russian Monarchy over the Bolsheviks. With the only conflict being a simmering tension with Moscow, and with the lack of American capital to fuel rebuilding -- and to go under during the Great Depression -- the nation-states of Europe are forced to unite to both reconstruct themselves and to contain the Russian Czar, who isolates Russia from the world behind the "Red Curtain," a heavily-fortified border wall along the western frontier of the Russian Empire (and reminiscent of the Berlin Wall, only manned by the Czar’s StateSec instead of communists). As a result, the mutual hostility within Europe largely fades away and their economies are relatively quickly rebuilt. As such UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini, UsefulNotes/JosephStalin, UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler and their compatriots never rise to power, and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII never happens.
9
10Or, rather, never in a way humanity could have predicted.
11
12After a few decades of tension between the West and the Russian Empire and some disturbing reports from those spies who manage to evade the Czar's secret police, Russia apparently disintegrates overnight. Refugees come to nearby countries pleading for help and warning of something called "The Angry Night" before dying mysteriously. A team sent to investigate disappears, and shortly afterward, in the final weeks of 1949, the Red Curtain falls apart to let loose a deluge, which continental Europeans will soon dub "The Deathless Plague." Within months, most of Eurasia is overrun by a race of creatures called the Chimera, who spread by infecting normal humans with the Chimera virus.
13
14A year passes, and the British Isles alone have thus far been spared by the Chimeran horde that has all but destroyed humanity on the mainland thanks to the English Channel - until the Chimera dig under and pop up in the middle of London, decapitating most of the surviving UED leadership and delivering England into enemy hands in one fell swoop as the survivors flee North to Scotland and try to hold off the horde. The USA, whose government has been strictly censoring all information coming from Europe and passing it off as an influenza epidemic, quickly sends help. The US soldiers are told they will be fighting an invading Russian army, and are completely unprepared for what they actually encounter. The first wave of their relief force is slaughtered within hours save for one man - Sergeant Nathan Hale, an Army Ranger who is resistant to the virus.
15
16Cue a long slog through the UK, during which Hale kills several Chimeran Angels (more or less a telepathic General) and destroys the central tower of the Chimera's country-wide network of them, which allows the humans to kick the Chimera out of Britain and allows a stalemate in the European theater to ensue. Hale goes missing in the confusion, found and kidnapped by American troops in strange uniforms and gas masks for unknown reasons.
17
18''Resistance: Fall of Man'' launched concurrently with the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3, and was the system's KillerApp for several months as Sony tried to figure out what they were doing.
19
20Insomniac released ''Resistance 2'' in 2008. In that, the US has captured a strange Angel called "Daedalus". Its appearance has caused the Chimera to greatly increase their tactical capabilities, and they have [[FromBadToWorse staged a massive invasion of the United States from the West and East coast]]. Nathan Hale, now a Lieutenant, is put in charge of a squadron of soldiers who are also resistant to the Chimera virus and sent to track down Fyodor Malikov, a Russian scientist who can stop Daedalus. Notable for hinting at major revelations regarding the origin of the Chimera. The AlternateRealityGame ''Project Abraham'' was a lead up to ''Resistance 2'' that detailed what happened before ''Fall of Man'', and revealed that Hale’s resistance to the Chimera virus was neither accidental nor natural.
21
22An {{Interquel}}, ''Resistance: Retribution'' was released for the PSP in 2009. It features James Grayson, a Royal Marine with a [[ItsPersonal personal reason]] for hating the Chimera, and several of the first game's supporting characters in their quest to help [[LaResistance The Maquis]] free France and Germany from the Chimera. Notable for switching from the main series' FirstPersonShooter gameplay to being a ThirdPersonShooter, and hinting at yet more unresolved plot points for the fans to fill with EpilepticTrees.
23
24''Resistance 3'' was released in 2011. After the events of ''Resistance 2'' [[FromBadToWorse the Chimera have succeeded in invading the U.S. and the remnants of humanity live a meager existence in hiding]]. One of Nathan Hale's old comrades, Sergeant Joe Capelli, is persuaded by Malikov to go to New York and destroy a giant tower the Chimera built that is freezing the planet. Like its predecessors, ''Resistance 3'' raised questions about the Chimera, and failed to answer a single one.
25
26A second portable game, ''Resistance: Burning Skies'', was released in 2012 on the UsefulNotes/PlayStationVita. ''Burning Skies'' takes place during the Chimeran invasion of America, and focuses on Tom Riley, a New York City fireman who joins the fight against the Chimera. Unlike ''Retribution'', ''Burning Skies'' uses the same first-person gameplay style as the main games, and also makes use of the Vita's touchscreen.
27
28----
29
30!!This series contains examples of:
31
32* AbortedArc:
33** The second game and ''Retribution'' left some minor plots hanging and alluded to the origin of the Chimera, but those were never answered before Insomiac Games left the franchise.
34** Malikov's last log in ''3'' alluded to a race that possibly forced the Chimera out of their home system, leading to them attempting to terraform Earth for survival. Unfortunately, due to the franchise's fledging sales, we may never known what really happened that led the Chimera to invade Earth.
35* AcePilot: Warner in R2; when asked by Hale if he could fly one of the Chimera's ships in the middle of a mission, he pretty much just sighs and agrees to it, and manages to master its controls in about 10 seconds.
36* ActionBomb: Leeches in R2 and R3.
37* AdvancingBossOfDoom: Satan/The Creature in R3 becomes this during a short mine cart section.
38* AfterTheEnd: Near the end of R2, pretty much the entire United States (if not the world) has been wiped out by the Chimera, while the setting of R3 focuses on the few survivors trying to stay alive. The multiplayer of R3 focuses on areas where humans have managed to stick together to form coherent armies, such as Chad and Wales.
39* AllThereInTheManual: Most of the game's back story and character development is explained altogether in the comic series and the [[AlternateRealityGame Project Abraham]], and events between the first and the second game are expanded upon in the novels.
40* AlienInvasion: The Chimera. We never get the full scoop on them, but the first wave were apparently normal humans mutated from an alien virus.
41* AlienSky: Done in the ending of ''R2'', to show that [[spoiler:a wormhole has opened up above Earth.]]
42* AllohistoricalAllusion:
43** It's mentioned in R2 that Douglas [=MacArthur=] eventually became President of the United States, after the whole government crashed down when the Chimera overran the Liberty Defense Perimeter.
44** Background material also notes that Noah Grace won the Republican nomination over UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt, who was seeking a third term, and that after Grace won a second term, there was an ultimately-failed attempt by the Democratic party to introduce a Constitutional amendment to limit Presidents to two terms in case Grace went for a third.
45* AlternateRealityGame: Project Abraham.
46* AlternateUniverse: See above, though the cultural implications aren't explored. The technological ones, however, are -- tilt-rotor aircraft and assault rifles with rail-mounted grenade launchers similar to modern-day ones were active in the 1940s. WordOfGod says technology went pretty far when the Chimera showed up.
47* AlwaysChaoticEvil
48** The Chimera, obviously.
49** The Wardens from the third game also count.
50* AmericaSavesTheDay: Averted. America gets its ass kicked. Twice. [[spoiler:There are three million Americans left over from the initial attacks, down from the hundred and sixty million that were alive at the time in real life.]]
51* AndThenJohnWasAZombie: And Then [[spoiler:Hale]] Was A Chimera.
52* AnachronismStew: As a result of being an AlternateUniverse. Human technology is now on par with stuff from the real 1990s or 2000s, but civilian design aesthetic is still rooted in the 1950s, as you especially see in ''Resistance 2'' when cruising through a few towns in Iowa. There are also a few 1950s-style weapons which have been enhanced by alien technology, like the Fareye, a conventional sniper rifle with a time-slowing scope for better headshots.
53* AttackReflector: The Backlash grenade creates an energy field that reflects most Chimeran weapons fire back on its source, damaging it.
54* AndNowForSomeoneCompletelyDifferent: ''Resistance 3'' gives the player control of Joseph Capelli, the man who [[spoiler:killed Nathan Hale]].
55* AnyoneCanDie: Generic, unnamed [=NPCs=], especially when they show up to aid you in combat, have [[RedShirt about the life expectancy you'd expect]], and even Lt. Cartwright takes a nasty wound in a cutscene (though he nevertheless survives). By the second game, even named characters aren't safe. [[spoiler:The only confirmed survivor at the end of ''Resistance 2'' is Joe Capelli; Hawthorne gets [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe ripped in half]] by Daedalus, Warner is stabbed through the gut by the same, Blake is ambushed and killed off-screen while delivering a bomb to a Chimeran warship's reactor, Hale takes a bullet through the head from Capelli after the Chimeran virus' infection goes too far, and one of the last intel items indicates Malikov is [[DrivenToSuicide planning to overdose on morphine]]. He doesn't go through with it and returns for the third game, but he still doesn't survive its events.]]
56* ApocalypticLog
57** Interestingly played with in ''Retribution.'' You do find a couple of documents, but the majority of the files you find are actually the protagonist's personal thoughts on whatever object he found, or intel report he just read at the location.
58** R3 plays this trope straight.
59* ArcSymbol: The [=SRPA=] logo, which appears prominently in all three games. In the first game it's a mystery as to what the symbol actually means; it's only in ''Resistance 2'' that [=SRPA=] and the central role it plays in the plot is finally revealed.
60* ArmCannon: The Executioner in ''Burning Skies'' wields one of these. The glowing rods on it are the creature's weak point.
61* AttackItsWeakPoint: besides the obvious BoomHeadshot and glowing points, the military Chimera in ''R3'' have their backpacks as one: shoot at them and they (the backpacks) will explode.
62* AssholeVictim: While the Chimeras are all heartless monsters, and therefore quite satifying to kill, [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters there's a few humans you encounter that fit this trope as well]].
63** Roland Mallery in Retribution. Whether he's an ally or not, he's still a JerkAss of the highest order with an [[LoveMakesYouCrazy erotic fixation for Raine]], considering that he's willing to steal from others and needlessly antagonizes Grayson and even going so far to leave him for dead or try to get him killed. You'll be very glad that Grayson snapped his neck near the end of the game after the prick pulls a FaceHeelTurn nonstop.
64** The Wardens in Resistance 3 can qualify as one since the leader should have never messed with someone like Capelli, [[spoiler: Mick learned it the hard way getting his head blown off.]]
65* BackFromTheBrink: The plot of the third game.
66* BadassLongcoat: Appears in several screenshots and in the teaser trailer, but nowhere in the games themselves.
67* BadassNormal:
68** Cartwright in ''Fall of Man'' manages to single-handedly survive several impossible situations, made even more impressive by the fact he's an unaugmented human without Nathan Hale's Chimera powers. On at least two occasions the game leads you to believe he's been overrun and killed by Chimera, only for him to turn up unharmed and kicking ass.
69** Retribution's protagonist, James Grayson, definitely counts. He's just an average soldier with no special abilities who can plough through armies of Chimera on his own. Not to mention he decides to go out on his own and destroy ''26 conversion facilities'', just because he's angry.
70** Specter team in the Co-op campaign of ''Resistance 2''. Despite being simply normal soldiers, they face much tougher opposition than the Sentinels and complete all of their missions successfully.
71** Capelli in ''Resistance 3'' is this, as he gets cured of the Chimera virus at the beginning of the game and loses all his Sentinel powers (no more RegeneratingHealth for you!). Also, from the same game, Charlie Tent, the commander of the Remnants in St. Louis, who assists you in the last mission against the Chimera.
72** Riley in ''Burning Skies'' is neither a trained soldier nor a superhuman Sentinel, yet manages to kick just as much ass.
73* BadassPreacher: Jonathan Rose from R3, who defines the Chimera invasion as God's final test on mankind, and fights to get through it. And he identifies a giant Chimera living underground as Satan.
74* TheBadGuyWins
75** Big time at the end of the second game.
76** Averted in R3. [[spoiler: Capelli manages to destroy the black hole over New York, resistance groups around Earth start reporting successes against the Chimeran forces, and humanity starts to rebuild after several years of war (a shot of the Statue of Liberty being repaired is shown during the credits).]]
77* BadVibrations: In ''Resistance 2'', the ground shaking is a sign that a Chameleon is charging you and is less than 15-20 feet away from you.
78* BeehiveBarrier: The Super Drone's shield, and the Auger's secondary fire.
79* BigApplesauce
80** The Chimeran wormhole in the third game is located in New York.
81** ''Burning Skies'' starts out in New York.
82* BigBad: Daedalus in the second game. The Angels in the first game.
83* BiologicalWeaponsSolveEverything: An eleventh-hour cure is used to defeat the Chimaera.
84* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: The main trilogy ends with the Chimera now gone for good, but 90% of the Earth's population are either dead or converted, and Earth's climate completely changed.]]
85* BloodstainedGlassWindows: The first game's infamous Manchester Cathedral shootout.
86* BreathWeapon
87** The Titans' roars in ''Fall of Man'' can damage you if you're standing too close to them. The same can be said for the Angel during the start of the "Angel's Lair" level.
88** The Kraken and Mother Spinner's roars can also damage you in ''Resistance 2''.
89* BodyHorror
90** What the Chimera do to captured humans.
91** What happens to anyone who gets shot with the Mutator gun in R3. [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential But it's so much fun to shoot people with it.]]
92* CapitalOffensive
93** In the alternate 1950s where an alien race attacked Earth instead of the Axis Powers, the aliens sweep through Europe with stunning quickness after having already overrun Russia (where they first arrived in the Tunguska Event of 1908). The first game sees the joint U.S. and British forces trying to retake London, which had been abandoned by the Brits months earlier, and destroy the massive tower. Which proves to be a InstantWinCondition against the aliens on British soil.
94** In the BackStory, one of the things that proved just how frightening the aliens are, is the fall of the Polish capital Warsaw. Out of a city of 2 million people, only ''1,000'' survived. This is because TheVirus is used on any humans that aren't killed to prepare them for transformation [[WeHaveReserves into more of the creatures]].
95** Prior to ''Resistance 2'', before they launched their main attack on America, Washington had been assaulted by the aliens during a Presidential speech. This forces the U.S. to move the government to Denver, which is inside the massive Liberty Defense Perimeter. [[spoiler: Sadly, it falls too, [[DownerEnding along with the rest of America, with the Perimeter being obliterated]]. So much of the government is killed, that the military has to directly take charge of what's left]].
96** ''Resistance 3'' has an opening cutscene which recaps the story, and includes alien foot soldiers marching in front of the Eiffel Tower. [[spoiler: And the game ''finally'' gives us a true HappyEnding by letting humanity win. Humans begin retaking the world, which includes a mention by an Irish fighter that they have retaken and secured safe passage to Dublin, the capital of Ireland.]]
97* CapturedSuperEntity: Daedalus in the second game, though he's released almost as soon as you find him.
98* ChainLightning: The Arc Charger and the Atomizer. The first one shoots a bolt of energy that jumps from enemy to enemy, and gets stronger with each body it passes through; the second one shoots lightning at its enemies
99* ChainsawGood / DeadlyDisc: In R2, the Splicer. Its main fire mode launches circular saws that ricochets on walls and splices everything that gets in their way. And with the secondary mode, it can rev up the saw (it can double as a melee weapon during this phase) and when fired, it hits the enemy and splices it from within.
100* CheckpointStarvation: ''Fall Of Man'' was pretty bad about this: each level only had 1 or 2 checkpoints, with many major firefights between each checkpoint. Given how quickly you can go from full health to completely dead in this game, it's very common to get booted back 15-20 minutes of progress or even right back to the beginning of the level just as you're about to hit the next checkpoint. The sequels used a much more conventional and forgiving checkpoint system.
101* LesCollaborateurs: In ''The Gathering Storm'' novel, President Noah Grace [[spoiler:attempts to make a deal with Daedalus where the Chimera are left to conquer the rest of the world unopposed as long as the United States are left alone. Daedalus is not impressed and Hale kills him for trying to betray humanity.]]
102* ContinueYourMissionDammit: Your allies in R2 will often yell at you to move as fast as possible to cover the fact [[TakeYourTime there's no actual penalty or consequences for being slow.]]
103* CurbStompBattle: Hale's U.S. Ranger battalion gets utterly ''slaughtered'' during the first level of ''Fall of Man'', and U.S. forces are not seen again for the rest of the game. The British resistance seen later in the game, by comparison, are still outmatched by the Chimera but manages to do noticeably better. The remarkably poor performance of the U.S. troops is attributed to the fact that the American leadership didn't even bother to brief their soldiers regarding the threat they were facing, so the Rangers went in expecting to fight Ultranationalists and ended up facing infectious aliens backed up by HumongousMecha.
104* CurbStompCushion: Despite how outmatched humanity is, various things they learn about the Chimera allow them to strike back, such as defeating the invasion of Britain in the first game, and starting to take back mainland Europe in subsequent parts of the timeline. Even when the United States is crushed after the Chimera smash the Liberty Defense Perimeter, the enormous air fleet that you've seen them using throughout the whole game suffers heavy losses, with only around twelve capital ships left out of around 60 earlier in the game.
105* CutsceneBoss:
106** The fight with Mick Cutter in ''Resistance 3'' is simply a couple of quicktime event button presses.
107** Likewise, the confrontation with Dr. Gorrell in ''Burning Skies'' is a simple quicktime button press, although this particular instance is justified as Gorrell is simply a scientist, not a fighter.
108* DamnYouMuscleMemory: Resistance 2's control layout is different from that of Fall Of Man.
109** The former alt-fire (L1) button now aims down the sights.
110** The new alt-fire button (R2) was once the weapon-menu button.
111** Melee is triggered by the R3 button, while Triangle switches weapons.
112** The circle button causes you to crouch, while grenades are mapped to the R2 button.
113** That said, all three games also give players the option to map any control to any button, which allows players to negate most of these changes. Although, since the aiming mechanic is altogether different between the first two (toggled in the first game versus held in the second on), mapping it to the R3 button won't work very well in the second.
114* DarkerAndEdgier: The second game is grimmer then the first. The third bucks this trend by ending on a more positive note.
115* DeadlyGas: The secondary fire mode of the mutator from R3.
116* DecoyProtagonist: [[spoiler:Hale is the protagonist for the first two games. However, in R2 he finally succumbs to the Chimeran virus and is killed by Capelli. Capelli himself takes up Hale's position as the main protagonist in R3.]]
117* DiabolusExMachina: Literally ''every single time'' humanity seems to have the upper hand, they get stomped into the dirt.
118** [[spoiler:Grayson discovering a vaccine/prevention fluid for conversion? The Chimera evolve to become immune to it, something that they were never shown/implied to be capable of.]]
119** [[spoiler:Hale killing Daedalus and destroying the Chimera fleet? There are randomly dozens more Angels, and the fleet was only a ''fraction'' of the Chimeran full force!]]
120** [[spoiler:''Finally'' subverted in R3, where it turns out the Chimera had NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup for the wormhole leading to their homeworld.]]
121* DistaffCounterpart: The Chrysalis ([[spoiler:Raine Bouchard]]) to Daedalus.
122* DownerEnding: In ''2'', [[spoiler:America is in shambles, and Hale becomes fully Chimeran. His only surviving teammate shoots him.]]
123* EarlyBirdCameo
124** Though he doesn't appear in person, James Grayson is mentioned in a few co-op intels of ''Resistance 2'' before his debut in ''Retribution''.
125** The protagonist of the Vita game ''Resistance: Burning Skies'' was rumored to be one of the survivors living in Haven, Oklahoma during the first few chapters of R3.
126* EarnYourHappyEnding: [[spoiler:The third game ends this way. Capelli is able to prevent to Chimera from opening a portal to their homeworld. After years of being embroiled in a losing war, humanity finally starts to turn the tide against the invaders.]]
127* EiffelTowerEffect: In the part of ''Resistance 3'' that takes place in St. Louis the Gateway Arch is prominently depicted, though the game is set well before it was built in our own universe.
128* EleventhHourSuperpower: In ''Resistance 2'', [[spoiler: after Hale defeats Daedalus, he touches him and gains rather interesting abilities. He can basically cause Chimera to spontaneously explode by waving his hands around.]]
129* EliteMooks
130** The Steelheads appear in every game, and can kill you fast if you don't deal with them right away. Their weapon is not only powerful, it can also shoot through solid matter, so taking cover from them is very difficult. They also have over twice the durability of regular Hybrids, which makes killing them tricky without focusing them down and exposing yourself to gunfire from the squad of Hybrids that usually accompany them.
131** The Advanced Hybrids, easily recognizable by their heavy armor and their use of the Bullseye Mark II. They only appear in the very last level of ''Fall of Man'' and can kill you very fast due to the high damage their weapon inflicts. Want to save your LAARK rocket launcher for the Angels? Using them on a group of Advanced Hybrids is probably a better use of it. They show up in ''Retribution'' as well, replacing the regular ones from the fourth level onward. They're a little more rare in R2, though they do pretty much exclusively replace the normal Hybrids in the airship section of the last level. Oh, and on [[HarderThanHard Superhuman difficulty]] in R2? ''Every single'' regular Hybrid is replaced with the Advanced version. Good luck. A few of them show up in ''Burning Skies'' as well, though they wield a different weapon.
132** There's also Hardfangs who exclusively appear in ''Fall of Man'', who can drain nearly all of your health if you don't kill them before they ZergRush you. The intel on them mentions that the British army has marksmen specificially assigned to taking them out before they rush into the frontlines and wreak havoc.
133** The Ravagers in R2 and R3, giant 9-foot tall Hybrids who move [[LightningBruiser deceptively fast]], have [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2 Juggernaut]] levels of durability, wield high-damaging weapons, and can project a shield to defend themselves. A single headshot from the Fareye or the Marksman can kill them, but if you don't have either of them or the Ravager simply decides to rush you then you're in for a world of pain. And there is ''rarely'' just one of them, too.
134* EnemyCivilWar: Feral Chimera (mostly Grims and Leapers, with a few Widowmakers around) against Military Chimera (Hybrids, Brawlers, Longlegs, basically any Chimera that is armored and can carry a gun) in ''Resistance 3''.
135** The humans also get into this as well. One faction, the Wardens, capture humans and lock them up in Graterford prison, making them fight in the occasional arena brawl (ala the Roman Empire). This marks the first time in the ''Resistance'' series that features human enemies in campaign mode. Otherwise, expect humans to team up with each other as much as they can.
136** During the R3 campaign, the player would encounter a Widowmaker fighting a squad of Hybrids in New York. The player gets a trophy for assisting the Hybrids in fighting the Widowmaker (i.e not killing the Hybrids whilst fighting the boss).
137* EnergyWeapon: How most Chimera weapons operate.
138* EverybodysDeadDave: By the second game, there's only a handful of continents that haven't been completely overrun. As of Resistance 3, that number falls to [[spoiler:none]].
139* EvilIsDeathlyCold: One of the goals of the chimera is to change the planet's environment to something closer to that of [[spoiler: long extinct]] masters, which was apparently much colder than the Earth.
140* EvolvingWeapon: In the third game, weapons upgrade via use, much like ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank''.
141* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The Leapers? They leap at you. The Rollers? You should get the idea.
142* FireBreathingWeapon
143** The L11-2 Dragon from R:FOM, which is only available on a second playthrough.
144** The secondary fire of the [[GatlingGood Mauler]] from ''Burning Skies'' consists of closing up its cooling vent and allowing heat to build up, and then releasing that heat as a burst of flame.
145* FluffyTamer: In ''The Gathering Storm'' it's revealed that a woman managed to tame a Howler, one of the Chimera's huge attack dogs. It even saved Hale from another chimera at one point!
146* ForegoneConclusion: The storyline is very, very bleak, but what did you expect with "Fall of Man" as a subtitle?
147* FreezeRay: The cryogun from R3.
148* FromBadToWorse: Pretty much every one of the main games from a narrative and story progression standpoint.
149* GameplayAndStoryIntegration: In the first game, Hale had no RegeneratingHealth starting out, and even after being infected he had to use canisters to heal up lost bars of health while regenerating smaller portions of the bars. By the second, his health naturally recovers altogether, indicating an increase in his Chimera powers. Capelli in the third game, on the other hand, had cured himself of the same infection, and is back to using canisters with no regen in sight.
150** GameplayAndStorySegregation: On the other hand, in ''Burning Skies'', Riley also has full regenerative health just like Hale did in R2, with absolutely no story purpose behind it.
151* GatlingGood
152** The HVAP Wraith from R2.
153** ''Burning Skies'' has the Mauler chaingun, which doubles as a flamethrower.
154* GeniusBruiser: Hawthorne's first scene in R2 involves him easily dispatching a Hybrid in melee combat, and later turns out to be tech savvy enough to control one of the Chimera's attack drones.
155* GiantMook: The 9-foot tall Ravagers are the standard first person shooter version of this trope, having the durability and damage output of a [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare2 juggernaut]], while the 15-20 foot tall Titans and yacht-sized Widowmakers are practically walking tanks. And taken to the logical extreme with [[{{Kaiju}} the Leviathan]]. ''Resistance 3'' introduces Brawlers, which are similar to Titans but more gorilla-like with a greater focus on smashing melee attacks. They're also ImmuneToBullets except to the heat sinks on their shoulders, arms, and chest which serve as weak spots.
156* GiantSpider
157** The Widowmaker from R:FOM and R3.
158** The Mother Spinner from R2.
159** The Goliath walking tank in ''Resistance 2'' also counts - they are many times bigger than they were in ''Fall of Man'', scaled up to emphasise Insomniac's "bigger and better" approach.
160* GlassCannon: Chameleons can kill you in one swipe of their claws but also die to a single shotgun blast or burst of gunfire.
161* {{Gorn}}
162** And quite a bit of it. Somewhat averted with the Chimeran Hybrids, as you can blow up bullets inside of them and they stay in one piece, [[spoiler: until the end, where Hale temporarily gets the ability to blow them to pieces with his bare hands]].
163** R3 features even more, by having Chimera Hybrids blow up left and right even by impaling them with a bayonet or attacking them with a sledgehammer.
164* GoryDiscretionShot: You'd think with all the {{Gorn}} in these games, they wouldn't mind showing [[spoiler:Malikov getting decapitated by Mick.]]
165* GuideDangIt: The Bullseye in ''Resistance: Fall of Man'' and ''2'' has a function that the game doesn't really explain: by holding the secondary fire button, you can place a tag on a surface. You can then "charge" it with projectiles from the primary fire, to create a tag bomb; you can either use it as a mine, detonate it by holding the button, or tag an enemy to make the bomb fly towards it.
166* HalfTheManHeUsedToBe
167** Happens in ''Resistance 2'' when Hale and two soldiers survive a Chimera ambush and run into another surviving soldier. As he is about to announce there's another monstrosity (the Chameleon) in the forest, he is brutally stabbed in the back by a Chameleon, and then [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill ripped in half right in front of their eyes.]]
168** [[spoiler: Hawthorne is killed this way by Daedalus]] in R2.
169* HandCannon: The Magnum pistol. It can kill a Chimeran grunt with a single shot to the head (as opposed to the carbine, which requires two to three shots) and once there's a bullet in something you can make it explode.
170* HappyEndingOverride: The first game ends on a somewhat triumphant note, with the Chimera being driven out of Britain after a long, arduous war. Then the sequel happens, which involves the Chimera having overrun the United States.
171* TheHeroDies: [[spoiler: At the end of R2. [[http://shogungamer.com/news/exclusive-interview-voice-actor-david-kaye-voice-clank-and-nathan-hale The voice actor]] apparently didn't get the message.]]
172* HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic: Hale loses his G.I. helmet during the first level of the first game, and completely fails to get a replacement even after multiple missions and 2 deployments. This is especially noticeably when he's seen alongside other soldiers, who are all wearing their helmets.
173* HeroicMime: Nathan Hale in the first game, for the most part. He ''can'' speak, but he only does so during cutscenes, and even then [[TheQuietOne he doesn't have a whole lot to say]]. These tendencies are even lampshaded in-game, where after being spotted by British forces, Lieutenant Cartwright figures out who it is by asking "let me guess, shaved head, kind of quiet?". By ''Resistance 2'' he becomes a lot more talkative in his role as a squad leader, even to the point of talking during a mission to give orders.
174** The player-2 characters in the first and third games' co-op campaigns play this trope totally straight. They never contribute a line of dialogue to the story. The only time we hear their voices is when they call their partners. Capelli's partner in R3, John Harper, may have a good reason to be silent - [[spoiler: his family was slaughtered by the Chimera.]]
175** Capelli himself is weird about this in the third game, acting more or less the same as Hale did in the first - he talks quite a bit during cutscenes, but then in gameplay there's not a word out of him. This was lampshaded by Yahtzee in his ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'' review.
176** The protagonists of ''Retribution'' and ''Burning Skies'' avert this, having lines both in and out of gameplay.
177* HeroicSacrifice: Inverted in ''Resistance 2''. [[spoiler: Instead of Hale going down as the man who was infected with the Chimeran Virus and spent his last hours delivering a crucial blow to the enemy, he'll go down as the Chimera who basically started Judgement Day.]]
178** [[spoiler:Not necessarily. Hale's blood was used as part of a cure for the Chimeran virus, as R3's beginning shows Capelli and other infectees being cured. Capelli actually gets all of the flak for killing Hale to begin with. To quote him:]]
179--> [[spoiler:''"Hale was the hero, and I was the villain."'']]
180* HideYourChildren: Averted, after a fashion. Some of the Grim are quite noticeably smaller than normal. Combined with some distinctly child-sized conversion cocoons, these smaller Grims were almost certainly children once.
181* HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct
182** There was no UsefulNotes/WorldWarII in this timeline. Instead, most of Europe and Asia [[spoiler:and North America, by the end of the second game]] are wiped out by the Chimera.
183** Notable because this is appears to be one of the rare inversions. The events that brought the Chimera invasion were independent of Hitler or much of history in general (they apparently came during TheTunguskaEvent), the West exited the Depression early, and the most pressing conflict of the day was a UsefulNotes/ColdWar with Czarist Russia that burned far cooler than even the historical one. While we don't know what the Japanese, Chinese, or miscellaneous Communists were doing at the time, it seems fair to say that humanity would have been far better off in general in this time line [[FromBadToWorse were it not for the fact that they share it]] with a race of genocidal [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot super-aggressive hivemind alien zombies]].
184* HiveMind:
185** The Angels are all linked together and give commands to the foot soldiers. If one dies, its subordinates die. [[spoiler:Hale takes advantage of this in the first game by blowing up the central Chimeran tower in their network and killing all the Angels within.]]
186** According to ''Retribution'', the Cloven are this as well. Their hive mind also extends to their numbers, becoming more brutal and savage if their numbers are depleted.
187* HopelessWar
188** Humanity has been almost entirely wiped off the face of Eurasia, the British have lost England and are barely holding on in Scotland, the enemy is vastly more numerous, more technologically advanced, and can turn those of you it captures into more of itself. Things get better when the Chimera are kicked out of the British Isles and mainland Europe starts to get taken back, [[spoiler:only for it to get a LOT worse when the Chimera invade North America]]. And humanity is desperately short on warm bodies.
189** [[FromBadToWorse But wait, there's more!]] The Chimera are also using their technology to make the Earth much, much colder than normal as they have a higher metabolism and otherwise require personal cooling devices. One level in the first game takes place in July in England that is under at least six feet of snow. Assuming that small pockets of people could survive after the world falls, it would not really matter as they would probably freeze to death. This is much more noticeable during ''Resistance 3'', because the Chimera are starting to terraform Earth and only a handful of humans are left to fight them.
190** Subverted in the end of R3. After [[spoiler:the portal to their homeworld is destroyed]], the Chimera start to lose momentum and humanity is able to start beating them back.
191* HostileTerraforming: The game has massive temperature shifts - most obvious in ''Resistance 3'' - due to the Chimera terraforming the planet to be more suitable their own needs.
192* HumongousMecha: All of the Chimera's war machines, like the Goliath, the Hammer and the Stalker.
193* HybridMonster: Most of the Chimera are not merely mutated humans, but surgically altered to have cybernetic implants, most often large radiator rods sticking out of their backs, because their heat output is too great to survive normally. No word on whether or not Grims get cybernetically augmented later; they generally resemble unenhanced Hybrids (the stock enemy) upon emerging from their cocoons.
194* HyperspaceArsenal: In all of the games-except ''Resistance 2'', which imposes a two-weapon limit on the player-you'll be carrying a ridiculous number of weapons by the end of the game.
195* [[IdiosyncraticCoverArt Idiosyncratic Logo Art]]: On each game, the "A" of ''Resistance'' has a landmark from the game's setting (Big Ben on the first, Golden Gate Bridge on the second, Eiffel Tower in ''Retribution'', Statue of Liberty in the third). ''Burning Skies'' breaks with this tendency by showing a silhouette of a firefighter, who is the main character.
196* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: Daedalus in R2 seems to be pretty fond of doing this with his tentacles. [[spoiler:He impales Hawthorne and Warner before killing them. He also impales Hale, though he manages to survive.]]
197* ImAHumanitarian: The Chimera and the Cloven are known to eat the flesh of deceased humans. While it is only alluded with the Chimera, the Cloven example is much more unsettling, as they actually prepare the flesh from corpses [[spoiler: of the women being stored on the Paris storage facility]], as Grayson attests in Retribution.
198* InvincibleMinorMinion: The Furies in R2 are unkillable despite the fact that part of their bodies is exposed and that they don't look more special than any Chimeras. This is because they primarily exist to [[BorderPatrol railroad the player into the intended path]].
199* InvisibilityCloak: The Sniper Hybrids from R3 have this.
200* {{Jerkass}}: Capelli in R2, though he is a lot more mellow in the last two levels. Grayson and Mallery in Retribution.
201* {{Kaiju}}: The Leviathan, one of the bosses in R2.
202* KillItWithFire
203** Air-fuel grenades, the L11-2 Dragon flamethrower.
204** In R3, the shotgun can be upgraded to fire incendiary buckshot.
205** ''Burning Skies'' has a chaingun that shoots fire as its secondary function.
206* KilledOffscreen: [[spoiler:Major Blake]] in the last level of R2, though no special attention is drawn to his corpse so you might overlook it.
207* LeftHanging: While ''Resistance 3'' isn't as definitively conclusive a finale as ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar 3'' or ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'', the ending is ambiguously hopeful enough to serve as a finale (and WordOfGod is that their current plans are for it to be the last game). By the end of the game, the true nature of the Chimera is left unrevealed, the hinted-at True Chimera are not encountered, and the Cloven fail to play any role in the main plot despite the significant build-up they receive throughout the series. ''Burning Skies'' does not answer these questions.
208* LighterAndSofter: ''Resistance 3'' counts as this. While the situation is pretty hopeless at the beginning, the characters do manage to make a difference and eventually [[spoiler:turn the tide back in humanity's favor]].
209* LightningBruiser: The Ravagers in R2 and R3 are tough, and can rush you in seconds. Better hope their AI is feeling lenient. The Gray Jacks in ''Fall of Man'' count as well, being extremely fast and able to slice your health meter apart in seconds.
210* LightningGun: The Arc Charger can fire a bolt of electricity at targets. Related to LightningCanDoAnything.
211* LimitedLoadout: In R2, you can only carry two weapons at a time. Due to negative player reaction, this was scrapped with subsequent games.
212* LiterallyShatteredLives: In R3, you can do this to enemies frozen with the cryogun by either hitting them with the secondary fire or simply hitting them with a melee attack.
213* LiveActionCutscene: ''Resistance 3'' was announced with a live-action trailer set to "[[Music/BobDylan Masters of War]]", featuring a group of survivors riding a train before being ambushed by a group of Chimera.
214* LostTechnology: The Gray Tech, technological objects found in Chimeric towers but not originating from the Chimera, suggesting an even greater force than the current Chimeric threat. The half chimeric/human Cloven who watched both sides scrambling for the unknown artifacts obtained the objects themselves in hopes of wiping both sides out, resulting in them collecting the most Gray Tech. Unfortunately for them (and fortunate for humanity and the Chimera), the only use the Cloven found for the Gray Tech was as objects of worship. Had they reverse engineered the components instead of holding rituals for the objects they could have potentially wiped out all the other combating races.
215* MagicAntidote: Believe it or not, if one reads the background materials in ''Resistance 3'', it becomes clear that the Chimera vaccine actually works like an '''actual vaccine''' rather than a cure [[note]]Vaccines and cures, despite what ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' would have you believe, are not the same thing. A cure helps someone who's sick already, while a vaccine gives the person's body the ability to avoid getting sick in the first place[[/note]]: it must be administered beforehand, and if it hasn't, it won't do much good, forcing the medical folks to adopt [[{{Squick}} much more primitive means of treatment]].
216* MagneticWeapons: The Longbow in Retribution.
217* MajorlyAwesome: Major Blake, Hale's superior in R2. He fights alongside Hale in the Prologue and the final level and is quite competent. [[spoiler:''The Gathering Storm'' reveals him as a [[EmpoweredBadassNormal Sentinel]].]]
218* MeaningfulName: Deliberately invoked with the Widowmakers, which were named as such by the British because their combination of high-lethality attacks and the rallying effect even a single one has on nearby Chimera foot soldiers tends to destroy entire batallions of soldiers.
219* MeleeATrois: Several times in ''Resistance 3'', between Capelli and the human Remnants, the military Chimera, the feral Chimera and a group of ex-prisoners called the Wardens. The Widowmaker battle in New York is especially notable, as the military Chimera will largely ignore the player if left alone (there's even a trophy for acknowledging the very brief truce).
220* MonogenderMonsters: Pointed out in ''Resistance: Retribution.'' All the Chimeran soldiers were apparently male. In ''Retribution'' we get to see where they were taking all the female humans for conversion. Then inverted in Resistance 3, where the Remnant leader mentions that Feral Chimera ''can'' breed.
221* MoreDakka: The Wraith cannon boasts a fire rate of 1200 bullets per minute.
222* NewGamePlus:
223** A second playthrough of the first game unlocks several new guns that can be acquired at certain points, including Reapers (a [[GunsAkimbo pair of]] auto-pistols that can [[OffhandBackhand track individual targets]]), Backlash grenades (pops up a {{Deflector Shield|s}} that repels most attacks back at the one who shot at you), and L11-2 Dragon (a flamethrower that can release streams of flame or flammable vapor clouds).
224** In a second playthrough of R3, every weapon you acquire will be at the same upgrade level you brought it to at the end of the first playthrough.
225* NiceJobBreakingItHero: In R2, [[spoiler:it's heavily implied that literally ''everything'' Hale did in the game was all part of Daedalus' master plan.]] It was. [[spoiler: The nuclear bomb kick-started the Chimera global tower network (which had been routed to [[ThanatosGambit Daedalus' ship]]) and opened a gigantic wormhole above New York City]].
226* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Related to the above: [[spoiler: Daedalus' MyDeathIsOnlyTheBeginning master plan was entirely contingent on the superportal remaining open long enough to bring the Pure Chimera to Earth. It also had the effect of causing the Chimera to lose their leadership structure as well as lose control of the lesser Chimera lifeforms, which helps accelerate the Chimera's downfall once Capelli closes the portal and causes the Pure Chimera to fail to show up to start running things.]]
227* NintendoHard
228** The Resistance series is ''significantly'' tougher than any of its major contemporaries (i.e. ''VideoGame/{{Killzone}}'', ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'', ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'', or ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare''). ''Resistance 2'' takes the cake by a wide margin, as even on Normal difficulty you'll die more than a dozen times even in many regular encounters, and unless you progress through a firefight using the ''exact'' piece of cover the designers want you to, you'll end up mowed down by pop-up Chimera. It's not clear if this is because Insomniac games doesn't know to properly balance level design because they don't specialize in FPS games, or if they're just sadistic bastards.
229** In ''Resistance 3'', towards the end, the game designers would like to introduce you to their good friends, the Long Legs Sniper. All over the place.
230* NoEnding: Played with in ''R2''; Capelli is forced to kill a converted Hale, Daedalus and the Chimeran armada are destroyed, and nothing else is revealed of the fate of the US or humanity until ''R3''.
231* NoGearLevel: At the beginning of the Graterford Prison arc in R3, Capelli is stripped of his weapons after being captured by the Wardens. He doesn't get them all back until his escape and the subsequent level outside of the prison.
232* OminousFloatingSpaceship: Huge ones appears in the R2 when the Chimera invade LA.
233* OneHitKill: The Chameleons can kill you in one hit, but luckily they [[GlassCannon go down easily]].
234* OneWingedAngel: At the end of Retribution, [[spoiler:Raine Bouchard mutates into a giant monster called the Chrysalis that looks like the DistaffCounterpart of Daedalus.]] Daedalus himself may also count, though we never see what he looked like before he mutated.
235* OppressiveStatesOfAmerica: Downplayed at first. America never entered World War I and the Great Depression was averted, and was still heavily under the grip of isolationism before the Chimera arrived. Once Noah Grace took power, he exercised a great deal of control over information and the military without congress' permission, quietly cracked down on dissent, killed the amendment on term limits and, when the Chimera invaded Europe, he had all public reports of them censored to avoid mass panic. He was seen as corrupt and totalitarian by many even before the War.
236* OurDragonsAreDifferent: From what little we see of the "Pure" Chimera, they seem to be serpentine and draconic in structure.
237* OurPresidentsAreDifferent: Noah Grace is a combination of President Corrupt and PresidentEvil, the latter solidified by [[spoiler: his plan to negotiate with the Chimera for America's safety in exchange for sacrificing the rest of the world.]]
238* PinnedToTheWall: The Hedgehog Grenade is noted for its ability to impale victims multiple times to the point of sticking them to walls at its maximum kill-range.
239* PostClimaxConfrontation: At the end of ''Burning Skies'', after [[spoiler:defeating the FinalBoss]], Riley is [[spoiler:accosted by the scientist who created it]].
240* PrisonEpisode: At one point, you are captured by bandits who use a local prison as their base. They force you to fight in a [[GladiatorGames gladiatorial arena]], until one of their own has a change of heart and frees you, giving you The Mutator, a gun that [[BodyHorror essentially makes enemies puke themselves to death.]] Brutal revenge ensues.
241* PrisonRiot: The whole point of the Graterford Prison levels in ''R3'' is doing this by [[spoiler: disabling a bunch of [[SummonBiggerFish Chimeran drones]] and sending reinforcements to the prison, so it would distract (or kill) the Wardens]].
242* PsychoPrototype[=/=]PsychoSerum: In the backstory, Malikov's attempt to create a serum that prevents soldiers from turning into Chimera resulted in thousands of Cloven, half-human cannibal mutants.
243* RealIsBrown
244** ''Resistance'' goes for a mostly-monochrome look in the original game.
245** For the sequel it completely averts this trope, with gorgeous, highly-colorful locations and skies. The third game takes a "Kodachrome" approach, looking like a retro, faded photo from the 50s.
246** This Trope is so up to eleven in ''Resistance 3'', IGN posted the [[http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/07/30/resistance-3-fade-to-brown-music-video music video]] "Fade to Brown". It gradually averts this as the game progresses. The earlier levels which take place in areas where humans are still dominant are mostly brown, while the later levels which take places in Chimera-controlled areas are mostly green, blue and grey. The multiplayer in the game shows this off, with humans being color-coded yellow-brown and the Chimera being colored blue.
247* RedshirtArmy
248** Absolutely ''everybody'' in this series: the Chimera die like flies but are limitless, and the Humans are better trained but less powerful and are running out of replacements.
249** The crown goes to the Army Rangers in the first level of the first game, who get utterly ''slaughtered'' by artillery, Chimera, and even [[EveryCarIsAPinto exploding cars]]. The British resistance forces later in the game do noticeably better during war sequence levels, although they still need your assistance to make any headway.
250* RegeneratingHealth: The series is unique for having an actual in-universe explanation for this trope: it's one of the side-effects of the heavily-increased metabolism one gets from infection with the Chimeran virus.
251** ''Fall of Man'' utilizes a segmented health meter. As long as their was some health remaining in one segment, it will refill after the player avoids getting shot for a few seconds. To restore a fully-depleted segment, you have to pick up a Sym-bac canister. For story reasons, the regeneration is also disabled for the very first level.
252** R2 does away with the health meter and uses the "bloodied-screen" effect commonly seen in other shooters, allowing you to regenerate from near-dead to completely healthy.
253** R3 scraps the health-regen concept altogether, due to Capelli losing his Sentinel powers, making the player rely on Sym-bac canisters entirely to keep their health up.
254** ''Burning Skies'' brings back the ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty''-esque system, although no in-story explanation is given for this.
255* LaResistance: The Maquis in ''Retribution'', Freedom First in ''The Gathering Storm'', and the Remnants in ''Resistance 3''.
256* RevolversAreJustBetter: The Magnum, able to one-shot kill most non-elite enemies, PLUS its alt-fire causes the bullet lodged in the target to explode violently. You can kill many enemies with just one shot this way.
257* RiseToTheChallenge: A few times you have to run away from a watery area as it's flooding, lest you be devoured by the shark-like Furies.
258* {{Roboteching}}: The Bullseye does this towards wherever you shoot a tag at. It's basically the ZF-1's Replay function from ''Film/TheFifthElement''.
259* ScaryScorpions: Arguably the Leapers and Rollers, which look strangely like a Chimeran version of modern scorpions.
260* SceneryGorn: Beautiful 1950s America and England, utterly destroyed by warfare and alien flora and fauna.
261* SecondaryFire: All of the weapons have a secondary function of some sort.
262* SecondHourSuperPower: In the first game, Nathan doesn't get his signature regenerating abilities until after the first level. In fact, the only way to restore your health there is to get killed and be booted back to a checkpoint.
263* SequelEscalation: ''Resistance 2'' is bigger and insaner than the first game, with several humongous bosses and more War Sequence levels. ''Resistance 3'' actually ''reverses'' the trend, with an even smaller setting than the first game, and telling a much smaller-scale, more personal story. This even extends to the gameplay, with much fewer war sequences or boss battles in favor of ''Half-Life 2''[=/=]''Metro 2033''-style survivor communities to interact with, as well as removing the protagonist's Chimera superpowers and thus taking away the series' staple regenerating health and replacing it with more traditional medkits.
264* SetAMookToKillAMook: Hitting an enemy with the upgraded mutator will cause it to charge other enemies before exploding.
265* ShaggyDogStory
266** [[spoiler:Deadalus' death and the destruction of their fleet turns out to have been only a temporary setback for the Chimera, and in fact was AllAccordingToPlan. However, as it turns out, Daedalus' defeat and Hale's actions also led to the development of a vaccine against the Chimera virus, which sets the stage for humanity to slowly but surely regain control of their planet.]]
267** The real Shaggy Dog Story in the series is ''Retribution'', [[spoiler: as Grayson and Bouchard sacrifice pretty much everything to stop the Carriers, only for the Chimera to upgrade to Spinners like nothing ever happened.]]
268* SigilSpam: The [=SPRA=] logo is stamped onto a remarkably large number of objects throughout the game, despite supposedly being the logo of a top secret covert organization that presumably wouldn't want to advertise its existence.
269* SmugSnake: Roland Mallery in Retribution (He stole a lot of things from people who needed them most and undermines James Grayson's efforts just because he doesn't like him), and U.S. [[OurPresidentsAreDifferent (corrupt) President]] Noah Grace in the novels [[spoiler:(who sets up a fascist regime in the United States, refuses to send aid to Europe [and makes sure what aid is sent has no idea what they're getting into so they get slaughtered], kidnaps and tortures Adam Shepard's (Daedalus) wife to lure him, and when finally Daedalus meets him, he tries to force him to spare his life in the event of a Chimeran invasion to the United States).]]
270* SomebodySetUpUsTheBomb: The ending of the second game.
271* StakingTheLovedOne
272** Grayson is forced to kill his brother at the beginning of ''Retribution'' after finding him halfway through the Chimera conversion process.
273** Tom Riley is forced to do this to [[spoiler:his wife Natalie]] near the end of ''Burning Skies''. Those GaidenGame protagonists just can't catch a break, can they?
274* SuperDrowningSkills: You actually can swim in ''Resistance 2,'' but the waters are almost all invariably filled with "Furies," who kill you instantly the moment they swim up to you and cannot be harmed in any way. Therefore, avoiding water like it's lava is essential, and a few times you have to hop onto cars or whatever else is in a flooded area to proceed. ''Resistance: Retribution,'' conversely, has lots of watery areas for you to traverse and if you're in Infected Mode you can even hold your breath indefinitely.
275* TakeCover: ''Retribution'' and ''Burning Skies'' feature a cover system. In ''Retribution'', it's activated simply by approaching the object you wish to use as cover, while ''Burning Skies'' uses a "crouch and pop out to shoot" mechanic similar to ''VideoGame/{{Killzone}}''.
276* ThanatosGambit: [[spoiler:Daedalus engineered the events of the second game.]]
277* TheFaceless: Tom Riley, the hero of ''Burning Skies'', never has his face shown in-game, even in cutscenes [[spoiler:until the end of the game]].
278* TheUnfought
279** And the unseen, for the most part. The Cloven are only directly seen in ''Resistance: Retribution'', so far, but they prove to be a hugely important part of the backstory. As a bonus, they also act as a sort of MetalSlime because some of the Skill Point challenges in ''Retribution'' are sniping the distant Cloven you see sneaking around in the background.
280** The [[EldritchAbomination Pure Chimera]] also fail to show up, despite being hinted at several times throughout the series as the true enemy.
281* TheVirus: The Chimerans use this to kill humans, then convert the dead to soldiers and a working force.
282* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: See HalfTheManHeUsedToBe examples.
283* ThrowAwayCountry: More like throw away ''continent;'' South America is mentioned in one bit of intel to have been completely overrun by just four Chimeran ships within the span of three days, leaving barely a few hundred survivors at most.
284* TookALevelInKindness: Capelli is a lot less hotheaded in R3 than he was in the previous game.
285* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: The American Government's propaganda machine, which covered up the Chimeran invasion of Europe as an influenza pandemic, and dismissed all warnings that the Chimeran invasion was only a matter of time. This doomed the continental U.S. to retreating to the "Liberty Defense Perimeter" (which got overran anyway).
286* UpgradeArtifact: This is how Grey Technology artifacts work in ''Burning Skies.'' You find a glowing, shapeshifting cube (usually near a dead Army soldier) and slap it onto your weapon to instantly improve it in some way. The plot revolves around a sinister SRPA plot to collect a whole bunch of them at any cost.
287* ViewerFriendlyInterface: The Chimera computer just shows an attack plan of the Chimera, which... consists of a map and a line.
288* WasOnceAMan: All the Chimera, but special mention goes to Daedalus, whose former identity ([[spoiler:Jordan Shepard]]) is a major plot point.
289* WeHaveReserves: The foot soldiers are more-or-less things to be thrown at humans until the humans died, and dead humans are collected and formed into new Chimera.
290* WeaponSpecialization: Team Echo (bar [[PlayerCharacter Hale]]) in R2 only use one specific weapon in every level. Capelli uses the [[GatlingGood HVAP Wraith]], Warner the Marksman, and Hawthorne the [[ShotgunsAreJustBetter Rossmore 238]]. Hale himself almost always has the Bullseye equipped during cutscenes in R2, whereas in ''Fall of Man'' he generally wields the Carbine during cutscenes. [[spoiler:This could be seen as a hint that Hale is slowly succumbing to the Chimeran virus, seeing as he starts to prefer the Chimeran standard firearm to the Human equivalent.]]
291* WellIntentionedExtremist: The BigBad of ''Burning Skies'' is a SRPA scientist, Richard Gorrell, who intends to control Chimera creatures using Grey Tech and use them to fight the Chimera. In order to do this, he actually lures the Chimera to a refugee camp so they'll capture all the civilians and turn them into a Leviathan, which Gorrell plans to hijack using his Grey Tech.
292* WhyAmITicking: The Titans in ''Fall of Man'' will look around questionably after the cooling unit on their back overheats and beeps loudly, and then [[OhCrap roar in defeat]] when they realize they're about to blow up.
293* XanatosGambit: In R2, [[spoiler: if Hale fought back against the Chimera, he'd open a portal and doom humanity. If he didn't fight back, the Chimera wouldn't need the portal to kill everyone.]]
294* YouDontLookLikeYou: Cartwright is inexplicably blond and blue-eye in the comic series.
295* YourHeadASplode
296** The Boiler's attack method in Retribution consists in running at you to [[ActionBomb detonate themselves]] this way. [[PinkMist They explode either way]] with a single shot [[BoomHeadshot to the head]].
297** In R3, this happens to [[spoiler:Mick Cutler]] after Capelli [[spoiler:shoots him in the chin with a Magnum, and then detonates the bullet.]]
298* ZergRush: The main tactic of the Grims, which are unarmed but almost always charge you in huge swarms and deplete your ammo VERY quickly. Leapers also do this.
299* ZombieApocalypse: Menials in the first game, Grims in the second and third, Boilers in Retribution.
300* ZombieInfectee: A human scientist goes insane and attacks you in ''Burning Skies'', becoming a sort of boss battle. It's unclear if he's infected by the Chimera virus, as he looks completely human and was acting perfectly normal prior to attacking you, but he behaves like a typical Fast Zombie complete with animalistic growls. The scientist later appears as a DegradedBoss alongside normal Grims.

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