Resident Evil at 30: How Capcom’s horror franchise survived and thrived | games

TMany of us were playing and writing about video games in the ’90s, and Resident Evil seemed to come out of nowhere. The emerging PlayStation and Saturn consoles were all about bright, cool arcade conversions – the glossy thrills of Daytona and Tekken – and Japanese publisher Capcom was in a state of coin-op conversions and endless sequels to Street Fighter and Mega Man. Scary games were rare at the time and were mostly limited to computers. So when news of a horror title called Biohazard (the Japanese name for the series) started to emerge in 1995, it caught the attention of gaming journalists because it seemed so radically out of step with mainstream trends. Games were about strength, but as early demos quickly revealed, Resident Evil was about vulnerability.

Thirty years later, he’s still here. The series has sold over 180 million copies worldwide, with 11 core titles and dozens of spin-offs and remakes, as well as film, television and anime tie-ins. Its characters and monsters are icons, and their tropes are now an integral part of game design practice. What has allowed it to not only survive but thrive in such a rapidly changing industry? Why do we still let that scare us?

It’s important to understand that Resident Evil didn’t actually pop up out of nowhere. And he had a source. In 1989, Capcom released a role-playing game titled Sweet Home on the Famicom, the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was about a group of filmmakers searching a haunted mansion for valuable artifacts owned by a mysterious artist. The game had modest domestic success but never received an international release. However, one of Capcom’s top producers couldn’t let go.

“We have Tokuro Fujiwara to thank for Resident Evil’s existence,” says Alex Aniel, author of the acclaimed Resident Evil history. “He directed Sweet Home believing that horror could become its own genre, but he wasn’t satisfied with its primitive depiction. He wanted to give horror another go as soon as the technology to allow it was available – and that opportunity finally arrived with the original PlayStation release.”

In 1993, a young producer named Shinji Mikami was brought in to oversee a horror game project inspired by Sweet Home. He took the concept of a haunted mansion, but drew influence from George Romero’s Dead Trilogy, as well as the 1992 Infogrames horror adventure Alone in the Dark, in which he imagined a mansion haunted not by ghouls but by zombies, mutants, and monsters. The heroes are an experienced SWAT team investigating disappearances at a country mansion owned by an evil scientific organization: Umbrella Corp.

The original idea was to create the game entirely in real-time 3D, but it became clear that the PlayStation hardware couldn’t handle that level of visual processing. Mikami and programmer Yasuhiro Anpo decided to come up with a compromise, combining 3D characters with pre-rendered 2D backgrounds viewed from a range of fixed camera angles. This limited expressive style emphasized the extreme claustrophobia of the environment. As main characters Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield explore bustling corridors and decaying rooms, information is always kept from the player through blind corners and mysterious doorways.

This combination of tension, omissions, and limitations is one of the primary reasons Resident Evil has endured as a horror series. Even after the camera moved to an over-the-shoulder perspective in Resi 4 and then to a first-person perspective in Resident Evil 7, characters always remain vulnerable. Ammo, save points, and health items are jealously rationed, and inventory is extremely restricted. In this way, Resident Evil is more like a classic horror text than a solid fantasy video game. The characters are victims trying to navigate a world full of unimaginable dangers using whatever tools they can find. This means that when we finally defeat Dr. Salvador, Mr.

Resident Evil has also expertly referenced horror conventions and paid its dues for its inspiration. Romero is there, of course, but so are many other films. “Kamiya’s biggest inspiration came from Alien and especially its sequel, Aliens,” says Aniel of Hideki Kamiya, the famed designer who directed Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil Zero. “For example, in Resident Evil 2, humans infected with the G virus grow a parasite that eventually tears apart their host and emerges from within, growing into deadly creatures.” Elsewhere, both Resident Evil 4, set in a diseased Spanish village, and Resident Evil 7, set in the turbulent swamps of Louisiana, both reference the Texas Chainsaw Massacre with incestuous families of psychotic killers and cannibals. Discovering these references is always a pleasure.

But Resident Evil also deftly moves between horror genres, never gets stale, and always keeps up with cultural norms. There is gothic horror in its crumbling mansions, its brutal enemies, and its vulnerable young women; There is sci-fi horror in her nightmarish biological experiments; There is folk horror in the game’s sinister villages and strange religious cults. In this way, it contains the full range of human fears, from monsters lurking in the dark to hysteria, physical deterioration, death, and dying. Whatever atrocities we see in society, Resident Evil can reflect them — a fact that came into sharp focus in March 2020. “The COVID pandemic has reminded us how real we are afraid of viruses,” says Bernard Perron, a professor of cinema and video games at the University of Montreal and author of The World of Scary Video Games. “In this sense, the fear of a corrupt corporation like Umbrella, along with mad scientists who do not necessarily have the best interests of humanity at heart, continues to resonate. These fears remain deeply rooted in our transhumanist societies.”

As with all great horror films, Resident Evil is constantly changing and reinventing itself. But like Scream and Halloween, it has strong returning characters that keep players focused and engaged. Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield, Leon Kennedy – they’re relatable but adorable, cracking sarcastic jokes like Hollywood heroes. We know they’ll enter a palace, a castle, or a laboratory and be attacked by monsters of delightful menace – and we know that behind the chaos will be charismatic adversaries like Albert Wesker, Lord Osmund Sadler, and Lady Dimitrescu. (By the way, it’s interesting how many of the game’s arch-rivals were aristocrats — Resi is about class horror, too.) We know that Umbrella will be involved in some way; The plot always goes straight to the top.

This is another reason for its survival. In Resident Evil, horrors reveal themselves gradually, like the leaves of some disgusting carnivorous plant. Take the latest incarnation, Resident Evil Requiem: rookie FBI officer Grace Ashcroft spends time exploring before facing any real danger. You were carefully pulled out. “The series offers deep and entertaining gaming experiences, but with very low barriers to entry, even for newcomers,” says Aniel. “Resident Evil games are more accessible than ever: because they are often on sale, they are affordable even for customers in emerging global markets, and they are available on every major gaming platform.”

Speed ​​and structure play a role here too. Resident Evil always skillfully demarcates sections of exploration, puzzle-solving and combat, giving us moments to breathe and relax. The locations are filled with beautiful details – plush furniture, whimsical oil paintings, ornate gardens – so they are a joy to explore and enjoy. After tense battles, we can retreat to safe places, such as Save Rooms; We can visit merchants and spend our money on new weapons. On the fragile facade of power, Resident Evil is a series full of illusions. It constantly deceives us, undermining our sense of what is real or imagined.

You know what you’re getting, but you don’t know either. There may be shock around every corner, or there may be nothing – it’s the uncertainty that gets you. It allows us to write about our fears and anxieties, or discover new fears that we had not thought about or acknowledged. Like all great horror novels, Resident Evil survives because it looks us straight in the eye and says, “I know what scares you.” Come and see.