Camera System

Reimagining Racoon City: A Tour of Resident Evil 2 Remake’s Brilliant Survival Horror

The Racoon City Police Station is perhaps the most iconic location in Resident Evil, whose large marble entrance and tight hallways made 1998’s RE2 simultaneously beautiful and haunting, personal and claustrophobic. This created an oppressive tone that multiplied as supplies dwindled and made fighting the undead horde and mutated freaks inside that much more terrifying. But after that, Resident Evil’s survival horror gradually broke from the slow burn atmospheric terror into the tense action era, which reworked the resource management into revolutionary fast-paced third person shoot outs. But the genes that made Capcom’s viral horror design continued to mutate over the next two decades, until it was time to return to Racoon City and merge the eras, bringing atmosphere, consequence, and vulnerability to the tuned gameplay. The 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake is both the reimagining of an amazing genre classic and the sequel to a legendary remake.

A Samurai Soul in Zombie Body: The Hack ‘N Slash Spirits That Summoned Onimusha from Resident Evil

Videogame history is incremental additions to mechanics and systems, series and genres, and technology and production pipelines, and following their cinematic shooter Resident Evil, Capcom began applying its 3D action model to more genres, swapping elements to experiment without breaking. The PlayStation 2 primed the design for the design’s second generation, and Jun Takeuchi’s Onimusha: Warlords successfully created cinematic sword fighting, translating hack ‘n slash into 3D as SquareSoft’s The Bouncer had done for brawlers. The increased processing power for animations and effects, the high-res art and character models, all aided gameplay and presentation, transforming the grindhouse zombie flick into a historical fiction samurai horror film.

Parasite Eve (or, SquareSoft’s Experimental Cinematic RPG)

Aya Brea’s date night at Carnegie Hall is tragically cut short when the show’s new singer eyes her in the audience, activating an unknown ability deep in her cells that lights everyone in attendance on fire except the stunned NYPD detective who chases the mutated Eve backstage. The theater is a perfect place to start Parasite Eve’s story, as the game, inspired by survival horror games of the time, was SquareSoft’s experiment with cinematic techniques, using digital actors on its virtual stage. Since RPGs are fundamentally about surviving dungeons and harsh environments with the resources you have in your inventory, Parasite Eve was a great opportunity to experiment with new ideas. Directed by Takashi Tokita, veteran of Live A Live and Chrono Trigger, Parasite Eve is a cinematic police procedural that merges game genres to tell of the six day quest to stop Eve’s genetic awakening before it changes humanity forever.

Splicing Gen(r)es: Investigating Resident Evil’s Survival Horror

A Biohazard Outbreak

When Special Tactics And Rescue Squad’s Bravo team goes dark in Raccoon City’s Arklay Mountains while investigating grizzly murders, the Alpha team rescue party finds itself in a firefight against bloody claws and gnashing teeth, a scene Resident Evil brings to life with real actors dashing through the woods towards the safety of Spencer Mansion. Though primarily told through cinematic in-engine cutscenes framed by a static camera system, this live-action scene transitions the player into the B movie game’s world filled with zombies, mutated dogs, giant spiders, and, at the end, the perfect bioweapon, manufactured by the international conglomerate, Umbrella Inc. A controllable, branching B horror movie starring S.T.A.R.S.’ Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine and supporting characters, Resident Evil tests your delicious brain’s skills to survive a different kind of haunted house, discover the truth about a biological outbreak.