Resident Evil

And in term of villians?

Because wesker is too much a anime villian to take me seriously, while my favorite is Nemesis by sheer hatred of it.

I enjoy Wesker because he's hilarious. To be fair, it's not like you can really take the plot of RE as a whole all that seriously (well, before RE 7 anyways). Like sure the first three games (and the R Emake) have a wonderfully crafted atmosphere of dread and terror but the subpar to mediocre VA undermined a lot of first 3 RE's attempt at drama, and from RE 4 onwards the series started to get more and more ridiculous.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Jan 2nd 2019 at 1:59:46 PM

I dunno, I was more partial to Mr X. Umbrella were able to massproduce him after all. Plus, he's so dedicated to his mission of retrieving the G-Virus that he's willing to follow a locket containing a vile of G-virus into a vat of molten metal like he's a stupider T-1000.

Plus it didn't kill him so...

Well okay there was Darkside Chronicles having him instead shirk his duties to go after Leon and Claire because fuck those guys

I just don't get the point of the coat.

I mean. He's an eight-foot tall gray-skinned monster that shrugs off bullets and relentlessly stalks its target.

What did they think the coat was going to do?

As I recall, it's actually some sort of "limiter" which stops it from mutating into the bigger clawed version and makes it more likely to do as it's told.

That. The 'coat' is really a suit of armor melded with the Tyrant, designed to prevent mutation and the resultant loss of control. It is also designed to break away if the Tyrant is heavily damaged; under the reasoning that if the unit is that badly wounded, allowing it to mutate out of control and hopeful kill/destroy whatever was capable of engaging it effectively is an acceptable tradeoff. You can see the break away part during the latter portion of the Tyrant fight in RE: Damnation.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Jan 3rd 2019 at 3:18:52 PM

Oh.

Well I suppose that's actually rather clever.

Yes, finding way to actually control your mutant super weapon that can MDK you in seconds is pretty clever.

Not creating the damned thing would be better to be honest.

That's the thinking of someone who doesn't have a totally loyal BOW at their disposal.

But nobody has one of those.

Nobody. I mean, in most cases they make sure to be as far away from the damn things as possible.

One of Umbrella's Russian operatives kept a Mr. X spinoff as a personal bodyguard, so apparently they can control them until they go nuclear.

Edited by Hashil on Jan 3rd 2019 at 5:03:43 AM

Yeah, and we have seen a few that appear at least as good as human troops at following orders in battle: the whole T-103 line was very reliable until one received enough cumulative damage to punch a hole through a tank, and by that point any actual soldier and most war machines would be out of commission anyway.

There are also the Plagas controlled Lickers, which seem perfectly controlled and responsive, even following obviously suicidal orders without hesitation. At least some Hunter variants were reliable to deploy alongside human troops, and the A-Virus also appears to create reasonably well controlled zombies.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Jan 3rd 2019 at 7:33:00 AM

Regarding the discussion about 5's premise looking somewhat racist - anyone else baffled about the fact that Capcom's initial reaction to the criticism was to remove black people while still keeping the spear-chucking tribals in?

Honestly, switching Chris and Sheva around to make the latter the primary protagonist would have been better than what they did.

Not to mention that this would have avoided Sheva becoming one of the worst AI sidekicks ever.

This is one of those suggestions that kind of comes off as, "It'd be easy to change the entirety of the game." The game being about Chris Redfield's desire to rescue Jill Valentine, finding out about Umbrella's secret history exploiting Africa, and getting revenge on Wesker.

Also, Sheva is awesome and I don't know what people have against her.

Having one of the few non-white characters be the sidekick to a white guy when the game is set in Africa does have some Unfortunate Implications.

Also the issue wasn't with Sheva herself being a shit companion story-wise - but the AI made her look utterly incompetent outside of cutscenes. She's often unfavourably compared to Ashley from 4 because the latter's AI actually fit her role as what was basically an escort questgiver.

I didn't see her as a sidekick except more people played Chris. The more personal story was Chris but the major goal of saving the region was hers.

Mind you, I guess I'm glad to have a game set in Africa as it's such an underrepresented region in video games.

So isn't pretty much answer to question "How to do zombie game set in Africa and not be offensive" being "Have a protagonist who is also from Africa"?

I started to think about it, and if main character of RE 5 was Jill instead of Chris, would it actually be even more offensive because of certain really really offensive stereotypes about Africa?

It would be about the same level of offensiveness.

There's a stereotype/offensive image no matter which direction you go in if you really want to skew it that way

• If it's Chris going to Africa fighting crazy infected natives it looks bad. "White person going around killing black people who need to be put down."
• if it's Sheva with Chris as a partner doing the same thing? Still looks bad. "The 'civilized', lighter-skinned black person going around killing black people who need to be put down with her white partner."
• The solution that seems most workable to me is to axe Chris entirely and just focus the game on Sheva and Josh - but then you don't want to have Wesker as the main villain due to his conflict largely focusing on Chris, and having Excella be the main villain instead well: "Black people going to Africa to kill more black people who are being manipulated by a rich white lady."
• You could have a different scenario where there's a lot of black leads, maybe some even from the area, and maybe not all of the Majini get mowed down and maybe they get cured but that's really not in the spirit of Resident Evil.
• Maybe you could make like half the zombies white? Well that's not really demographically accurate for a game taking place in Africa.
• Or, just don't make the game take place in Africa when the game is an action-heavy romp where you gain points for murdering your enemies stylishly and efficiently. But then what, are we afraid to use Africa as a setting in video games?

Personally I didn't really care back when the game came out until someone described the things this way: "It's not that you're a white protagonist in Africa that's bad, it's that you're a white protagonist in Africa slaughtering Africans by the dozens and stealing treasures and pretty much anything not nailed to the floor."

But even with that thought, it's a video game, harmless at best and Unfortunate Implications at worst. Japan has plenty of arguably offensive depictions of black people - looking at you Final Fantasy - I don't think it's a problem on a level that significantly hurts the game or requires drastic revision. And a third-person action game taking place largely in Africa at all is pretty unheard of.

Japan feels more prone to accidental stereotyping than anything. Like you never get the impression they made Barrett Wallace or Mister Popo or Black-er Baron or Balrog because they're outright racist, just not as conscious of stereotypes. Those characters and their respective franchises are notable for more than their stereotypes.

It's this awkward, revolving door of positive and negative portrayals of black people when it comes to Japan. They'll make a game like RE'5 that sets off all sorts of alarms, but then they'll make a character like Josh or Sheva who don't feel negative at all, or a character like Balrog from Street Fighter whose this typical, menacing Scary Black Man who works for the series villain, but then have Dudley, a British-African boxer whose all posh and handsome, and Elena, who might be the purest character in the franchise.

Edited by Soble on Jan 5th 2019 at 2:25:25 AM

https://www.livescience.com/3385-worse-resident-evil-5-exposes-racism.html

Live Science did an article on it.

But I always point out, again, that a good half of the enemies are Caucasian and Arabic as well as black.

It's not the game of killing black zombies.

Here's an example:

https://imgur.com/a/L340UNq

Sadly, the black enemies are much more memorable because they're so rare in gaming (and the damn spear zombies).

Mind you, the spear section is doubly weird because apparently that's supposed to be something the Las Plagas do to people. In Europe, that caused the farmers to all become Medieval superstitious peasants who burn witches and defer to church authority while it apparently makes black citizens tribals. We have documents talk about it. It's also an amazingly stupid idea.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 4th 2019 at 8:04:23 AM

Yes, because Capcom's answer to the "white man goes to Africa and kills hordes of black people" was to literally replace Africans with white and Asian people while keeping the "spear-chucking savage" stereotypes in the game.

My point is that they basically chose the worst option to deal with the pre-release criticism they could find. The answer to "white man killing hordes of black people in Africa" shouldn't be "let's remove some of the black people".

Though as people pointed out, this might be more out of ignorance than actual malice.

For example, heir depiction of rural Spain in 4 wasn't any more flattering - first of all, it looks more like Central or Eastern Europe, considering how dreary the whole place is. Heck, I would have loved if the game had actually been set in some isolated German village, considering Germans rarely get to be villains that aren't Nazis.

Not to mention how these supposedly Spanish villagers speak Mexican Spanish.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Jan 4th 2019 at 5:27:19 PM

Resident Evil 4 is also a adaptation of the Shadow Over Innsmouth.

So there's no way someone wasn't going to look horrible in that.

(Weirdly, the movie Dagon also does an adaptation of that movie in rural Spain)

Apropos Resident Evil 4 - anyone else hoping the Merchant makes a comeback at some point.

I really want to know what his story is, considering he's a British bloke who's pretty cordial to the player, despite showing signs of Las Plagas infestation himself.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Jan 4th 2019 at 7:14:04 PM

The only thing greater than the need to serve the Las Plagas' master is his need for money!

:)

Here's to hoping for a cameo or easter egg in the RE 2 remake.